LaShonna Jones, 33, is one of seven siblings. She grew up in Southeast San Diego, mostly Spring Valley, and City Heights, but also spent time in Las Vegas. She attended Horace Man Middle School and Gompers, where she played basketball. One of her fondest memories from her childhood is her father taking the kids to the beach. She’s the oldest girl, and sees herself as a role model for the younger ones. She also has “lots of cousins on my dad’s side” in Texas and Louisiana.

She quit high school to start working and spend more time with her boyfriend at the time. The boyfriend became more and more controlling. He would tell her not to talk to other people, isolate her from her friends and family. He would hit her if he thought she wasn’t behaving according to his demands. They couch surfed when they lost housing, then became homeless, moving around different San Diego neighborhoods. When the boyfriend went to prison for stealing bicycles, she was at peace, albeit on the street. She was afraid, she admits, but stayed behind businesses, in their alley. When she was threatened by men she would put on her bravest face, leave, and spend a few days with friends or family.

Her own fateful turn happened when she was dumpster diving about eleven months after her boyfriend went to prison. According to LaShonna she was smoking a cigarette while searching through a dumpster for food. The cigarette fell into the dumpster and caught some paper on fire. She ran to get some water, and when she got back the police were there. They arrested her for arson. “I stayed away from fights in there,” she said of her year in jail, though she admits she wasn’t always successful. “I mostly talked to the old people” in order to stay away from trouble. But she was lonely, spent some time crying, thinking about her mistakes, “Though I didn’t do too much wrong,” she said. She read a lot about history, which she really loves.

After she got out of jail in August of 2019, she lived with her auntie, the one who raised her from the age of 13, but there were always too many people there, so she bounced between her auntie’s house and her stepfather’s house before moving in to the Crossroads program where she lives currently. She was glad to get out of jail in time to spend a few months with her mother before she died in December that same year. Her grandmothers both died when she was 17; she still misses them.

One day, about five years ago, her stomach started growing, she said. She hadn’t changed her diet, and she wasn’t pregnant. Doctors told her it was stress. Finally a more attentive doctor identified the two large cysts on her kidney. Surgery was successful to remove them. Now she is dealing with a smaller cyst on her uterus, but otherwise is in good spirits. She’s proud of her ability to center her own well-being. She gets together with her extended family for a picnic in the park every two weeks or so, which helps validate her new direction.

LaShonna moved into Crossroads in Encanto in March 2020, and is taking advantage of all the programs available to her. She plans to get her GED, learn to drive, and get a job teaching. She currently has a job downtown with a city work crew. She said she can make almost $100 a day, and is saving every penny for the day she has to leave her current program. She has a current boyfriend, but he is off in Tennessee looking for work. LaShonna does sign language to gospel music, and wonders if that might be something she can use to help others. Ultimately she would like to open her own homeless shelter so she can be there for people who might be in a situation she knows all too well.