Nidia Yuvixa Koren, owner of Aguilas Radio Taxi, who immigrated to the United States from Guatemala, owns the largest Latino taxi company in the Phoenix area. She also has expanded into the limousine and tow-truck business.

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PHOENIX — The painful memories come back at the most inopportune times, said Nidia Yuvixa Koren, like when she is trying to balance books or deal with demanding customers or just get a break from overseeing one of the Phoenix metropolitan area's largest taxi companies.

She reflects back to being a teenager on school buses in rural Guatemala during the heart of the Central American country's vicious civil war in the early 1980s.

There are soldiers on one side of the highway, guerrillas on the other. They open fire and the bullets shatter glass panes as students dive for cover.

The bus comes to a sudden stop at another canyon crossing with another bridge blown apart. The students mount horses and traverse the canyon and river to a waiting bus on the other side before continuing their journey home.

Sometimes, she has to pinch herself as a reminder that those days are long over.

Koren is now a U.S. citizen married to a Maricopa County sheriff's deputy. Her business is thriving, and she wears flashy, turquoise designer jewelry even during the most routine day at the office.

But Koren, 41, still carries a .38-caliber revolver everywhere she goes.

She used to paint the vehicles of her Aguilas Radio Taxi blue and white, the colors of the Guatemalan flag. Then, she started thinking that it was time to give up the past. And what better symbol to attract business than the aguila, the eagle, the national symbol of the United States which is also emblazoned on the Mexican flag. It has done wonders thus far.

Koren, who owns the largest Latino taxi company in the Phoenix area, says she has 92 taxis. She also has expanded into the limousine and tow-truck business.

"She's a really good businesswoman, very sharp," said Hossein Dibazar, an Iranian immigrant who is general manager of both AAA and Yellow cabs, the largest taxi companies in the Phoenix metropolitan area. "Most of the Latin companies come and go because this is such a competitive market, but she's done a good job of hanging in there."

Jaime Gaspar, a Guatemalan immigrant who lives in Mesa, said Koren is respected in the Guatemalan community around Phoenix, which now numbers about 35,000.

"She helped us a lot in getting our consulate here and was very active in doing relief efforts last year when Hurricane Stan hit the (Guatemalan) coast," Gaspar said.

Count Koren among the most surprised as to how she got to this point. Hers is anything but the typical story of a poor immigrant from a war-torn country fleeing north.

Koren's father, an accountant and attorney, was governor of the Guatemalan department (state) of Suchitepequez. She lacked little financially growing up and came to this country primarily out of curiosity because her brother had immigrated to Los Angeles a few years before.

Koren, who spoke no English at age 18 but now is fluent, said she enrolled in English classes in Los Angeles. Then, she got the accounting bug and went to Los Angeles Community College to study business administration.

But she also was homesick and returned to her hometown of Mazatenango. Koren said she opened a store but soon was bored. All her childhood friends were getting married, she wasn't in a serious relationship and she got tired of driving to Guatemala City, 100 miles away, to party on the weekends.

Her brother eventually moved to Scottsdale from Los Angeles. Koren came to Arizona in 1991 and landed a job keeping the books at El Gran Mercado swap meet. That was the beginning of a trail that lead to her present ownership of the taxi company.