Tough as Leather Building a business isn't easy, but how much can one entrepreneur take?

When Julia Duren arrived from Hamburg, Germany, at the SanFrancisco Airport in 1982, she was a 30-year-old mother with twochildren, ages 5 and 2. Her second husband, an American, was doinglife at San Quentin. She had almost no money and no friends, familyor contacts to speak of. But Duren knew something about leather,and she had a dream.

That put her on the road to success. Today, she's thelargest shareholder of K.L. Manufacturing Inc., a Larkspur,California, firm that had revenues of $1.2 million last year. Shehas 24 employees, all of whom have profit sharing, 100 percenthealth benefits, paid vacation time and all the other benefitssuccessful businesses can afford. But the ups and downs Durenendured are perhaps better-suited for the trampoline business.

"I was scared as hell," Duren says of her arrival inthe United States. She had only a tourist visa that didn'tallow her to work or live in the country, despite her recentwedding, and had to immediately apply for her green card. It'seasy to speculate why she would marry a man serving a lifesentence, but it was a real marriage, maintains Duren, who wasmarried for seven years before she sought a divorce.