ELIZABETH QUIROZ

Elizabeth Quiroz believes in miracles. She has absolutely no doubt that they exist. But if a shred of doubt ever does creep in, she has a sure-fire remedy to send it packing: All she has to do is reflect back on her life.

Born in San Francisco, Elizabeth was four when her parents separated. She moved to Sacramento to live with her grandmother — a cruel and abusive woman, she says — who regularly beat her. Elizabeth hid in a closet during her grandmother’s all-night parties, lived in constant fear and was sexually assaulted.

“Because of that early trauma,” she says, “I became sexually active at a very young age.”

Later, after returning to live with her mother, the abuse continued. Elizabeth began cutting her arms and thinking about suicide.

“I wanted someone to love me,” she says. “And I felt that by hurting myself someone would notice me. It was a coping mechanism.”

After her mother physically abused her by pouring chemicals on her and in her mouth, Elizabeth called the police. They handed her the business card of a social worker. After seeing the social worker, she was placed in a foster home.

Unhappy with the conditions there, Elizabeth took off. She ran to her father in

San Francisco and pleaded for help. He took her in, but his alcoholism, she says, made it impossible for him to protect and care for his vulnerable daughter.

So when a tatted and bald 27-year-old man presented himself as an appropriate boyfriend for 15-year-old Elizabeth, her father gave him his blessing. The man turned out to be a member of a prison gang who made his living by selling drugs and exploiting young girls.

“He began grooming me,” says Elizabeth. “He told me how beautiful I was. He took me to motel rooms. He gave me drugs.”

Soon, Elizabeth was hanging out at 16th and Mission streets, holding drugs for her boyfriend. He forbade her to look into other men’s eyes and would beat her when she did. It broke her heart when she learned he was seeing other girls.

“But I stayed with him,” she says. “I felt like I had nowhere else to turn. I was just surviving. I wasn’t living — that’s for sure.”

When her boyfriend was arrested and jailed, an older woman took over for him. She told Elizabeth she had to earn money for her boyfriend. She took her to 17th and Capp Street, where she sold Elizabeth to men for sex.

Following an arrest when she was 16, Elizabeth was committed to a group home. She ran away before being sent there and spent the next three years on the run, living under different aliases.

“At that point,” she says, “I was Beth the drug dealer — or I was Sabrina when I was sold to men.”

Life on the street continued unchanged for several years. Occasionally, Elizabeth was arrested for possession and sales, but she always took up where she left off when she got out of jail. She had a child, but that didn’t alter her course.

Eventually, it would. Set up by an informant, Elizabeth was arrested. Detectives gave her an ultimatum: Either she told them who she worked for, or she would be going to prison for a very long time. Fearing she would lose her son, she decided to cooperate.

“I knew that if I told them who I was working for I’d never be able to go back to the street. But it needed to happen. I could have died. My son could have died.”

Elizabeth was then sentenced to a five-year prison term behind bars, where a transformation began to take place.

Through a chaplain, she says, she “started to learn what love was really like.” Through a program called Choices and others, she learned about drug and alcohol addiction, and other self-destructive behaviors. She became interested in education and earned her G.E.D.

“That was huge for me,” she says.

Since being released, education has been a priority. After graduating from Santa Rosa Junior College, Elizabeth transferred to Sonoma State University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology. Currently, she is studying for her master’s degree online at Arizona State University.

Now married, Elizabeth lives in Santa Rosa with her husband and son and four stepchildren. She works as an investigator at Dependency Legal Services, helping parents and children navigate the child welfare system.

Elizabeth wants to use her education — as well as her experience — to serve others. She co-founded Redemption House of the Bay Area and plans to open a safe house for trafficking victims. She has written a memoir, “Purified in the Flames,” which will be published this spring.

“It’s a miracle that I’m in the place in my life I’m at right now,” says Elizabeth. “God has given me quadruple of what was stolen from me over the years.”