SAN ANTONIO – When she's not on the dais at City Council chambers, you may find District 5 City Councilwoman Shirley Gonzales working at her family's West Side pawn shop.
In business since the 1960s, Gonzales grew up inside Bill's Pawn & Jewelry.
She remembers playing in the store's warehouse and hiding inside the large safes with her brother, Henry.
"It's been my only job. It's where I was raised. It's where I spent all of my time as a child," Gonzales said . "I've spent my whole life in this neighborhood."
And now her boys spend time there, too.
Ian is 2-years-old and Zachary is 11 months.
Gonzales welcomed her two children in her 40s.
"The only regret I have about having children so late in life is that it took me so long to appreciate my mother," Gonzales said.
Her mother, Eloise, runs the day-to-day at the store while Gonzales often works in the back office. She and her husband, Kevin, take turns opening and closing the store.
The couple met on a grueling bike ride.
"I've told this story many times that we met on the road to Comfort and Welfare," she laughs. "But it was actually literally Comfort and Welfare. We met on a very long bike ride and he helped support me on that day that I was feeling exhausted."
Exhaustion is nothing new for the councilwoman.
She's completed four Ironman competitions and still does triathlons.
"There's something that makes me want to do things that other people can't do -- that not the average person can do," she said.
Some of her drive was shaped by loss.
In 2009, her brother, Henry, died of cancer at 39 just four months after he was diagnosed.
"He was my very best friend; my No. 1 companion," she said. "It has shaped me in very significant ways and made me not afraid to take challenges because I feel like if he had known his time was near, what would he have done differently?"
So Gonzales lives her life with that lesson in mind.
"You just don't know what's going to happen in this world. So you might as well give it your all," Gonzales said.