2000 ROBERT F. KENNEDY AWARD FOR INTERNATIONAL PHOTOJOURNALISM

He was 14, already a man. Osveli Sales and his brother, Noe, left the crushing poverty of their mountaintop village in Guatemala for the United States, looking for a better life.

Wedged into the back of a van, the Sales brothers and 11 other illegal immigrants were transported northeast through Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. On Dec. 23, 1998, the van sailed off a razor-sharp curve on U.S. 160 west of Springfield in southeastern Colorado. Osveli Sales and another young man, Raquel Jimenez, perished. Noe Sales was flown to Denver Health Medical Center.

For a time, no one was certain of the identities of those killed on the commonly used smuggling route.

They were dark-skinned, thin-boned and small, not much taller than 5 feet. They looked like boys, really, although their hands told a different story. Thick with calluses, they were the hands of men.

"Tells me they worked hard all their lives," said Neil Harmon, the owner of the Springfield funeral home where they had been brought after the wreck.

Osveli was 2,000 miles from home when he died, but his heart-rending journey, in a way, was just beginning.

Harmon and his wife, Judy, would spend countless hours over the next several weeks raising money to send the bodies back to Guatemala. Carmine Corica and his family in Denver would be instrumental in reuniting the Sales family. Many others helped.

Some two months later, the bodies were shipped back to Guatemala via Miami. From Guatemala City, Osveli's body was driven by pickup to road's end high in the southern Sierra Madre. From there it was 4 more miles and another 3,000 feet in elevation gain over rugged terrain to his home village of Cucuna.

The 330-pound casket was carried by hand, laborious switchback after laborious switchback. His mother, siblings, other relatives and villagers met his arrival with unmitigated grief. But Osveli was home.

Written by Mike Anton, reported by Anton and Hector Gutierrez and photographed by Essdras Suarez, Osveli's Journey was published Feb. 14, 1999. It was in keeping with the Rocky's philosophy of telling international and national stories through a Colorado lens, and it won the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Award for international photojournalism.

To read the rest of Osveli's Journey, go to RockyMountainNews.com/osvelis-journey/