Photo by Jason Wilson
Avis Atkins is a senior at CSULB. By summer, she will have graduated in four years, majoring in Human Development with two minors in sociology and psychology. As an honor student, she is the founder/president of Black Scholars, the vice-president of the Rotaract Leadership Club, and a senator of the College of Liberal Arts Associated Students Incorporated. She is hoping to become a college counselor and eventually a college president.
This would be a lot of weight for anyone to carry, but when you understand where she came from, these accomplishments and goals become astounding.
Avis and her four siblings grew up with her father, a Vietnam war veteran who battled an addiction to crack. During her elementary years she regularly begged for money on the street, lived in five cities, attended eleven different schools, lived in a West Hollywood apartment, two motels, two homeless shelters, and a van.
With a smile, she recalls one cold winter night when Reginald VelJohnson (Carl Winslow on Family Matters) gave her $20 and a bucket of chicken.
At the age of seven, she met her mother for the first time (who was by then, a clean crack addict). Her stepfather was physically abusive, an active crack addict, and a thief who would steal money from her and her siblings and get in fistfights with her father. After a lengthy custody court battle, she and her siblings lived with her father in an Atlantic Avenue G.I. house.
Blaming his father for not spending enough time with him, her older brother committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. In his latter days, her father suffered from a deep depression, dabbled in crack, and developed an aggressive cancer that rapidly spread throughout his body. Avis tenderly remembers seeing the bumps under his arms and on his torso.
And then he died alone on his bed at home.
Throughout her entire senior year of high school, Avis lived at home completely alone.
During the last days of her father’s life, she asked him why he treated her so differently than the rest of the kids. She had a deep love and respect for him, but wondered why she always had to do most of the begging and assume so much more responsibility than the others.
With quivering lips and tears streaming down her cheeks, she told me the answer that would change her life forever:
“Because I always knew you could handle it. I see something in you. You got something real special.”
“A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.” (a Chinese Proverb provided by Avis)
// JASON WILSON
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