Q&A with Evie West
Photo by Christopher Vega.
Lee Clarion sat down with Evie West, a Lee alumna and sergeant of the Cleveland Police Department’s community relations unit, to discuss her story and how resilience has been a uniting factor throughout her life.
What was your childhood like?
I grew up in a Christian home in Southern California, kind of by Huntington Beach. I had a great childhood. I was very loved and encouraged by my parents. My dad is from Mexico. My mom is from Virginia, but the funny thing was they came to Lee College in 1964. They met [at Lee], got married, left [Cleveland] and went to be missionaries in Mexico and ended up in California. That is where the bulk of my childhood was.
What was your experience like growing up in California?
When I turned 12 … I was struggling with my identity, being a Mexican-American in California because I didn’t look like everybody else at my school. I was bullied and targeted. I had a decision to make at that pivotal point in my life, where you are trying to find out who you are, you want to be accepted by people, you want to fit in, you want to have friends, and you want to be popular. Unfortunately, during those years of my life, and in that part of the country, the popular thing was being involved in gangs.
How did your decision to join a gang affect your personal relationships?
I got so engulfed in myself that I didn’t really care about anybody else, and the reason I say that is because there were two significant things that happened. I recruited my younger cousin [into gang involvement], and he was shot and killed in a drive-by … and there was a drive-by at my house — they were targeting me.
Can you explain what happened the night of the drive-by?
The Hand of God has been over [my] family and over my life since I was born. When I made those choices, regardless of how I was living, God was like, “I still have a plan.”
That particular night, it was so weird, but my dad got a phone call about 11 o’clock; the Pastor said, “hey, I was at the church, I locked my keys [at church], and I’m across the street at the liquor store using the payphone.” My dad gets out of bed and asks my mom if she wants to ride with him — which doesn’t make any sense. My mom gets out of bed, and they ask me to go too … we were gone about 45 minutes.
We return back to the house. No one turns on the light. We all just go back to bed. I heard my mom tell my dad, “Jose, turn the light on … ” there had been a drive-by at our house. There were six shots that came through our house, four went through my mom and dad’s window, and four bullets pierced their bed, where they would have been laying.
How did you end up in Cleveland, Tennessee?
I was living [recklessly] … I had a baby when I was 16. When I was 19, my mom just said, “that was it.” She packed my bags and said, “you’re going to Tennessee,” and I did not want to come here. My parents put my bags in the car and drove me to the LAX airport on Jan. 8, 1996.
How did you adapt to the sudden culture shock of moving across the country?
It was just totally different than how I was raised, but on the other hand, the shift was necessary for me. I feel like God was saying, “your kind didn’t accept you, the way you were, so you had to change to be how they wanted you to be, but I have all kinds of people here on this campus and in this city, and they are going to love you for who you are.” It was a pivotal point in my life where I felt like God was saying “let me love you.”
When were you saved?
It was actually in the Conn Center of 1996 in February when a man was preaching about how God pursues us, and he loves us no matter what we have done in our past. No matter what our resume was, he is after us. I came to the front, and I just raised my hands and said, “God, if you can change my life and use me, that’s what I want. I want that from you.”
One day I woke up, and I threw up — and I never throw up unless I’m pregnant. Immediately I thought, this is not happening. God knew I was going to move here, and my life was going to change. Why is this happening? I grabbed a phone book and looked under A for abortion, and I found New Hope Pregnancy Center.
What happened when you arrived to New Hope Pregnancy Center, expecting to have an abortion?
When I got up to do the pregnancy test, I saw a Bible in the chair, and I thought, “oh, I’m in the wrong place.” I asked [the nurse] “why are you in the phone book under abortion,” and she said, “it’s post-abortion recovery care.” I didn’t even see that. I just thought, “can I have an abortion here?” I thought, “I can’t have this baby.” I don’t want this baby because I don’t even have money for food for myself or my son.
I remember coming to [Lee], and no one knew my secret. By divine intervention, this lady came up to me and said the Lord spoke to her and told her I was pregnant. Eventually, she brought up the topic of adoption and told me about this couple in Ohio. I finally made the decision in a short period of time that this was the route I had to take. This was during my first semester at Lee, and I hid my pregnancy up until the end of the semester.
When you look back on the course of your life, if you could have changed things, would you?
I think I choose the pain that was in my life. I’m sure that’s not what God wanted for me, but that’s what I choose. Even through that, [God] was faithful to love me, and to have his hand on me and to say, “even though you made those choices, you are still someone I love so much, and I’m going to use you to touch other people’s lives.” [People] who may have made bad choices or even people who didn’t make bad choices, but those choices found them. I can say that with Jesus, your life can be totally different. You don’t have to stay stuck and bond, handcuffed, arrested. You don’t have to stay there.
What message of hope or resilience do you want to give to students and faculty?
We have to work as Christians — or even as people who don’t believe — we have to work on the theory of knowing who you are. Coming to know Jesus, you come to know who you are. Who you are is someone that is loved, someone that is chosen, someone that is redeemed and restored, someone that is not forgotten. He speaks these things over us, and so when we know who we are, we can stand firm. We won’t allow our faith to be moved. It keeps us grounded, that [God] is our strong tower.
West’s chapel message during the “Resilience” Convocation last week is available on the Lee University livestream.
