She was a rough-and-tumble gangbanger, mouthy, mean and ready to fight the world.
Her world has since changed.
She has her high school degree and is preparing to enter the Navy.
Some of the state's most troubled girls wind up in Iowa in a dormitory-style detention center that sits in the middle of a corn field.
After six months, with the right kind of intervention by staff and the right kind of attitude by the girl, a teenager's life can change from felony assaults and being locked up to embracing a future full of hope and promise.
The facility, Forest Ridge Youth Services, is one of several out-of-state programs where the state Division of Youth Corrections places some of its offenders.
Because of a $1 million budget cut to the department in the past legislative session, division officials are having to rethink which juvenile goes out of state, and why.
Right now, there are more than 100 offenders in out-of-state programs. By July, that number will have to be pared to 75 and kept there, executive director Gary Dalton said.
"Some of it will be easy because it will be by attrition. Kids who are at the end of the guidelines and will age out of programs by July, they'll simply go off the rolls. With others, it is going to be hard."
Forest Ridge is unique because it is strictly for females. Although there are a number of private programs that contract with the state that are effective, officials say there's nothing in Utah quite like Forest Ridge.
"We just don't have anything like it here," said Julie Carmalt, a Salt Lake City case manager assigned to work with female offenders.
The program craves girls who are highly delinquent, wanting the worst of the worst.
"Most who are there have failed every other alternative. This is a last-ditch effort to save the girl," Carmalt said.
Like the other out-of-state programs, Forest Ridge is the last stop on a potential road to secure confinement — a prison for youths.
While many may say, "So what? Just lock them up," advocates for youths say that is the wrong approach.
"The ramifications are that kids who are institutionalized have a higher propensity to reoffend later on," Dalton said. "They do not have the opportunity to spread their wings and fly with good competency and with good skills."
With programs like Forest Ridge, more emphasis is placed on positive choices rather than imposing a setting where many of the choices are already made.
"Although we do a good job at the institutional kind of care, there is something to be said about the other care," Dalton said.
At Forest Ridge, the atmosphere is like that of a girls school that places an extreme amount of importance on education and athletics.
Offenders complete four phases, with the last phase attaining a level allowing the girls freedom accompanied by responsibility.
Both Carmalt and case manager Heidi Chisholm have been back to Forest Ridge because of their girls and praise one particular technique that corrects unacceptable behavior.
At first, a counselor will make eye contact and later issue a verbal warning about the behavior that needs to stop. If it escalates to the most serious phase, positive peer pressure is brought to bear on the troublemaker.
Carmalt's gangbanger was one of those girls who pushed it to the limits. In the end, she was sitting on the floor. She had her fingers stuck in her ears to block out the commands and was babbling so she couldn't hear what was being said.
The other girls in detention circled her, offering "support" for her to stop the behavior.
Eventually, Carmalt's troubled girl made it through the program and is getting on with a productive life.
The same is starting to happen for a girl under Chisholm's care.
At 14, the child was a meth user heavily into gangs. Her mother was no help because of her own gang lifestyle and frequent stays in jail.
After Forest Ridge, the girl is going on four months of good behavior and is pulling down straight A's in school.
Often, advocates for youths turn to out-of-state programs like Forest Ridge when the young offenders lack good family support in Utah and are entrenched in gangs.
Getting them out of state, away from the gangs and away from negative family members, gives the girls a chance for the first time to develop a positive identity.
It's also helpful to get away from the boys.
"It empowers them to be proud of being a girl, proud of being a strong girl in a world that says 'don't throw like a girl' or 'don't cry like a girl,' " Carmalt said.
Right now, there are 11 girls at Forest Ridge, and five are coming home next month.
Traditionally, with a long list of girls waiting to get into secure care, Carmalt and the others would be perusing files and seeing if they could salvage one of those seemingly hopeless cases by sending her to Forest Ridge.
With the decreased funding, that salvage work is less likely to take place. "As it is, it is frustrating we can't send more," Carmalt said. "Numbers shouldn't have to be an issue."