After being an active community volunteer and working 27 years as a server at The Margarita at Pine Creek, opening her own restaurant was less a dream come true for Marina La Riva than a desire to have a place to sell chili.

“I never wanted a fullblown restaurant,” she said. “A lot of people assume it’s what I always wanted. I really just wanted a place to get good red chili.”

She has both.

La Rosa Southwestern Dining got its start, La Riva recalled, when her husband, Bill, told her two friends asked if she wanted to open a restaurant: “I said sure.”

That was 2012 when

CHRISTIAN MURDOCK, THE GAZETTE Marina La Riva serves dinner to customers Bill Fisher, front, Maria Duran, behind Bill, John Cameron and Rebecca Duke, right, after serving them drinks May 4 at La Rosa Southwestern Dining in Palmer Lake. she, Chris Bohler and Mike Elliot established La Rosa in the old B&E Filling Station in Palmer Lake, which had sat empty. She said the owner of

O’Malley’s just down the road provided the seed money, friends came in to help, the kitchen was