EL PASO -- The story of Blanca Enriquez is a love story -- but it is such a complicated love story ... such a multifaceted love story.

The story, like Enriquez herself, is something of a whirlwind, a 59-year whirlwind. The young girl from Juárez, the teenager who graduated in the top 10 percent of her class at Bowie High School, the young woman who got bachelor's and master's degrees from UTEP and a doctorate from New Mexico State has somehow managed to embrace life while traveling at 110 miles per hour.

The story is her love affair with her late mother, Maria Vicenta Navarrete, with her high-school sweetheart Manuel Enriquez, with her three children and her six grandchildren, with thousands of children who have been touched by her love over the past quarter of a century, with all their parents, with all her co-workers, with knowledge itself and, well, a love affair with life.

Enriquez has been the executive director for El Paso's Operation Head Start program since 1986 -- seeing it grow from nine centers to 30 early childhood centers, from 198 employees to 800, from 1,200 children to 3,803 pre-schoolers and an additional 213 infants and toddlers, from a budget of $1.5 million to $30 million.

"It has been a beautiful journey of investing in El Paso," Enriquez said. "I still enjoy doing this very much. It is so rewarding."

John Uxer, former executive director of the Region 19 Education Service Center and now a board member of El Paso Community College, said, "Blanca Enriquez is one of the best -- if not the best -- Head Start directors in the nation. She is very dependable, very demanding, very forward-looking, very cooperative ... cooperative but demanding."

El Paso's Head Start program is the only one in the nation to receive an exemplary rating for the past 12 years. Every three years a team of investigators descends on the program, checking every crevice, every child for two weeks. Each time Enriquez and her colleagues and their baby, the Head Start program, have received exemplary ratings.

"We have people from all around the nation who come to our program to be mentored," said Irene Rosales, who has worked with Enriquez for 20 years.

"We've had people all the way from Washington state, people from Washington, D.C., from Florida, from all over. We've had people with areas that have migrant problems, Indian problems, every sort of problem imaginable seek her guidance, her mentorship. She always opens our doors, tells them to ask us anything and everything. She tells them we will share what we know so their trip will be worthwhile."

And Socorro Rodriguez, who has worked with Enriquez for 22 years, said, "She is such a humble person ... just a wonderful person. She has this great vision, a vision beyond words. She is so caring for those she serves and yet she is always looking beyond. She has done amazing, amazing things with the Head Start program."

The Blanca Enriquez story began, though, in
Juárez. Her father died before she was born. Her
mother was a U.S. citizen living in Mexico, and that made Blanca Enriquez a U.S. citizen, too. The family moved to El Paso, and she began first grade at age 7, quickly learning English.

"My mother always said I was going to college," she said, smiling at the recollection. "She always said it. I didn't know how. I didn't know where. But my mother planted that seed. When I graduated from Bowie, I married my Manny, my one and only boyfriend, my sweetheart. He was drafted to Vietnam and I found a way to go to college through the Carrillo Act. All I had to pay was books and student use fees.

"Growing up, I thought I would be a legal secretary," she said, chuckling. "But when I went to UTEP, I thought they would only want young girls to be legal secretaries. You can teach forever and a day. Manny was always so supportive in everything I wanted to do. You want to do this? Do it.

You want to do that? Do it."

She became involved with work-study and the El Paso Independent School District even before she graduated from UTEP. She graduated and taught at Beall Elementary School and loved it. But they wanted her back in teacher training, as a bilingual consultant at Region 19. That was the next step in her story, the next step toward her involvement and love affair with Head Start.

"The Head Start program was kind of a political football," she said. "Nobody really wanted it. John Uxer, the executive director at Region 19, asked me to help write a grant, said they might take the federal funds away from El Paso if we didn't. We got that first grant, and John told me he wanted me to be the director. I told him if it was just because I helped write the grant, the answer was no. If it was because of my administrative ability, if he would give me 110 (percent) support, well, then let me talk to my family."

Smiling again, she said, "Manny just said, 'You want to do that? Sure, that's you.' I told him it was going to take 24/7 but that I would still take care of my mother duties and my wife duties. He told me to do it."

And another love affair was born -- a love affair that has spanned nearly a quarter of a century, thousands of children and countless parents. So many of the parents have become staff members. First they volunteer, then they like it, then Enriquez gets them back in school and, presto, they are part of the program.

El Paso stands in the spotlight with this program, and Enriquez is so proud of the unique Intellizeum program, an innovative and fun project that actually lets children step into the shoes of various professionals. Of the 12 different stations for 3- and 4-year-olds, one has the children slip into a space suit and they become astronauts for the afternoon, studying planets and constellations, listening to the voice of El Paso's own astronaut, Danny Olivas. In another one, they are doctors and nurses. Another one is for architects and engineers, another for newspaper writers and television anchors.

"It plants the seed that these babies can be whatever they want -- like the seed my dear mother planted for me," she said.

Enriquez gets excited, her eyes lighting up, her voice almost bubbling when she talks about the project. Of course, she gets the same way when talking about her babies, her thousands of children -- and about her own children and grandchildren and about her high-school sweetheart Manny.

"Life is good and God is great," she said, smiling yet again. "I lost my Manny to a heart attack in 1996. We had a wonderful, beautiful relationship. I lost my dear mother, too, who instilled so much in me. But I still have my three children -- Juan Manuel, Sandra and Robert -- and I have my beautiful grandchildren -- Michael, Adrian, Gwen, Eric, Sarah and Lauren."

She also has those thousands of children through Head Start, all those many parents and so many loyal colleagues.

And so The Blanca Enriquez Story is clearly a love story -- one as simple as someone striving to help others and as multifaceted as life itself.