Famous Latinas...Barbara Garcia ,Lorena Ochoa, Erica Ortiz,Kathy Martinez,Victoria Recaño !

Meet the Latina who helped rebuild the levees in New Orleans

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After Hurricane Katrina left New Orleans in pieces, Barbara Garcia helped rebuild its levees.

Imagine a job so potentially dangerous that your boss tells you not to wear your uniform for fear that you´ll be beaten or killed. Think we´re referring to police work in Iraq? Think closer to home: As one of only two Latina structural engineers in the Army Corps of Engineers´ Task Force Guardian, Barbara Garcia and a team of approximately 100 colleagues spent nine months restoring the levees that were all but destroyed when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, all while workers received death threats from people who blamed the Corps for not properly maintaining them in the first place. "It was so upsetting," says Barbara, 31, a Guatemalan-Honduran New Orleans native who blames the lack of adequate federal funding for the levees´ collapse and says she and colleagues did everything they could within budgetary constraints to keep the city safe. "I would get up in the morning, and we would always be on the front page of the newspaper. Meanwhile, you´re trying to do your best, working seven days a week."

Rather than getting angry at distraught residents, Barbara attacked the project—which included designing secondary concrete walls and new drains—with the same determination with which she tackled tough math and science courses as a teenager in order to follow her older sister into the male-dominated field of engineering. "I challenged myself," says Barbara, who learned a love of figuring out how things work from her dad, a mechanic. "I told myself, I´m going to work hard at this. That is what got me through."

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Lorena Ochoa, Top-Ranked Golf Superstar

LPGA star Lorena Ochoa drives toward first place in the world rankings.

Mexican star golfer Lorena Ochoa, world-renowned for her sweet temperament—and for quietly and politely crushing opponents—has been a fierce competitor, oh, since the sandbox. At 9, she scored better than the teenage boys in a golf competition and won a spot in a Japanese tournament. By 12, she had climbed the 17,343-foot volcano Iztacc?huatl. As an adult, Lorena has run in marathons and triathlons and participated in adventure racing—a physically brutal competition sport that includes mountain biking, swimming and kayaking. Today, when it comes to her daily golf-training routine, she's no less driven: Lorena hits the links before most of us hit the snooze button, and then follows up with meditation, yoga and a gym workout, pausing only for an almuerzo at home with her parents and brother in her native Guadalajara.

That dedication has paid off big-time: Not only did Lorena, now 25, become the second female golfer in LPGA history (after Annika Sorenstam) to earn more than $2 million in one season, but she'll also likely overtake Annika, 36, this year for the top ranking. (Watch the two face off at the Kraft Nabisco Championship Tournament on CBS, April 1.) "Annika has dominated for many years, but she knows I'm close to beating her," Lorena says bluntly. And her odds are excellent: Last December, Lorena, who was a star college player at the University of Arizona, won the LPGA's Vare Trophy after ending the 2006 season with the lowest scoring average.

A number one ranking this year, five years after joining the LPGA, would mean a big boost toward her ultimate goal: playing at the pro level for 10 years—and then quitting at the top of her game, so she can get married and have kids. "I've had to make a lot of sacrifices, missed a lot of birthdays and weddings because I was always traveling and missed out on high school because I studied at home," says Lorena, currently single but clearly hoping to change that. "It's a tough life, but it's been worthwhile."

It's also earned her hero status in Mexico, where she is idolized by kids—especially girls. "When I started playing at age 5, I was the only girl," she recalls. "It's a clean, healthy career for kids, and I feel fortunate to be an example for Mexicans."

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Erica Ortiz, professional drag racer

The girl loves to go fast. Really, really fast. Professional drag racer Erica Ortiz sets records and usually leaves competition in the dust.

Here's what it's like to go from 0 to 200 miles per hour in just over six seconds in a 2,700-horsepower car: "I'm wearing a fire suit, helmet and neck restraint, and I'm strapped in the car with a five-point harness," says Erica Ortiz, one of only a handful of female professional drag racers in the country. "When the green light hits, I floor the gas pedal and brace myself because when the car leaves, it snaps your whole body back into the seat so hard you wouldn't be able to bring your head forward under your own power. And then I'm going down the quarter-mile track, shifting gears, pulling a parachute lever and trying to keep the car straight, because at 2,700 horsepower, it wants to go in every direction but forward."

Scary? Not for the first woman to reach 200 mph in less than 7 seconds in the history of the Fun Ford Weekend, a series she'll return to this month when she races at the 17th Annual Peach State Nationals in Commerce, Georgia. "It's an incredible rush," says the Puerto Rican and Cuban 27-year-old, who races in a souped-up Ford Mustang. Erica fronts an all-woman team called Horsepower and Heels in Columbus, Georgia, and has been hooked on adrenaline ever since she was a teen racing her pickup truck for fun around Orlando, where she grew up. Soon she was working at an auto shop, building her own engines and racing at a local, legal drag strip. "It's funny, because no one in my family can change a tire," she says.

Now even her abuela, who raised her, is into racing. "Early on, she was constantly asking me, 'When are you going to sell all this stuff [Erica's car and equipment] and buy a house?'" Erica says. "Now she's very supportive. But she still lights a candle for her little daredevil."

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Mujer On the Move: Kathy Martinez, activist for the disabled

Activist Kathy Martinez's mission: to make sure the disabled are treated with dignity.

Anyone who grew up in an extra-large family can tell you that when you get mercilessly teased by your brothers and sisters practically from birth, you emerge with a force field of thick skin that stays with you for life. Disability-rights advocate Kathy Martinez is no exception: Even as one of two blind sisters in a Mexican American family of six siblings, "my sister and I would walk into the living room after dressing ourselves," she recalls with a laugh, "and if something didn't match, we would hear about it!" That brutally honest upbringing—coupled with her parents' insistence that she attend a regular school while growing up in Orange County, California—is exactly what prepared Kathy, 48, for a career persuading people to treat the disabled with dignity and respect.

Kathy, who first became involved in disability activism in 1977 after participating in a demonstration in San Francisco, leads diversity workshops at Fortune 500 companies, has trained rehabilitation professionals in Honduras and El Salvador and was appointed by President Bush to the National Council on Disability in 2002. Today, as the executive director of the World Institute on Disability, she also oversees Proyecto Visión, which seeks to increase job opportunities for Latinos with disabilities. It will host its annual conference June 13 to 15 in Miami. "Growing up, when my sister and I would visit our t?os, we would always hear '¡Ay, pobrecitas!' but my parents expected us to do what other kids did," Kathy says. "That's really what it's all about for me: If someone expects you to do well, you will."

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Leading Lady: Meet The Insider's Victoria Recaño

Victoria Recaño is The Insider´s ace reporter, but what she loves most is helping those in need.

Victoria Recaño, the glamorous correspondent for the syndicated newsmagazine show The Insider, may look like she spends her days at the spa, but actually, she devotes much of her spare time to giving out food and supplies to the homeless through her church. "It´s important to do," Victoria says, "because I´m so lucky." Actually, luck played only a small role in her success (she´s interviewed everyone from Martha Stewart to Senator John Kerry). Growing up in St. Louis, Victoria—whose father is Spanish and Filipino—dreamed of becoming either a surgeon or a psychologist until she landed a gig as a teen reporter, covering topics like anorexia and divorce for local TV station KPLR. "That put the reporting bug in me," says Victoria, 29. It also lead to a job hosting the cartoon block The Disney Afternoon, for which she won two Emmys. After graduating magna cum laude from Loyola University Chicago, she spent the next few years as a TV reporter in Chicago and San Francisco before joining the entertainment show Inside Edition. In 2004, she started working at The Insider in Los Angeles, where she now lives with her husband. Though she enjoys helping the homeless, she admits to also liking the perks her high-profile job has afforded her—like interviewing handsome men. "Enrique Iglesias," she says with a laugh, "sure is a cute one.

Source:Latina Magazine