FORMER GANG MEMBER FINDS PLACE IN NURSING

 

A few of her classmates were complaining. They didn't want to be there; they didn't understand why they had to hand out food to the homeless. They didn't understand why the children and adults they were feeding had nice clothes, cars and gold teeth.

          "It's two totally different worlds," Asan Mitchell, a third-year Bachelor of Science in Nursing student, says, as she prepares for a nursing final, her hands calmly placed on a small stack of text books. "When you grow up with absolutely nothing, that's what they like to do. It's important to them."

          "If [students] go into a hospital with their preconceived notions, they will give horrible care in my opinion. I want them to be able to put their judgments aside."

          Mitchell is doing what she can by not only teaching her Clarkson College classmates, but by actually showing them. Mitchell's past and future are not what many thought it would be -- including her.

          Growing up in Denver, Colo., Mitchell's disabled father took care of her and six siblings on his own. No water or electricity ran through their small apartment.

Drugs and violence were the family way. An older brother had left for Calif. and brought back a new name for their crew -- the Bloods.

          "My entire family, everybody, were involved in it," Mitchell said. "I was a straight 'A' student, but started ditching school. In 10th grade I dropped out. I just wanted to do the stuff they were doing in the streets, smoking weed and hanging out. You still survived through it. That's all I knew."

          Mitchell started taking drugs at age 8, and quit at 17 when she became pregnant with son Anthony, now 15. She left Denver while in high school. A gang fight broke out; her life had been threatened. "He was trying to protect me. I watched my brother get shot," she said. "The police shot him once in the chest and once in the back."

          Her brother survived. A bullet is still lodged two inches from his heart. Knowing her own life would change forever if she stayed in Denver, Mitchell took the few belongings she had and headed for Wyo. and eventually Omaha.

          "My dad sent me on a bus with the clothes on my back and told me never to come back. I had no idea what I was going to do," Mitchell said.

          The snow blanketed the grey and dismal Omaha streets. Unrelenting and depressing, the clock ticked faster and faster as Mitchell sat anxiously in the cold vinyl city bus seat. Already three hours late to her welfare appointment, she still kept her pleasant disposition and conversed with the bus driver.

          After her appointment, the snow had not stopped. As the bus rolled to the nearly unrecognizable corner, Mitchell noticed the same driver behind the wheel. The loud engine roared as her trek home began.

          "What's that?" she asked the driver, as she looked out a frosted window.

          "That's Creighton University," he said.

          Mitchell leaned her neck and pressed her face against the glass as the bus trudged by the campus and headed to North Omaha. And so began her journey.

          "I got a job in the kitchen at the Creighton student cafeteria that week," Mitchell said. "Then one day while walking home, I walked past the Tech Building (Omaha Public Schools Technical Building). I thought 'How can I have my kid graduate if I didn't have a GED?' So, I started my GED on that Monday and got it on Friday."

          With a new found confidence, Mitchell went on to complete the requirements to become a Certified Nursing Assistant. "Lutheran Homes, that's where I started," she said. "I said 'Oh, yeah, this is interesting.'"

          In 2001, she enrolled in Metropolitan Community College. She took classes one at a time and rekindled her passion for mathematics; she calls herself an "algebra fanatic."

          "My kids and I all sit around and do our homework together," Mitchell, now mother to three boys and a girl, Anthony (15), Zakeal (13), Tajmia (10) and Jalon (9), said.

          "They need to have people around and know of people that go to college. I'm doing this all for them."

          Mitchell had just gotten the call from the Clarkson College admissions counselor. The time had come to deposit $100 to ensure her spot in the BSN program.

          "I took the money I had for the light bill and ran down to the College," Mitchell, who plans to graduate in December 2006, said. "My first day at Clarkson College, my mind was racing. I felt like I was a manic patient. I was just so excited; it took me a minute to realize I had actually made it here."

          It's been 11 years since she first arrived in Omaha. The woman who once lived in a car is standing on her own two feet now and strives to be a shining example to her children and to her community.

          "Originally I wanted to start my career in med surg (nursing medical surgery)," she said. "That experience alone is challenging. Mental health [course] came along, and I've enjoyed that the most. In order to help these people you have to show them who you are. I was like a wounded dog. I'm very proud of myself. This is the first time I've been 100 percent sure about being me and being a woman."

By Melissa Kucerik