Rosa Lopez, Simpson's fifty-seven year old maid, was a immigrant from El Salvador. One of ten children, Lopez had dropped out of school at age nine to help her parents harvest their small crop of corn, beans, and rice. Lopez married young and had seven children, only two of whom survived to accompany her to Los Angeles, where she had worked as a maid for about thirty years.

Frightened by the press and the attention they brought, Lopez shunned the cameras and reporters who flocked around her in an attempt to get a statement regarding what she saw on the night of the murder. A few days before her testimony, Lopez fled from Los Angeles to New Mexico. After calling a lawyer from Simpson's defense team, she was persuaded to return. Asked by Judge Ito to stay and give her testimony, Lopez replied, "I don't want to be here any longer. All these reporters have ruined my life." Lopez reluctantly agreed to stay for her testimony, telling Judge Ito, "I will do it for you, Your Honor."

Lopez returned to El Salvador following her testimony. She has never returned to the United States.