She Lived Through Fear, and Inspired Hope : Elvia Ruiz Turned Her Life Around After Escaping Abusive Marriage

Elvia Ruiz recalls the countless slaps, the punches and the threats.

“I have a daughter with cerebral palsy and I remember my husband threatening to have two men we lived with take my daughter to Mexico and just abandon her there,” she said.

On Tuesday, the woman who started out as a client at the Interval House women’s shelter

and now heads its Latino outreach program--will take another step forward as ROSE (Regaining One’s Self Esteem) honors her in Boston as a former domestic-violence victim who has turned her life around and become an inspiration to women across the nation.

“Elvia has done a lot, not only for herself but for many other women,” said Marta Rodriguez, ROSE’s manager of operations. “She is the winner of our first ROSE Achievement Award and she is someone we recognize who has freed herself from the violence.”

Ruiz, a 37-year-old mother of two, intends to enjoy the trip and the speech she will deliver in English, her adopted language.

“I had to go to community college to learn to speak English,” said Ruiz.

Her journey began in a small Mexican village outside Guadalajara. She left school after the third grade and helped her mother take care of nine brothers and sisters.

At 16, she left Mexico for the United States and settled with an older sister in Los Angeles. A year later, she fell in love and married a young man from her village who had also emigrated.

The abuse started soon after and continued for the next five years, she said.

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She would leave, but always return. Then, it got worse.

“The turning point came when he started making threats that he was going to kill me,” Ruiz said. “I would move out and he would learn where my new home was through my relatives. Eventually, he would show up.

“It was frightening,” she added. “He would follow my car and find out where I lived and where I went.”

Finally, she moved into a women’s shelter in Long Beach. Then, through a friend, she heard about Carol Williams, the executive director of Interval House in Seal Beach.

Still, the abuse didn’t stop. Her husband was persistent and continued to follow her. So she decided to permanently stay at the shelter, which is in a secret location. She lived there 10 years and only got her own apartment last year.

“I had to, I had no choice,” she said.

She moved into the shelter with her daughter, Silvia, now 19, who grew up baby-sitting children of other abused women.

Nancy Rodriguez, an Interval House manager, said she began noticing how other Spanish-speaking clients would seek out Ruiz when they had problems. According to Rodriguez, Ruiz was becoming an integral part of the shelter’s social fabric.

“Her rapport with the women was exceptional,” Rodriguez said. “If she has to, she will drive them to work and to court, and tries to be there for them. At times, she has put her life on the line.”

While in the shelter, Ruiz, with the help of her sister, Marina, formed Las Hermanas, a support group that has grown to more than 100 battered Latinas in Long Beach and Orange County.

“I saw that when I shared my story with other members of the group, like how I decided to leave my husband or how I went to college to learn English,” Ruiz said, “that they got impressed and began to feel that they have a chance too.”

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Through their group, Ruiz and her sister won a U.S. Department of Justice Award for helping other Spanish-speaking immigrants obtain the status of legal residents under the U.S. amnesty program. In spring, 1995, Ruiz was given an achievement award from the American Red Cross of Orange County. Her daughter, Silvia, won a Los Angeles Times award for volunteering.

ROSE, formerly known as Ryka ROSE Foundation, was created in 1992 by Sherry Poe, chief executive officer of Ryka Inc., a Massachusetts athletic shoe company. It changed its name this year to the ROSE Fund, which provides treatment, education and prevention programs to help end violence against women.