Overcoming the insurmountable a way of life for minority Entrepreneur of the Year.

When Christine DeHerrera-Hicks was a teenager she was stricken with polio and spent two years in an iron lung before being told she would never walk again. She proved her doctors wrong in a big way. Not only has she been walking for years, but late last year was named the minority Entrepreneur of the Year for 1991 in Los Angeles by Mayor Tom Bradley.

The founder and president of Studio City Travel Inc., DeHerrera-Hicks opened her business in the mid-1960s with a $15,000 loan from a program for minority entrepreneurs that was started by former President Lyndon Johnson. She said she couldn't have started up without the federal loan.

"The important issue to me at the time was that it didn't require any collateral. . . . You can say that ever since then I have been a strong backer of the Democrats because mine is a case where one of their projects worked."

The travel agency now has annual sales of between $18 million and $20 million and employs 27 people, said Hicks, a widow of 10 years with two daughters ages 26 and 30.

"I'm not sure why I received the award," said DeHerrera-Hicks. "A few years ago I won another award from the YWCA . . . for being entrepreneur of the year and I'm not sure why I won that one either. Maybe it's because I hire minority workers."

But she acknowledged that her latest award may also have something to do with Studio City Travel holding the contract to book travel for Los Angeles city workers and officials.

DeHerrera-Hicks declined to reveal the value of certain contracts, but said her agency also arranges travel for other commercial clients that include businesses in the entertainment, printing and medical fields.

DeHerrera-Hicks, who refused to disclose her age, was stricken with polio when she was 17 years old, just before the vaccine was discovered to prevent the disease. To help her breathe, she was placed in an iron lung for two years. When taken out of the lung, she was put into a wheelchair and told she would never walk again.

"I remember going home and just started working with braces and eventually I was walking," she said.