The Castro daughters, Beth, mounted at left, and Mary Pat, spent plenty of time riding around their home at River and Dodge roads. Here they're with their grandparents, David and June Norris.

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He lives not far from where it all began. • Raul H. Castro, former judge, governor and ambassador, lives in a 102-year-old house in Nogales, Ariz., just footsteps from the Mexican border. • On the other side lies the country where he was born. • But it is in this country where he would make his mark. Prevailing against often stifling racism, he would rise to serve two United States presidents, as well as the people of Arizona — in the courtroom and as governor.

The second-youngest of 14 children born to Francisco and Rosario Castro, Castro, now 92, moved with his family at a young age from Cananea, Sonora, to Pirtleville, Ariz., near Douglas.

His father, who worked for Phelps Dodge in Douglas, died when Raul was 12.

He persevered, enrolling at what was then Arizona State Teachers College in Flagstaff on a football scholarship. He also served as captain of the track team and was the undefeated Border Conference boxing champ.

The same year he graduated — 1939 — he became an American citizen. But when he returned to Douglas hoping for a teaching job, he was turned down. The schools, he says, would not hire a Mexican-American.

Disheartened, Castro took to riding the rails.

"I was boxing on the road for a couple of years — New Orleans, Pennsylvania, New York. I would fight at carnivals, wherever, get $50 or $100."

And so it might have ended there.

No becoming the first naturalized Mexican-American Superior Court judge in Tucson. No becoming the first Mexican-American governor of Arizona. No ambassadorships to El Salvador, Bolivia and Argentina. No hobnobbing with the likes of LBJ and Lady Bird.

But then fate intervened in the form of Castro's youngest brother.

"He was in school in Flagstaff," says Castro. "He said, 'I'm going to drop out. You got a degree and you're nothing but a hobo and a boxer.' "

Castro told him to stay in school, returned to Arizona and soon went to work with the U.S. State Department as a foreign service clerk in Agua Prieta, Sonora.

Five years later, fate intervened yet again. "The consulate-general of Juarez came there on an inspection and said I was doing a great job but I was wasting my time because I could never go any farther there," says Castro. "I hadn't gone to an Ivy League college."

In 1946, he enrolled in law school at the University of Arizona, working his way through school by teaching Spanish.

Not that it was easy getting into law school. "The dean told me no, that Mexican-Americans just did not graduate."

So he called the president of the university and told him to cancel his contract as a Spanish teacher, something the university desperately needed. Castro got into law school.

"If I get offended, I am motivated," he says.

After passing the bar in 1949, Castro, a Democrat, went into private practice, then became deputy Pima County attorney. In 1954, he was elected Pima County attorney. Four years later he was elected as a judge of the Pima County Superior Court, serving until 1964, when he became a U.S. ambassador, first to El Salvador, then to Bolivia.

After resuming his law practice in Tucson, he was elected governor of Arizona in 1974, resigning in 1977 to serve as ambassador to Argentina.

He quit the ambassadorship in 1980 to work for Jimmy Carter's failed re-election campaign, then returned to Arizona, practicing law in Phoenix.

In 1993, he and wife, Pat, moved to Nogales. "I couldn't stand living in Phoenix," says Pat, now 84. "I wanted something cooler with less traffic."

Her husband was less than thrilled. "I did not want to go to Nogales," he says. "I was born near the border."

But he relented, opening a law office across the street and helping Pat fill the house with furniture and antiques from their many travels.

Today, he no longer practices law. Even so, his calendar is filled with appointments and speaking dates, many of them at schools throughout the state.

"I talk to kids at low-income schools who feel they don't have a chance," says Castro.

His life says otherwise.

He was the first, and so far, the only one. A little over 34 years ago, Raul H. Castro was elected governor of Arizona, the first Mexican-American to do so. He was 58 years old.

Local newspapers hailed the achievement while dutifully chronicling his rise from poor Mexican immigrant to successful attorney, judge and ambassador.

It was not his first grab at the brass ring. Four years earlier, 1970, Castro — who resigned as ambassador to Bolivia a few months after Richard Nixon took office — made a run at ousting Arizona Gov. Jack Williams.

His campaign would hit on four topics: environmental pollution, drug abuse, lack of respect for the law and deteriorating relations with Mexico.

He lost by 7,300 votes. Four years later he was back, this time running against Republican opponent Russ Williams, no relation to Jack.

Actor Lee Marvin threw his support behind Castro at a rally at Reid Park that drew more than 3,000.

This time Castro won, though there was some question as to where he and wife, Pat, would live, since there was no governor's mansion in Phoenix.

Many of the previous governors were from Phoenix and already had houses there, says Pat. "When we got there, we lived in a motel."

That is, until a house was donated to the state for the governor to use.

When Castro resigned in 1977 to become U.S. ambassador to Argentina, the four-bedroom, five-bathroom house was put on the market for $375,000.

Meanwhile, the Castros had their own home to sell before heading to Argentina — the house on East River Road.

"When we came back from Phoenix, the place had been rented out to worm farmers," says Pat. "There were these trays of worms in our carport."

Nevertheless, they managed to sell the home and were soon off to Argentina.

Tragedy brought her to Arizona. Fear of the dark led her to the man she would marry, a promising young attorney named Raul Castro.

"I was married in 1947 to an Air Force pilot who was killed in Korea. I was a widow at 26 with two little girls to raise," says Pat Castro, who was living in Japan.

So she went home to her mother, who happened to be living in Tucson. A year went by. "I was bored," says Pat, who went to work as a secretary for the assistant postmaster.

Later on, she would become a detective with the Pima County Sheriff's Department, as well as a U.S. deputy marshal. "Part of my job was escorting women prisoners on the train back to a women's prison in West Virginia," says Pat. "It was the same one where Martha Stewart went."

One day, a political reporter for the Arizona Daily Star invited her to a barbecue at his home in the Tucson Mountains. "There was nothing out there. I said I didn't want to drive out there at night."

The reporter told Pat he'd ask Raul Castro to give her a ride.

And that, as they say, was that. They married in November of 1954.

By then, the two had already bought an old adobe ranch house on East River Road, where Dodge Road ends.

"There was a shell of a main house on about eight acres. We paid about $14,000 for it all. It was the worst-looking mess I'd ever seen," says Pat, who hired a contractor to add on an extension.

Peacocks roamed the place and young neighbor Linda Ronstadt would trot over to go riding in the hills with Pat's girls, she says.

That came after they built a little corral and bought a couple of Shetland ponies at a livestock auction in South Tucson.

"I had two little mares. So I thought, 'Let's breed them,' " says Pat, who bought a palomino stallion and bred the mares.

"Then this man showed up and asked me to sell him that stallion. I said, 'What will you give me?' He said $3,500. I almost fell over in a faint."

Shetland ponies, it seems, were all the rage back East, where they were commanding top prices.

Before long, the Castros were buying, breeding and selling ponies, often hauling a horse trailer across the country.

As many as 40 ponies would be living on their property at any one time — registered Shetlands as well as "kid" ponies that Pat would sell or loan out.

"Schools were calling me up and asking me to take the ponies out there for their carnivals," says Pat.

"Here I was, a judge's wife, and I was running a pony ride on Saturday afternoons. But I got enough money to pay for their feed. In fact, I did so well I had to hire an accountant."

In 1964, her husband was appointed ambassador to El Salvador.

"I was horrified," says Pat. "I did not want to give up my little business." But that's exactly what she did. "I sold the ponies and we rented out the house."

Yet another grand adventure — several in fact — awaited.

They survived an earthquake, a surprise visit from Lyndon B. Johnson and dinner parties they hosted for a dozen guests at least three times a week.

And that was just in El Salvador, where Raul H. Castro served as ambassador from 1964 to 1968.

In May of 1965, the country was hit with an earthquake that killed more than 100 people.

"Because of the heat, I was sleeping in the nude," Castro would later tell the press. "It took me a long time to find some clothing and get out into the open."

Meanwhile, Pat Castro and her two teenage daughters, Beth and Mary Pat Castro, were trying to make their way down a darkened stairway. "I remember chairs sliding across the floor and my feet on candles that had fallen off the candelabra," says Pat.

Even more earthshaking, perhaps, was the phone call she later received while visiting in Tucson.

"It was the State Department telling me, 'Mrs. Castro, you must return to El Salvador at once. President and Mrs. Johnson are staying with you for a week.' "

When she returned, she learned that there would be a conference of the presidents of several Central American countries.

"There were Secret Service men all around and a destroyer off the coast. We had to move out of the house so the Johnsons could move in," says Pat, who remembers Lady Bird as "the nicest person."

Not so, perhaps, for LBJ. "We had a reception at a hotel and were lined up perfectly," says Castro. "I was first in line, then the president, then my wife and his wife. He told me to give him the name of every person and what they did.

"There were 300 people there. I was talking to all of them until the president gave me a kick and said, 'What are you doing? They came here to see me, not you.' "

During the visit, Pat also had a little face-off with Liz Carpenter, Lady Bird's press secretary.

"I had five presidents' wives. We had a bus coming to take us to see various sites and get lunch. Liz Carpenter gave me a whistle and told me, 'I want you to blow the whistle to get the ladies on the bus.'

"I said, 'Look, I've got presidents' wives here and I'm not blowing a whistle to get them on the bus.' " And she didn't. "I stood patiently and waited until they got in."

In 1968, Castro was appointed as ambassador to Bolivia. "We were there two years," says Castro. "We were at 12,000 feet and the airport was at 14,000 feet. We had oxygen masks to give to the people when they got off the plane."

Adds Pat: "People would get off the plane and faint."

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed Castro U.S. ambassador to Argentina, where he served for three years.

"I loved it," says Pat. "We had a staff of 20 and two Italian chefs."

Even so, she is adamant when she says today, "I don't ever want to go to another cocktail party in my life."

They are of the same generation as Raul Castro. All attorneys who first knew him in law school at the University of Arizona six decades ago. Here's what they have to say about him:

● Henry Zipf, 91, whose law firm, Zipf, Larkin, Lyle and Rogers, once included Castro as one of its attorneys:

"We went to law school together. I had an old Model A and I would pick him up and give him a ride to school.

"Saturdays, we'd cover South Sixth Avenue, go to the Chanticleer or La Jolla. Beer was 10 cents a glass.

"After he came back from Bolivia, we officed together. When he ran for governor the second time I pitched in, even though I was a strong Republican.

"Four of us went up to the Indian reservation. We went up to Window Rock. There was a fair. He went into every one of those displays all day long while the rest of us sat around. He won the Navajo vote."

● Stewart Udall, 88, former Arizona congressman and secretary of the Interior:

"He first came to my attention when I was in high school in St. Johns and he was a boxer at the college in Flagstaff. I never saw him box, but I read the sports pages. Later on I met him at law school. I never practiced in front of his bench because I was in Congress by then.

"I always enjoyed visiting with Raul because he was a pioneer. There were very few Hispanics that were successful back then."

● Tucson attorney Tom Chandler, 88:

"I met Raul when he was a first-year student and I was a third-year student in law school.

"We had a moot court competition where the seniors judge the first-year people. I judged Raul and his partner's argument. I was really taken with what a feel he had for the issues. Here was a guy going somewhere.

"Later on, I did practice before his bench. It was a joy to be in his court. He understood that for justice to be done you had to let the lawyers present the case, don't make them work at a pace they can't work at.

"The things he faced as a young guy and the things that he accomplished are not ordinary things. This man is a giant."