Among the serendipitous benefits of writing a column are the surprising invitations that occasionally materialize in my inbox. With today’s intersected world, it’s a fool’s errand to try and figure out how or why your name turns up on a particular e-mail list. That was the case last month when I received a notice for a free paella buffet at a private party launching the fourth Maria Empanada shop on Platte Street in Denver’s Riverview neighborhood. I met Lorena Escobar Cantarovici who employs 55 and will add another 8 or 10 next week when she opens her fifth location at the unveiliing of a new foodie marketplace in the 900 block of Broadway.

It ‘s been my observation that perhaps 3% of the human race seems comfortable operating on 220V while the rest of us settle for 110V. My grandmother was one of those wired at 220V. No matter how early you woke, she was already preparing breakfast, mopping the floors (which you could eat from), hanging laundry and generally blasting through each morning like a whirling dervish. Lorena belongs to this fortunate cohort. She requires extra power to build her Empanada Empire.

Lorena was graduating from college as the Argentinian economy spiraled into collapse at the turn of the century. Both her parents lost their businesses, their savings and soon the family was living with relatives. She took her first step away from this chaos by enrolling in a marketing master’s degree program at the Monterrey Institute of Technology in Mexico. Upon completion she applied for a visa to study English, arriving in Denver with $350 and all the clothes she could stuff in her backpack. She found a job waitressing and grins when she explains that her English was so poor that she asked patrons to point out which items they wanted from the menu. All along she had her eye on opening her own business.

Immigrants are three to four times more likely to start a business than resident Americans. Finding she loved our mountains, the outdoors and what we like to think of as the Colorado lifestyle, Lorena soon found herself feeding friends by introducing them to her empanadas. Her friends loved them and told her she could surely sell them. She had her doubts, until they began placing orders for more. Starting with the stove in her kitchen, she soon graduated to a small industrial oven in her garage, only to discover she couldn’t bake her empanadas and run the air conditioning in the house at the same time. Soon she raised $4,000 from her mother (Maria) and other family members so she could open a small, walk-in shop on Sheridan Boulevard in West Denver.

Many of her customers were Mexican Americans who were curious about the empanadas, but wondered why they weren’t stuffed with chilies and chorizo. If you aren’t familiar, empanadas look a lot like what the English call pasties or handheld pies. Lorena explains that a true, original empanada was a sheet cake sized pastry served in Spain. Argentinians reduced this pastry to something that could be slipped into a saddlebag by a gaucho or into a miner’s lunch bucket. With plenty of carbs in the pastry and stuffed with meat and veggies in the filling, Lorena began supplying empanadas to several Denver catering services and found herself outgrowing the little shop on Sheridan.

She needed a bank loan to purchase a shop and attached bakery at Broadway and Louisiana in south Denver. Her applications were rejected eight times by bankers before she discovered the Colorado Enterprise Fund, which kick started the success that followed. (More about them in a future column) Relying on her marketing training, she developed standard operating procedures for her employees ranging from how to greet customers down to the placement of items on a coffee plate.

This attention to detail has paid off for her. Zagat’s Guide ranked Maria Empanada as one of the ten best new bakeries in the country last year. Empanadas are prepared at the main location and then frozen. Once delivered to the remaining shops, they are baked fresh as required so each item tastes like it just came out of the oven, which it has. Argentinian travel authorities have hailed Lorena as the Ambassador for the Argentinian Empanada in America. Last month QSR Magazine ranked Maria Empanada among the 40 best, new fast casual restaurants in the country. Her ambitions are large – first Colorado, then 49 more states. Maria Empanada would not be the first restaurant chain to have been nurtured in Colorado.

Lorena is a proud immigrant and an even prouder U. S. citizen. Her success demonstrates the American Dream remains within reach in a nation founded on immigration. It makes one question the wisdom of border walls and unfounded fears of job loss. The luckiest people in this story are Maria Empanada’s employees.

Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and a former state legislator. He can be reached at mnhwriter@msn.com.