NORTHGLENN - Reyna Gutierrez thought she had a way out of being poor. Instead, she found herself dug in deeper.

"I had my first child when I was 17 - just with the hopes of getting out of a small town," she said. "That was my mentality: If I had a kid, maybe I'd get out of there."

She came up hard in the San Luis Valley.

Her dad abandoned the family when she was a baby, died when she was 14. She worked the fields around Center - weeding lettuce, bagging potatoes - just to buy school clothes.

It's the way she was raised. Girls were expected to get married, have babies and care for their families.

It's easy for people to judge who don't know how hard it is to raise yourself up by your bootstraps when you're barefoot.

Gutierrez's mom worked two jobs. Her stepfather worked long hours on the farms. And it still wasn't enough.

By the time she was 24, Gutierrez was married with three children. That's when she realized if she didn't make a future for herself, her children wouldn't have one, either.

So she enrolled at Trinidad State Junior College's branch campus in Alamosa.

Gutierrez didn't know much about enrolling - or financial aid.

But she asked questions. And she got the answers. Then she got grants and loans to go to school.

Dropping out was a big temptation. "I always wanted to quit. Something always came up. Financial aid wanted some form I didn't have," she said.

But she stuck it out.

"My kids were the inspiration for me to do it. I didn't want to have to struggle every week to provide for them," Gutierrez said. "I just knew that's something that I had to do. There wasn't an option not to do it."

She studied business for three years. Then she and her family moved to Northglenn. She finished her two-year degree at Front Range Community College.

Now, she's 31 and the mother of four. She works days. And she's still in school, going nights.

She's a junior at Regis University, thanks to a Daniels Foundation Scholarship.

She never considered Regis until she was almost finished with her two-year degree.

"I thought Regis was unattainable," she said.

"I just thought it was some place you pass by, a place with gates all around it, a place that was off-limits."

She learned it wasn't like that at all.

She has switched majors to psychology and has a plan for her future.

After graduating in 2008, she wants to get a master's degree, possibly in organizational leadership, and then head back to the San Luis Valley to work with kids who are like she used to be, kids who think the future is like five minutes from now.

Whatever, life will be different for her kids.

"They have no choice. They're going to college," Gutierrez said. "There's no maybe I will or maybe I won't."

massarog@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5271

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