ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — How far would you go to protect your livelihood? For one small business owner, who faced several break-ins at her now-shuttered Uptown store, the answer is somewhere else in town at an inconspicuous warehouse.

“I’m not your average girl, so I’m going to keep fighting. I’m going to keep fighting until there’s nothing left to fight for,” Leticia Leyba said

Leyba is the owner of the Groove Boutique. She says a handful of break-ins pushed her out of her original location, but she wasn’t ready to give up on her dream. 

KOB 4 met Leyba at the secret location Wednesday for a look at the new concept. If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of safety. 

“Because no one knows we’re here, it feels so safe. It feels so safe and comfortable,” she said.

Leyba has been craving those feelings for more than a year. She opened a boutique in Uptown Albuquerque last year.

Thieves and vandals in the area gave Leyba a not so warm welcome.

“We went through so much up there, and you wouldn’t expect to go through that, because it’s Uptown. It’s a nice location. It’s our shopping corridor. You would assume that it was safe,” she said.

Five break-ins and thousands of dollars in repairs later, Leyba closed her doors earlier this summer.

“I was already losing employees because they were scared to be there. We were having to keep the door locked,” she said. 

But that fear hasn’t kept Leyba down or out of business. The Groove Boutique “Closet” is coming soon in a new location.

“I’m not going to just abandon my Albuquerque people. I need to keep fighting for them as well. So our new vision is we’re going to revamp our website, but now you also have somewhere locally to come in and get a one on one shopping experience,” she said. 

Only customers who book an appointment will get the new address.

“We don’t have to worry about being broken into, we don’t have to worry about vagrants coming in here. We don’t have to worry about being cased,” she said.

But that comfort doesn’t come without concern over the lengths that Leyba had to go to achieve it. 

“It honestly is sad, because this was never the vision I had for Groove,” she said. “You can’t sleep because you don’t know what you’re going to walk into the next day. It overtakes your life. It overtakes, your home life. You’re stressed out all the time. It just it takes over everything.”

She hopes those days are behind her. 

“It’s somewhere safe, safe for my customers and for myself, and if we decide to hire any employees, it’s safe for all of us, and that’s the main concern these days, is our safety,” said Leyba. 

Leyba plans to launch the new concept Nov. 1. Folks can find Groove online and on Instagram.