But there was scant interest, and Melgosa's brother quickly gave up. Melgosa kept going.
She's never made a profit. Though she has participated in more than 600 funerals and can charge $600 for a funeral in a location as far away as Denver, Melgosa often donates her services. She offers free funerals for children and law enforcement officers, as well as for members of the military. She pays her bills by running a local Verizon shop and selling antiques online.
She dabbled in weddings, but after battling "bridezillas," she is a funeral-only operation. "Weddings are too depressing," said Melgosa, whose marriage ended in divorce more than a decade ago.
Her first funeral for a soldier who died in Iraq or Afghanistan was in 2005. Army Staff Sgt. Justin Vasquez of Manzanola was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad, and Melgosa, who had watched Vasquez grow up, offered her services. More than 1,000 people -- twice the town's population -- turned out for the funeral.
Two weeks later, a Denver funeral home called and asked if Melgosa would transport the body of a Marine killed in Iraq. She agreed. After the burial, as she drove her hefty trailer out of the cemetery gate onto a traffic-choked street, drivers honked and cursed.
Melgosa was shaken. "I thought, 'This stranger died for me,' " she said. "I cried all the way home. I thought of all those people honking. After that, you have to do it."
She started scouring newspapers for reports of slain troops. Using contacts in the funeral industry and military, she tracked down their families and offered her services.
"When people die, you say [to their families], 'If I can do anything, just let me know,' " she said. "In general you can't do anything. But I can help."
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Melgosa is a supporter of the Iraq war but mostly shies away from politics. "I'm a hick from Manzanola, and there are people in higher places that know better than me," she said. "If they say we have to go to war, we have to go to war."
Melgosa tries to keep her burials to locations within 350 miles of home. "I wish I could do them all, but I'm not independently wealthy," she said.
Sometimes she breaks her rule.
She trekked 450 miles to Roswell, N.M., for an Army sergeant who died pulling troops from burning Humvees in Iraq. She drove 380 miles to Bayard, Neb., to help bury Army Capt. Scott Shimp, 28, who died in a helicopter crash in Alabama shortly after returning from Iraq.
