Despite her somewhat unique upbringing, it never occurred to Liberty Tavarez that her life might be different than others.

Born Libertada del Cielo Martinez in San Diego, California to two young parents she hardly remembers, she was placed into the foster system at age five after a report of neglect had been passed along to the department of children and family. Luckily, she was adopted out quickly and easily to two men who had longed for a child of their own for years. They'd even gone so far as to travel from San Francisco to pick her up because, in their own words, they could tell that she was special.

From then on, it was the life of a normal child for Liberty. While she had struggles adapting to life with a new family and often acted out, she had a good heart that was usually in the right place; and soon she also had a sister with whom she'd bonded instantly and helped to level out her more attention-seeking behaviors. Bright and athletic, Liberty, who had come to prefer being called Lou by her peers, actually acclimated quite well to school and found interests in a lot of different things ranging from sports to drama to computers; she was something of a jack of all trades. It could easily be said that once she'd committed to something, she would put her heart into it two hundred percent. Still, she understood what it meant to be practical and managed to find ways to employ both what she loved to do and what would make the most sense for her future when it came time for college and deciding what she wanted.

Attending the University of California, Berkeley was a natural choice and she found her footing quickly and fell into a computer sciences major but was nearly sidelined completely when her parents decided, after suffering a difficult blow with a third child they'd attempted to adopt, that San Francisco was no longer for them and they wanted to move to the much more laid back and affordable setting of Denver, Colorado. With her sister just graduating high school and moving across the country, Liberty decided it would be best for her to finish her education at home in California and fell into the tech startup world almost immediately afterward, which kept her in the bay area and well paid, to boot.

However, like many startups, the company didn't pan out in the long run and only made it about a year before it folded, leaving Liberty jobless and eventually homeless. Still, she stayed in California for much longer than she'd intended, traveling slowly through the area to Sacramento and eventually the Lake Tahoe area until a fortunate set of circumstances put her on a plane to Denver, where she was able to reconnect with her parents. It didn't take much effort at all for her to settle into her new environment and now, going on three years in the area, she's finally starting to consider Colorado home.