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Copyright © 2018 Albuquerque Journal

For the past several years, a group of six women now in their 80s – all friends from church – met every other week to play dominoes in a neighborhood off Wyoming and Academy NE.

On Thursday, three of them never made it to the game.

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The women were two blocks from their friend’s home, heading north on Wyoming, when police say the driver, 85-year-old Betty Kopecky, made a left turn across traffic onto Cubero NE and collided with another car heading southbound.

Kopecky’s gold Mercedes-Benz showed severe damage to the passenger side where it came to a stop on the grass, several feet from the road.

Her passengers, Peggy Jojola, 88, and Marie Roark, 82, died at the scene. Kopecky was taken to a hospital, where she died about two hours later. The driver of the other car suffered minor injuries.

Gilbert Gallegos, a spokesman with the Albuquerque Police Department, said the three women were all wearing their seat belts. He said speed doesn’t appear to be a factor in the crash, and neither does alcohol.

“The initial investigation indicates that the driver of the Mercedes failed to yield right-of-way,” he said.

Their friend Kathryn Maudlin said the group was supposed to meet at her house at 10 a.m. and she began to get worried when Jojola, Roark and Kopecky didn’t show up. Eventually, she and another woman walked up the street and saw there had been a horrible crash.

“I said ‘The ladies we were concerned about were in a Mercedes’ and (the police officer) said it is a Mercedes,” Maudlin said. “We knew then without a doubt it was them in a terrible accident.”

She said the group of six normally met on Wednesdays but rescheduled this week. Kopecky’s birthday was July 2 and the friends wanted to surprise her with an early celebration of ice cream and cupcakes.

“We hadn’t told her we planned to celebrate her birthday that day …,” Maudlin said. “It made it all the sadder – having the cupcakes just sitting there.”

Maudlin said the remaining friends are devastated about the news. They gathered at Jojola’s house with her family Friday morning.

“It just breaks our hearts to lose them,” she said. “We’ve been friends for so long. There started out being eight of us – we are all older people – and one went into a facility a while back and one had died. So there were six of us. This took half of our group.”

Maudlin said the women had met at Del Norte Baptist Church, where Jojola taught Sunday school. She said they got together once for lunch and a game of dominoes several years ago and decided to continue the tradition.

Jojola’s son Jon said she had three children, five grandchildren and four great grandchildren, many of whom still live in Albuquerque. Jon said his father, Peggy’s husband, had passed away in the late 1990s and she no longer drove herself around.

“She was just a wonderful lady,” Jon said. “Very full of life.”

Roark’s daughter, Anita Roark-Mayer, said her mother had always looked forward to the dominoes games and getting together with friends, especially after her husband’s death last year.

“I loved her like you love your mother,” Roark-Mayer said. “She was a housewife most of her life and she took care of the kids.”

Kopecky’s family could not be reached Friday, but Maudlin said she had a daughter and a son who lived out of state and she had worked for Sandia Labs before she retired. She said her husband died several years ago.

“She always wanted to help those two get here,” Maudlin said. “She would pick them up from their homes. That had been going on for quite a long time.”