MODESTO BEE
ORIGINAL ARTICLE

By CHRISTINA SALERNO
BEE STAFF WRITER

Last Updated: August 30, 2006, 01:08:00 PM PDT

The road out of poverty doesn't always lead to another neighborhood.
Mary Ann Lewbow has lived her entire life in the airport neighborhood, an economically depressed area in Modesto just south of Yosemite Boulevard. It is a place, she says, where life always has seemed the same.

But she changed. She started working as a housecleaner at 18, and eventually got a job working as a yard duty at nearby Orville Wright Elementary School. In her spare time, she took training classes and volunteered for various jobs at the school.

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