Along with his wife and 17-year-old daughter, this Bosnian refugee reached San Diego in 1999. Deretic once owned two restaurants and an import-export business in Sarajevo. But at the height of the Bosnian civil war in the early 1990s, surviving each day in Sarajevo "was like winning the lottery."

In 1994, Deretic and his family fled the city through a tunnel dug underneath an airport runway. The Deretics spent four years living in Germany while they waited for the U.S. to grant them refugee status.

In San Diego, Deretic got a maintenance job at a Holiday Inn. In 1991 he bought a stretch limo and launched Majestic Limousine (majesticlimo.net) with help from the IRC, which loaned him $10,000 and helped him write a business plan. The IRC also taught his wife, Senka, how to use accounting software.

Today Senka keeps the books for Majestic, which grossed $100,000 in 2005. Success has allowed the Deretics to buy a house and send their daughter to college. "Look at me," he says. "I have a good life. I love it here."
--Eilene Zimmerman