In 1979, when the Vietnamese invaded and Cambodians were freed from labor camps and collective farms, Kelly walked to a refugee camp in Thailand. She was 17 when she officially became a refugee, 19 when the older Cambodians in the camp arranged for her to marry, 22 when she and her husband and their two children were relocated to California.

Kelly moved to Utah after joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Divorced from her Cambodian husband and later from an American, Kelly now is a single mother of five children, ages 21 to 6.

"You can be anyone you want," she tells her children. "All it takes is effort." She plans to start Weber State University in the fall, where she will study to become a registered nurse, just like her mother. In the meantime, she works as an interpreter, giving a voice to other Cambodians who have not learned enough English to navigate through American hospitals and courts.

The woman accused of stealing two bandages sits next to Kelly outside the courtroom. She speaks in Cambodian, and Kelly translates for the lawyer. "I believe that I am not guilty," Kelly says for her. Instead of accepting the prosecutor's offer to reduce her crime to an infraction, the woman decides to fight the charge.

She will not be tied to a tree. When the case goes before the judge, she will have a chance to explain.

As for herself, Kelly says, it was the desire for freedom — freedom to explain, choose, move — that kept her going when she thought she would die from the hunger and hard work and loneliness.

When she first moved to Utah, she planted a vegetable garden. That first summer she walked out to her little plot of land, bent over next to a vine and picked a cucumber. She ate half of it and then threw the rest across her yard. "This is my cucumber," she told herself. "I can do whatever I want with it."

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E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com