When she was first found — seen through the cracked opening of a Trinidad motel room door — she was lying on the floor naked, bleeding and bound at the hands and feet with telephone cords.

She had been sexually assaulted with a coat hanger. Inside the room, police discovered a hair dryer in the “on” position with a tripped circuit breaker. She told police that her assailant held her down in a filled bathtub, then tried to electrocute her, according to a report.

In Trinidad — a town of about 9,000 people in southern Colorado that sees no more than a couple dozen serious assaults a year — the attack last month is shocking enough. But that the victim was a transgender woman who traveled to the town’s famed sex-change clinic strikes at the heart of something many Trinidad residents pride themselves on: the community’s unblinking tolerance for and acceptance of the transgender community.

“I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen somebody even catcalled,” said Marci Bowers, the internationally renowned doctor who runs the clinic and performs about 150 gender-related surgeries a year.

“It just doesn’t happen here. And that’s not to say that we’re not a bunch of rednecks and truck drivers and oil-field workers. But there’s just a respect and a tolerance for this population that’s unique.”

Bowers was quick to point out that, although the police have not arrested anyone in the case, the suspect they are investigating is from out of state.

The attack underscores the danger that stalks transgender individuals, Bowers said. Last year, 289 transgender people nationwide reported to local advocacy groups that they were the victims of bias-related violence, according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs.

In April, a Greeley jury found a man guilty of committing a hate crime in the killing of 18-year-old Angie Zapata, the first such conviction in the country.

But in Trinidad, those undergoing gender transition have been able to find a refuge. Las Animas County District Attorney Frank Ruybalid said he can recall only one other attack on a transgender person — an attempted assault about eight years ago — during his years as a prosecutor in Trinidad. Some patients have traveled to Trinidad for gender-change surgery and decided to stay.

“My impression is most people leave them alone,” Ruybalid said. “If they have hostility to transgender patients, they don’t show it. . . . I think a lot of people, when they meet a transgender patient, are surprised at how normal they are.”

According to the police report about the assault at the motel, the victim, 25, arrived in Trinidad on a bus, with no money, no place to stay and no appointment at Bowers’ practice.

Bowers said the victim hoped the clinic could help her in her transition. Bowers’ staff, having been told by a crisis worker in Seattle that the victim was coming, tried to accommodate her and worked with a local nonprofit group to get her a motel room.

The assault happened, according to reports, after the victim met a man in the motel lobby and the man followed her back to her room and forced his way in.

When details of the attack hit local newspapers, Trinidad residents shuddered at the violence, said Diana Velarde, the owner of the Hot Spot at the Savoy restaurant.

But the assault didn’t dominate conversation in her cafe.

Trinidad Mayor Joseph Reorda also said the assault generated no more interest in town than other crimes. Bowers said people expressed sadness to her about the attack.

It was as if the victim was just like any other person in the community — which, in Trinidad, she was.

“I have sympathy,” Ruybalid, the district attorney said, “for anybody who is a victim of a serious crime.”

John Ingold: 303-954-1068 or jingold@denverpost.com