This is one of a series of stories about the nonprofit agencies that receive money from The Gazette/El Pomar Foundation Empty Stocking Fund campaign that runs through the holidays.

Denisse Rodriguez was very ill when she came to Colorado Springs from Puerto Rico in 2011.

“I came because doctors in Puerto Rico told me they didn’t know what to do with me because they couldn’t find out what was wrong with me,” Rodriguez said.

When she first started seeing doctors at Peak Vista, she got a little better, but then much worse. Rodriguez went from one doctor to another as she tried to get to the bottom of it.

“I was in bed all of the time,” she said. She finally got a doctor at Peak Vista who kept checking things until she got to the bottom of the issue. Rodriguez had dangerously low levels of Vitamin D. Her doctor also helped her control her sugar levels as she was diabetic.

“Here, they took the time to listen, to look for things,” she said. “When they found a dead end, they started over. They take time to take care of people.”

It took Rodriguez two years of being very sick before she found her doctor at Peak Vista.

“I can’t say I’m completely better,” she said. “I have some conditions that aren’t curable. But I’m not to the point where I’m bedridden.”

Rodriguez, now able to work, has worked at Peak Vista for a year and a half.

“The same place that took care of me, they gave me the chance to work with them,” she said.