At the age of 4, little girls play with dolls. At the age of twelve, girls talk to their girlfriends about crushes they have on boys. And at fifteen, girls go to the mall to shop for new outfits.
Tanya Johnson attended Pleasant Valley High School in Chico, but how she lived was anything but pleasant. At the age of 4, her parents separated, her grandmother passed away, and her mother suffered from bipolar disease. At the age of twelve, Johnson was raped, began taking drugs and suffered from her own disease, anorexia.
By the time Johnson was fifteen, she tried every drug possible but heroin, miscarried her first child, and was running from a possessive boyfriend who wanted her dead.
In Johnson’s twenty-year span, she has endured what many only hear about on TV. However, the perils in Johnson’s life have made her who she is today: a scholarly student hoping to help those in the similar situation she was in.
After her parents separated, everything in Johnson’s life turned for the worst. “My mother has a history of being bipolar, and once my father left, it kind of forced her to a downward spiral keeping her incredibly depressed,” Johnson said. “She just really shut my brother and me out and she was incapable of being a mother figure.”
Johnson’s mother moved the family to Chico, and, later on, sought refuge in being a Jehovah’s Witness. Since the age of 4, Johnson has lived under her mother’s rules. “Growing up, I was not allowed to go to birthday parties or hang out with friends,” Johnson said. “If anything, I was the complete opposite of what I am today.”
But as Johnson reached her adolescent years, she began to rebel. On her twelfth birthday, her mother advised her to go to church. Instead, Johnson went to another party with her friends. In that one day, everything had changed in Johnson’s life. Johnson got drunk, smoked, and was then raped by her friend’s boyfriend.
“It spiraled down to why I was depressed. I was like, ‘why is this happening to me?’ I started cutting on myself. I started throwing up bits of my food. I had fits where I would stop eating and then I had fits where I just kept getting high,” Johnson explained.
By the time Johnson was seventeen, she found herself in an abusive relationship. She tried running from one place to another, and those trying to protect her got caught in the crossfire. Johnson explained one incident where she stayed at a friend’s house and the next day, the same friend that helped her was jumped by her boyfriend.
Johnson needed an escape from her life in Chico. “I had found out that my mom’s estranged sister lived in Pacifica and my mom and her had reasons not to get along and I knew that it was going to be a bad housing situation,” Johnson said. “But I knew I had to do it, I had to get out of my life and I moved to Pacifica sporadically.”
But moving to Pacifica wasn’t easy for Johnson. While living with her aunt and uncle, Johnson recalled being verbally abused by them. She then needed a different escape: to go to school. “The thought of getting involved at school was really appealing.”
Johnson started to attend Skyline Community College and there she met her best friend, Hien Kieu, who would help change her life for the better. Johnson started to get involved. “I joined the honors transfer program, I tested into it, and I got in,” said Johnson, “and I still cannot believe it until this day. I never knew I was smart, because I was never told that growing up.”
Today, Johnson is a member of various organizations and programs, such as the Pacifica P.M. Toastmasters, Phi Theta Kappa, the Honors Transfer Program, and the Gay Straight Alliance, to name a few. Within the years Johnson has spent in Skyline, she has devoted herself academically and to her community.
“What I know about Johnson is that she is a wonderful example of a student who has used her time at Skyline to flourish and to grow,” said Jeff Westfall, English teacher at Skyline College. “Her hard-earned success is her version of what Skyline wants for every student and what the faculty work so hard to help bring about.”
Johnson described the best day of her life as the day of the President’s Breakfast this year. In front of many honorary guests in the President’s Breakfast, Johnson gave an emotional speech on how Skyline has helped change her life.
As Johnson described her day at the President’s Breakfast, the teary-eyed Johnson explained, “Everyone was coming up to me and giving me recognition, even though I wasn’t looking for that, it was something I did because I wanted people to know about my life and was one of the people changed through community college.”
Nowadays, Johnson is looking forward in transferring to the University of California, Santa Barbara and studying Business Administration and Industrial and Organizational Psychology.
“I’m really happy that things happened the way they did here,” Johnson said.
