Born in 1915, Theodore Rios lived in the San Xavier del Bac District, southwest of Tucson, Arizona. He was part of the first generation of Tohono O'odhams to attend boarding school. Employed as a rancher in his youth, he spent much of his adult life doing mining work. In the 1970s he told the story of his life to Kathleen Mullen Sands. Sands is a professor of English at Arizona State University and the coauthor of "American Indian Women: Telling Their Lives,"