This article describes a private, open-enrollment school in Washington state's agricultural valley which typically serves first-generation college-goers who were actually discouraged from seeking higher education. Heritage University, a 1,346-student commuter university, serves a region and a population that other institutions have historically ignored and essentially written off as nothing more than farm laborers and service workers. Indeed, the 25-year-old school in south central Washington, about 165 miles southeast of Seattle, is surrounded by vast fields of apples, hops, cherries, apricots and asparagus worked by many of its students and their families. While the Hispanic-serving institution is private, its tuition at $9,000 a year is within reach of its working-class clientele. Its closest neighbors include not only crop fields and laborers, but also the Yakama Nation, which used to own the land where Heritage now stands. Heritage's founding and only president is one of the school's staunchest donors and a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant winner.