Angel started turning tricks when she was 14, a few weeks after her mother abandoned her for the second time.

Her mother first left her on the street when she was 12. Angel was placed into foster homes but kept running away, looking for her mother.

Angel finally found her mother in Colorado Springs. But when she abandoned her again, two months later, Angel "had nothing to eat. I had no clothes. I was homeless."

She worked her way up to Denver. At a bus stop, she noticed a woman hopping in and out of cars. Angel asked the woman what she was doing.

"She told me, and she introduced me to my first tricks," said Angel, now 33, outlining the beginnings of a life that has been as filled with difficulty.

Her last name is not being revealed because she is trying to rebuild her life and find a legitimate job.

She said there was good money to be made for a teenage prostitute, but it didn't last. Not when she got hooked on drugs.

"As the years went on, the money started tapering off as I became more interested in getting high," Angel said. "Getting high made it easier to take care of the business I had to take care of. It made it a lot less degrading."

She said no one rescued her from the life - not in the way two young prostitutes in Lakewood and one in Denver were taken off the streets during a nationwide sting operation last week. Instead, Angel became so addicted that the attraction of the drugs was stronger than the repulsion of having sex with strangers, so she continued year after year, well beyond her teens.

Angel said she's been raped 10 times, beaten up several times and arrested 28 times for prostitution.

The latest arrest was three weeks ago in Aurora. But she swears she is out of the game for good.

Angel, who is trying to get help at the Empowerment Program, a Denver nonprofit that works with women and girls in trouble, hopes to stay sober and care for her 4-month-old baby, a product of a rape, she said.

Angel still loves her mother despite everything and said she understands that her mother had her own demons because of alcohol addiction.

"I was mad at her," she said. "She took my childhood from me. You know, I had great foster parents. But I always ran away because I felt guilty that I was starting to love these people, which meant I was betraying my mom."

Sometimes she wishes she was dealt a better hand.

"But all this has made me stronger," she said. I wasn't sheltered. I know what is out there.

"If I could help kids 10 to 18, prevent them from going through what I went through, that would make me feel better inside."