If you could design a member of Congress who would be the ideal representative of the grit and glory of the American worker, it would be Lauren Boebert. 

Boebert, as a matter of fact, has just been elected to serve in that august body, representing Colorado’s 3rd congressional district. Boebert, 33, hails from Rifle, Colorado, where she owns a gun-themed restaurant called Shooters Grill. Half the wait staff open-carries. 

Naturally, it’s the guns that already have made her famous on Capitol Hill. There’s been no shortage of headlines about the “gun-toting” congresswoman-elect who inquired during freshman orientation about rules for carrying her trusty Glock on Capitol Hill. It’s legal by the way for legislators to carry (but not for tourists). For all her wallop, Boebert is a slight, dark-haired woman with studious glasses, who once described herself (to anti-gun politician Beto O’Rourke) as “5 foot nothing and 100 pounds.” 

The media’s overwhelming focus on Boebert and her guns overlooks what is really more important about the newly-elected legislator: her hard work, down-to-earth values, and a success story that will endear her to regular folks. She did not get her start in life in a fancy internship at a law office or think tank.

Lauren Boebert went to work for the local McDonald’s at the age of 15. At the age of 18, McDonald’s promoted her to manager. Boebert regards working at McDonald’s as transformative. For one thing, members of Boebert’s family had received welfare assistance, and working at McDonald’s changed Boebert’s views on that.

“McDonald’s taught me a lot about work ethics and responsibility that I did not know,” she says. “Starting at 15 and being offered a pretty significant manager’s position at 18 developed in me skills that I never knew I had. McDonald’s launched me. I took the values I learned at McDonald’s to future positions.”

She still calls her former general manager at McDonald’s. “Anytime I have a question about my business, I call her and I ask her what she would do. She was a great manager, and she’s always there to give me advice on how to make my restaurant successful and other aspects of my life.”

Lauren grew up in the Aurora and Montbello areas in Colorado. “My mom had five children,” she recalls, “and she believed the lie that she was told that you need government to take care of your children. We lived under those failed policies for far too long, and it was just a cycle of poverty that we were stuck in. There was no incentive for us to get out, because if mom made too much money, then we could risk losing everything. That wasn’t a risk that she was comfortable with taking. I stood in line for bread and cheese, and I know firsthand that that’s not the best way to live.”

Lauren’s stepfather moved the family to Rifle, where he worked in the oil and gas industry, and for the first time the family began to enjoy some financial freedom. “That is about the time I started working,” Lauren says. “It was very empowering. I was helping out with paying the bills, and helping to obtain that financial freedom. And I brought my mom home that first paycheck and I was happy to. It was very empowering that I had put my hand to something and was able to contribute to the family and I learned from a very young age that I could do a better job taking care of myself than the government ever did.”

She also remembers how empowering it was to buy her first personal luxury item: Hanes socks. “They were little white Hanes ankle socks,” she says. “Hanes was written in pink letters. I really liked that because it was very clear that, although they were white socks, they were girl socks. They were not little boy socks. I had been wearing my brother’s socks. I loved being able to go out and get those things that we often take for granted. This is one of the things that motivated me to continue to work.”

When welfare reform was under consideration in the Clinton years, a lot of people, who faced diminution of their benefits, sneeringly would ask, “What do you expect me to do—work at McDonald’s?” Lauren Boebert would reply with a resounding “yes.” “I’m so grateful for the owners of McDonald’s, for the managers who were there at that time, who took risks and invested in me. I could have gone anywhere from there. I could have stayed with McDonald’s for the rest of my life and had a tremendous career if I had chosen to. It’s a place that a lot of people overlook and don’t give a lot of credit to, but they have so much influence in so many lives here in America.”

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