For the past 25 years, this suburban Sunnyvale resident has lived and worked in the United States, raised her children and watched them near graduation from universities.

But for much of the time she's been in the U.S., she's been saving money and planning ways to make life better for her family and friends in the tiny farming village of El Capulin--named after a small cherry--in the Guatemala state of Chiquimulilla.

"My goal is to finish building up my mother's house, and when we get that done, I'd like to build a little orphanage on the land so that we can provide for my mom and dad and help the children," Tucker said.

Tucker, 47, said that she--like many of her generation--was lured away from the tiny village of farmers and fisherman by the excitement of city life in Guatemala City. After working for years without making much money, she came to the United States to start anew.

Through it all, she's been concerned with children, whether it was helping her own children get through school and college--her youngest, Kathleen, is set to graduate from California State University, Sonoma in May--or planning to bring shelter, care and education to children in her native village. She began working in Guatemala as a caretaker for children and has continued in that line of work since.

"It feels like I've been a mom since I was five," Tucker said.

Ten years ago, she met and married Scott Tucker, and he adopted her children from a former marriage, giving the couple three children altogether: David, 22, Kathleen, 20, and Michael, 22. Scott has joined in her dream of building a place for the many children in her village, and to that end, he's helped Manuela and her siblings purchase enough land to build both a house for their parents--now in their 70s--and an orphanage.

In the meantime, Scott and Manuela are getting ready to move to Texas, with moving trucks set to arrive on March 2. The move will bring Scott closer to his real estate investments and Manuela closer to the airline hub for flights to Central and South America.

It cost the family almost $12,000 to purchase a plot of land roughly the same size as the one the Tuckers have on Floyd Avenue in Sunnyvale. They are currently building a home out of cinderblocks for her parents, complete with a working bathroom and electricity, which the village did not get until seven years ago. They're still $5,000 short, but once they're able to save that amount, Scott says, they should be able to finish the house and begin hiring local labor in Guatemala to start work on the orphanage.

The village of El Capulin has traditionally had a feudal-system of landowners, in which members of a few powerful families own most of the land, and have villagers working that land to make enough to survive.

"That system is beginning to die as the older generation dies and passes the land to the younger generation, and it's divided up into smaller and smaller lots," Scott Tucker said.

And one of those lots is where the Tuckers will carry out Manuela's dream.