Mazatlan: It’s the name of a chain of Mexican restaurants that is becoming as much of a brand name as national franchises.

There’s one difference, however. The Mazatlan network, with nearly two dozen restaurants throughout the Northwest, still is closely held by a family that not too many years ago immigrated to the United States from the small town of Cuautala, Mexico.

The chain’s newest store is being built in Redmond, just south of a Taco Bell off south Highway 97.

Salvador Robles recently sat in his Bend restaurant, which has seven employees and seats 125 people, with his sister-in-law, Mara Robles, and talked about how he ended up in the U.S. as a co-owner of the Bend and Redmond restaurants.

Robles is an owner with his brother, Andres Robles, and a friend from Cuautala, Salvador Galvan.

The Robles are only part of a wide network. Andres Cardenes, also a native of Mexico, opened the first Mazatlan Restaurant in the 1970s in Auburn, Wash.

After marrying Cardenas’ daughter, Mercedes, Galvan, 31, grabbed scraps of recipes from his mother’s kitchen and moved to Tigard in 1982 to open his own Mazatlan restaurant in Oregon.

Since then, Galvan has attracted other family and friends to the state and, with their help, has opened 19 Mazatlan restaurants in Oregon.

It’s a business that grows by promoting from within, often relocating staff when new restaurants open and drawing more family and friends from Cuautala, who are looking for better opportunities in the United States, Salvador Robles said.

Feeling the success after 15 years in the restaurant business, Salvador Robles still remembers when he came to the United States in 1983 knowing only a handful of English words and carrying the dream of earning $1,000 to buy a truck.

Ignoring his parents’ wishes for him to attend veterinary school in Mexico at age 17, Robles took off to Enumclaw, Wash., where he worked 14 hours a day, seven days a week in three jobs milking cows, vacuuming an office, and washing dishes for the area’s Mazatlan, owned by Cardenas.

”I just came to get $1,000 to get nice clothes and make life a little bit different and go back to Mexico for vet school,” Robles said. ”One thousand to $2,000 is a lot of money in my country.”

But when Robles tried to return to Mexico a year later, he said his luggage and all his belongings were stolen at the Los Angeles airport. So instead, Robles worked in construction for 2 years in Los Angeles before returning to Mexico.

He didn’t let the loss discourage him.

”The only time you lose something is when you die,” Robles said. ”Otherwise you don’t lose anything. You have to keep moving forward.

”Sometimes I’ll lose $30,000 for some stupid thing I do but I just keep going.”

Still, his time in the United States whet Salvador Robles’ appetite for new opportunities. He began to develop ideas about owning his own restaurant while working as a dish washer.

So he and his brother Andres Robles returned to the United States to work at Mazatlan in Tigard.

”My English was awful and I was so scared to be with the customers I stayed in the kitchen,” Salvador Robles remembered. ”They tried to get me to come out and serve.”

Three years later, Salvador Robles’ confidence grew enough that he opened his own restaurant with Andres Robles and Galvan in Bend in 1992 and later in Redmond.

Among Salvador Robles’ three brothers and two sisters and their 13 children, who are all under the age of nine, Andres’ wife Mara Robles said she is certain there will be plenty of family to help the Mazatlan chain grow.