SEA meeting is 'out-of-this-world'

RIO RANCHO — The Sandoval Economic Alliance (SEA) looked to the skies during its monthly partner breakfast at the National UFO Historical Records Center located at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School Dec. 17.

David Marler, the National UFO Historical Records Research Center executive director, and Rio Rancho Public Schools Chief Operations Officer Mike Baker spoke at the meeting.

Baker mentioned that the partnership between RRPS and the National UFO Historical Records Research Center came about as an initiative to make learning fun for students.

“Why Rio Rancho Public Schools?” Baker said. “We are not here to prove whether we have little aliens from outer space, but there is a body of evidence, and we want students to learn and to be critical thinkers and to say, ‘OK, this is the evidence out there; what does it mean?’”

Marler also gave partners a tour of the research center, which included a database of government documents, newspapers, original photographs, recordings and other assorted items.

“Whether you believe in the reality of UFOs or you think it’s a sociological phenomenon, we welcome Ph.D. researchers to come and research the subject,” Marler said.

The National UFO Historical Records Research Center has even garnered international attention for Rio Rancho.

“We had the Canadian Broadcast Corporation here. I have been working with them on a major documentary where for the last two years they have been traveling the globe interviewing Ph.D. level researchers that are now applying science into looking at the subject,” Marler said. “It will be showing our ribbon cutting, which will be memorialized in the documentary, showing the partnership between an educational institution and a UFO organization in preserving the history.”

The unnamed documentary will be coming out in late 2025 in 50 countries.

While SEA partners were touring the facilities, Marler’s “The X-Files Theme” ringtone went off which got a huge laugh from all in attendance, including Marler.

“It’s an organic collection. It continues to grow as, I think, public interest continues to grow, so there’s a lot more to the subject than people think, as you can tell,” Marler said. “I will leave you with a joke. The inside joke is, ‘We are here to preserve the history of moving this out of my house, we preserve my marriage.’”

At the end of the presentation, Baker shared optimism that the National UFO Historical Records Research Center could eventually bring tourism to Rio Rancho.

“We would like to have a permanent facility. We want to open this up, not just for our Rio Rancho community, but we literally want to open it up for the world for people to come and see the collection and conduct research,” Baker said. “One thing about Rio Rancho and Sandoval County, we don’t really have that much with regard to tourism. I think this concept will help us in that regard.”