When Beth Alvarado was a child in the Fifties, her parents moved to Grand Junction, Colorado at the time, a uranium hotbed. They came with a proud legacy: They were from a line of people who had seized opportunity and done well.
The family roots are pre-Revolutionary War. One grandmother had been a Mormon pioneer, another, a store-bought bride. A gambling grandfather won a handsome family home in Hayward, California. Through the generations, gambling and hard work had paid off. By the 1950's, the family was upper class, propertied and educated.