As a plucky 13-year-old, Maj. Gen. Linda Urrutia-Varhall watched Air Force Academy cadets do noon meal formation during a visit with her family, and proclaimed her future.

“I got caught up in the moment,” said the Colorado Springs resident. “I pointed at the cadets and said I’ll be down there one day.”

But it was 1974 and the academy didn’t accept women, a fact her uncle noted.

“I said watch me,” said Urrutia-Varhall, who was born and raised in Pueblo’s Bessemer neighborhood. “When I was growing up, my mom and dad made me believe there were no barriers to what I wanted to be or could be.”

The teen stuck to her word and received two appointments to the academy, one in the Class of 1983, which she didn’t accept, and one in the Class of 1984, which she did accept, four years after the academy began accepting women. There were about 100 in her graduating class of 1,000.

“I was always looking to do stuff not everybody else did,” Urrutia-Varhall said. “Oh, you say you can’t ride your bike up the tree? But maybe if we go fast enough we can. I wanted to do something unpredictable, not the status quo in my culture and society and friends.”

That indomitable spirit led Urrutia-Varhall to become the first and only Latina two-star general in the Air Force. In her 35-year career she went to 64 countries and 42 states, and met two kings and six sitting U.S. presidents. She served three secretaries of defense and the director of national intelligence and advised Cabinet-level officials, intelligence officers, national intelligence agencies, Congress and the White House on strategies and policies and diplomacy initiatives.

She’ll be the keynote speaker at Pikes Peak Library District’s Latina Voices. The free event is Saturday at Library 21c and also features El Paso County public health planner Rubba Ahram and a performance by Ritmo y Sabor Hispano, a folklorico dance group made up of Harrison High School students.

“She was selected because of her extraordinary accomplishments and her engaging personality,” said Linda DuVal, co-chair of Latina Voices. “She is an exceptional role model for any young Latina wanting to enter the military.”

At the academy, Urrutia-Varhall earned a civil engineering degree before being sent off to pilot training — cadets at the time were required to fly. But she was limited in stature, and being short effectively put the kibosh on the pilot life, which was fine by her. She hoped to be a civil engineer, but the Air Force had other plans for her — a career in intelligence. So they sent her to intelligence school at Lowery Air Force Base in Denver, where things fell apart.

“It wasn’t good, because after not being able to make it through pilot training, for the first time in my life I thought I had failed,” she said. “I went to intelligence school with the worst attitude. They held me back it was that bad.”

But she persevered, and upon finishing training her superiors had this to say about their pupil: “Though outspoken at times, Linda may make an adequate intelligence officer.”

The comment still makes her laugh today: “That’s what they wrote about me out of school. They read that at my one-star promotion.”

Intelligence school was the best choice anyone could have made for her, though, she says. It helped her get jobs working with three U.S. secretaries of defense: Vice President Dick Cheney, Leslie Aspin Jr. and William Perry. Under Perry she served as an international politico-military affairs officer on the Somalia Task Force and represented the U.S. Department of Defense at the United Nations.

She ended her career in Washington, D.C., where she worked for a national intelligence agency at the Pentagon, then moved home to Colorado.

Nowadays her passion for speaking to audiences about her singular career takes her around the country. Often she talks to high school kids and Latina women, whom she tells to take up space in whatever room they’re invited into and to get good at being comfortable with being uncomfortable.

“You were sent on purpose and deserve to be in that room,” Urrutia-Varhall said. “Whether you look at me as a pathfinder or a trailblazer, unfortunately the glass ceiling has not been broken. You will be in the minority for sure. Usually you’re not the only woman, but you’re usually the only Latina. But never apologize for being a woman or being Hispanic.”

Contact the writer: 636-0270