Ortega's paternal grandfather arrived from Texas in the 1880s while on her mother's side, her great-grandfather Luciano had been one of the original settlers of Tularosa in 1862.

[1][4] As a teenager, Ortega worked as a teller at Otero County State Bank in order to earn enough money for college.

[1][2] In 1968, Ortega moved to Los Angeles where she became a CPA and joined the firm of Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Company as a tax supervisor.

She also worked as a cashier at Pan American National Bank, a financial institution founded in 1963 by Romana Acosta Bañuelos.

[1] Ortega worked for Republicans at local and state levels initially as a type of low-key liaison to women and Hispanic groups in New Mexico.

In April 1982, Ortega was named to a 10-person Presidential Advisory Committee on Small and Minority Business Ownership by President Ronald Reagan.

In December, she was appointed one of five members and chair of the Copyright Royal Commission, a federal agency established in 1976 to set royalty fees for the cable television and music entertainment industries.

At her swearing-in ceremony, three previous U.S. Treasurers attended: Francine Irving Neff, Bañuelos, and her immediate predecessor, Bay Buchanan.

[4] In 1986, Ortega conducted a study that rejected the idea of changing the colors of $50 and $100 denomination bills in order to frustrate counterfeiters and drug lords with large amounts of such type of cash.

In 1990, she was appointed by President Bush to serve as an Alternate Representative to the United Nations General Assembly for the duration of his administration.

[4] Ortega's years as Treasurer came partially under scrutiny in 1992 when Sen. John Glenn, then chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, investigated irregularities in the competitive bidding process used by the Treasury Department.

Sen. Glenn's committee questioned the relationship between Robert J. Leuver, then director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and Maurice Amon, president of Sicpa Industries of America – the sole provider of the ink used for U.S. currency since 1982.

[7]She has often singled out her father in particular, saying that "[he] taught me we were as good as anybody else, that we could accomplish anything we wanted ..."[1] Ortega was married briefly when she returned to New Mexico in the late 1970s.