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Kyrsten Sinema was born on Tucson's Northwest side. She grew up in Florida in a Mormon family. After college she moved to Phoenix, where she became a social worker in Latino barrios.

Today, Sinema, 29, is the youngest member of the state House of Representatives.

Sinema, a first-term Democrat representing central Phoenix, has emerged as one the Legislature's most vocal supporters of immigrant rights.

At every step in her life she has been a maverick, defying expectations. It's a role she's comfortable with.

"It's OK to be different," Sinema said during a recent interview.

She was in town to promote a documentary video critical of the Minuteman Project, the civilian border watch group. I caught up with her and the video's producer, Ray Ybarra, a Douglas native who works with the American Civil Liberties Union while on leave from his studies at Stanford Law School, for dinner on North Fourth Avenue.

Sinema finds herself frequently driving between Phoenix and Tucson, and along the Arizona-Mexico border. She is opposing a full frontal legislative assault against undocumented immigrants.

She often speaks to groups in the state and across the country. In February she will travel to Iowa to talk about immigrant rights and the people she sees as border vigilantes.

Monday she was in Morocco as a member of the American Council of Young Political Leaders, a nonprofit group. She met legislative leaders from the national parliament and spoke about the deaths of undocumented immigrants in Southern Arizona's desert, a problem not unheard of in that North African desert country, where people are dying trying to illegally enter Europe.

On the night we talked, she was part of a three-woman panel at the Pima Community College Downtown campus, where the Minuteman video was shown to an overflowing classroom audience.

She's gone to the border to observe and document border watchers, many of whom are armed.

And she's active in the movement opposing a state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, which would also eliminate legal benefits for same-sex partners.

Sinema is proud of her political positions and isn't shy about speaking for those who have few and diminishing civil rights. But she feels almost alone, even among her fellow Democratic legislators.

"We need people to push in from the edges," Sinema said.

She was born in Tucson and for two years attended Harelson Elementary near Oracle and Ina.

After her parents divorced and her mom remarried, the family moved to the Florida Panhandle, where her civil rights education began. She saw and heard ugly racist acts and words hurled at black Americans. It left an indelible impression.

When she was 16, she graduated from high school. After attending a local college, she entered Brigham Young University.

When she graduated, she cut her Mormon ties and became a social worker in Phoenix.

She's since earned a master's in social work and a law degree from Arizona State University.

Her activism led to a failed run for the state House in 2002 as an independent. Two years later, she ran as a Democrat and won.

She opposes calls by some legislators who want a fence and armed soldiers on the border.

Sinema realizes her voice is drowned out by people who prefer to punish illegal immigrants.

But she won't stay quiet, she said. Someone has to speak up.