Ortega was born in El Paso, Texas and has moved to Los Angeles in 1978. He is married since 1988 and has two children, a boy and a girl. He received two awards, a Stuntmen Award in 1986 for best spectacular sequence in the mini series North & South, starring James Read, Kirstie Alley, Jean Simmons, Jonathan Frakes and his wife Genie Francis, Jim Metzler, and David Ogden Stiers, and a Screen Actor's Guild Award in 2001 for the outstanding performance of the cast in Traffic, where he doubled actor Benicio Del Toro and played a minor part. He doubled Del Toro also in the 1998 film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in which Star Trek performers Richard Riehle, Larry Cedar, Ransom Gates, Gregory Itzin, Milt Tarver, and Lisa Hoyle also appeared. In 1994 he doubled Star Trek guest actor Carlos Carra