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HI! my name is Yesenia Garcia. I grew up in a mixed family. My mother and step dad had 12 kids combined! I am half Native American and half Mexican. I've lived in White Swan for most of my life.  

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HI! my name is Yesenia Garcia. I grew up in a mixed family. My mother and step dad had 12 kids combined! I am half Native American and half Mexican. I've lived in White Swan for most of my life.  

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For most of my life, my family has always had drug addictions in it. Opioids, alcohol and marijuana were the main ones. It caused us to become homeless when I was around 12-13 years old. We lived on the Columbia River making very little to no money from selling fish we caught. I didn't attend school during this time.

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After about a year of being homeless my grandma let me move in with her so I can start attending school again. I had missed my eighth grade year. I started smoking and life felt very hard without my family. Eventually my mother and my family moved back to White Swan but I felt like I couldn't move in with them because of their addictions and I felt like a burden. During my sophomore year of high school I found Christ through a local church. I soon turned my life around very quickly. Helping with the church kids events have helped me know that I wanted my career to be around kids.

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Through my church I found a job with Swan Graphics. I stopped smoking and found Christ but I was still "couch hopping" until my junior year when my boss and his wife took me into their home. I finally had a stable home and a healthy new family. I was still very close with my own family too. I felt like life was good.

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In April of 2019, my beautiful mother passed away of heart failure. Her passing is still hard for me to comprehend, she was my best friend. She always said that I was the only in the family that was going to do something with their life and I am! I got the Act Six four-year scholarship and was the first one in my family to graduate high school on time. I am currently still working and now attending college. I still live with my bosses family and still have faith. That's me!