DENVER -- Jasmine Hoffman was on her cell phone, on her way to pick up her husband in Colorado Springs, talking about how she -- a graduate student in the University of Pittsburgh's MBA program -- managed to score some coveted tickets to Sen. Barack Obama's acceptance speech last night at Invesco Field.

Then suddenly, her voice thickened, and she began to cry.

"Sorry," she said, pausing for a minute to regain her composure.

"Look, I was watching him give a speech on television a year ago, in Selma, [Ala.] where my grandmother lived, and I was blown away," she continued. "My grandparents had been activists in the civil rights movement, with Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King, Jr. and had gone through so much trying to help blacks get the right to vote. My grandmother told me, too, she never thought she'd live to see the day when an African-American could become president and told me I needed to get involved."

So, in December, Ms. Hoffman, 25, of the South Side, began volunteering for the Pittsburgh Obama campaign, working so hard and producing so much that when she approached the state campaign a few months ago seeking tickets to see Mr. Obama claim the Democratic presidential nomination, they decided to reward her.

Ms. Hoffman was among 10 volunteers in Pennsylvania chosen by the Obama campaign to receive tickets to Invesco Field, home of the Denver Broncos -- on the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

It was no easy accomplishment. More than half of the 75,000 free tickets were allocated to Colorado residents, with another 10,000 to surrounding "battleground" states -- as part of the so-called Western Majority Project, a Democratic party effort targeting the Rocky Mountain west in November.

Pennsylvania, too, has been a high-priority state, both during the seven-week primary and now into the two-month final stretch of the general election, and Ms. Hoffman has been in the thick of things since January.

Concentrating in the nearby neighborhoods of South Side Flats and South Side Slopes, she first collected signatures for delegate petitions, then worked to register voters, and then to find ways to get those voters to the polls.

She still gleefully remembers the 20-degree day she stood outside the East End Co-op in Point Breeze and collected 100 signatures.

"It was an amazing experience, living in a swing state during an election like this," said Ms. Hoffman, who grew up in Tuscaloosa, Ala., "and seeing how well received we were as Obama volunteers.

"When we turned those signatures in, we all said to each other we had a feeling that this primary campaign is going to come down to Pennsylvania, and lo and behold, now, three months later, it looks like the general election is going to come down to Pennsylvania as well."

There's more. The man accompanying her to Invesco -- her husband, First Lt. Justin Hoffman, an Oakdale native who is stationed with the 4th Infantry Division, 2nd Brigade combat team in Colorado Springs, will be deployed to Iraq, in what will be his first tour of duty -- today.

"I've been a huge Obama fan from the beginning," Lt. Hoffman said, noting that when he watched Mr. Obama give the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention four years ago, "I turned to my wife and said, one day that man is going to be president."

While Mr. Obama has pledged to end the war in Iraq quickly, that doesn't affect Lt. Hoffman one way or the other.

"When you sign up to be a soldier, you're given a mission, and you go ahead and execute it," he said. "Politics are out of it. The mission is first."

Lt. Hoffman, 28, is a graduate of West Allegheny High School and West Virginia University. After enlisting in the Army, he was first sent to Fort Bragg with the 82nd Airborne, and then was encouraged to undergo officers' training. After getting his master's at Duquesne University, he was commissioned as an army officer at the University of Pittsburgh's ROTC.

His wife, who has been commuting back and forth from Pittsburgh to Colorado, said she was taken aback when she arrived at the Denver airport Sunday "and saw just this sea of signs. There was so much energy, there and on the streets of Denver, which can be pretty quiet on a Sunday night."

"The last time I was at Invesco I watched the Steelers play the Broncos," added her husband. "All I can say is that it's great that on my last day in this country, I'm going to see Sen. Obama become the Democratic presidential nominee there."