LOS ANGELES — There was all the time the prospect that Tee Higgins could be gifted sufficient to play within the NFL, and possibly even in a Tremendous Bowl if he have been fortunate sufficient.
And if he have been fortunate sufficient, fortunate sufficient to land with a quarterback like Joe Burrow, there was all the time be the prospect that Camilla Stewart wouldn’t be there to look at him.
However this Sunday, Tee Higgins’ mom, clear for 14 years, free from the life-threatening grip of crack cocaine and survivor of a bullet to her head, can be at SoFi Stadium to look at her son on the largest soccer day of his 23-year-old life.
A Tremendous Bowl Miracle.
“I’m so excited to go see him play,” Camilla Stewart informed The Submit, “and on the stage that he’s enjoying on. I’ve all the time watched it rising up, wishing that I might go to a kind of video games, and to know that my son is enjoying in a sport like this? It’s surreal.”
Tee, seated on a UCLA podium sheltered on Friday from the nice and cozy California solar, broke into an enormous smile as he flashed again to Thursday.
“Bought to see her yesterday,” he mentioned of his mom. “She had nothing however a big-ass smile on her face. She’s like, ‘Son, we’re in L.A., we’re within the Tremendous Bowl!’ Like ‘Yeah, mother, we’re right here! We gotta get it carried out!’ ”
A mother-and-son dream on the finish of a nightmare they each survived.
“That is one thing we dreamed of,” Tee mentioned, “simply having her right here, particularly after the whole lot that she’s been by means of, the whole lot I went by means of along with her.”
Camilla, who is named Woman in Oak Ridge, Tenn., began utilizing and dealing when she was 19. She is going to flip 50 on April. 9.
" class="wp-image-21184813"/>“It was simply one thing that I selected to do,” she mentioned. “It was simply one thing for me to do.”
Tee’s aunts would usually look after him. His father, Eric, would take care of him.
“It affected me rather a lot, simply seeing her undergo issues that she did,” Tee mentioned, “however now I have a look at it nothing can worsen than these occasions.”
By the point Camilla was 20, she discovered herself in Johnson Metropolis, Tenn., metropolis jail. “The primary time I went I did 14 months,” she mentioned. “And I got here residence. And I used to be residence for 5 months, and I failed my drug check and I went again.”
When she bought out, after one other year-and-change, she started turning her life round. “I had identified Tee’s dad all my life, and that’s across the time me and him bought collectively and I used to be clear,” she mentioned. “We have been collectively for 4 years, after which that point, that’s once I bought pregnant with Tee.”
However the whole lot quickly modified for the more severe. “Me and Tee’s dad had damaged up, and I relapsed,” Camilla mentioned.
Tee was not more than 6 when his mom was shot in the correct facet of her cranium.
“By the drug vendor slash boyfriend slash the monster,” she mentioned, “no matter you wish to name him.” She survived — with 160 screws in her head.
The reminiscence stays vivid in her son’s thoughts. “I keep in mind it like yesterday,” Tee mentioned. He had been dwelling along with his aunts. His sister KeKe, who's 10 years older, took him out of college.
“She was crying,” Tee mentioned. “Bought within the automotive and drove to mother’s home, there’s warning tape in every single place: ‘I wish to see my mother.’ Helicopter taking off along with her. ‘The place’s my mother, the place’s my mother?’ ”
She was taken to the hospital. “You'll be able to’t see her proper now, she’s damage actual dangerous,” KeKe informed him. “And I simply began busting out crying,” Tee mentioned.
Sadly, the medication saved stalking her. “I recovered from the gunshot wound and went proper again,” Camilla mentioned.
Throughout her six or seven months in Anderson County Detention Facility, she determined that she was sick and uninterested in being sick and drained. “I knew I wanted assist, I simply wasn’t making an attempt to get assist. I needed to go once I was prepared,” she mentioned.
One other vivid Tee reminiscence: a go to to a midway home as soon as when Camilla was in rehab. He thinks he was round 9.
“I cried, and I needed to go see my mother,” Tee recalled. “And my aunts lastly took me to go see her, and I needed to remain the night time along with her. And my mother was similar to, ‘This isn't the place so that you can keep, you wouldn’t prefer it right here.’ ”
Tee informed her he didn’t care. “So I stayed,” he mentioned. “However the meals there was not so good. So we ended up consuming the noodles packs. We ended up consuming the noodles however we didn’t prepare dinner ’em, they have been simply dry …
“Now,” he mentioned with an enormous smile, “We eatin’ good! It’s been a wild journey for us for certain.”
Cynthia Russell and the Knoxville Space Rescue Ministries’ Serenity restoration program marked a turning level. “Serenity helped me discover ways to love myself, develop into a lady, a mom, a daughter,” Camilla mentioned. “It helped me notice loads of issues that I used to be lacking in my life.”
She has been collectively for 2 years now with Eric Higgins, Tee’s father, and the 2 flew into Los Angeles on Thursday for Tremendous Bowl 2022.
Tee has sported a Greatness tattoo on his proper thigh since final yr. “All the things I’ve been by means of, me and my mother been by means of, my tattoo Greatness is … I've no different alternative however to be nice,” he mentioned.
Tee inherited his father’s laid-back persona. However Camilla is aware of this a lot: “He’s a mama’s boy, nonetheless to today he’s a mama’s boy.”
Camilla has no regrets about the way in which her life has unfolded.
“As a result of that’s how my life was speculated to go,” she mentioned, “and if I'd have had any regrets, nothing can be going the way in which that it’s going now. So no I don’t remorse something that occurred in my life.”
Tee is pleased with the lady she has develop into.
“She didn’t have to come back clear,” he mentioned, “she might have stayed on the fallacious route. However she selected God, and God led her to the correct path.”
To a Tremendous Bowl. Along with her son enjoying in it.
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