15 minute read
Meet Your Neighbor
Sonja Polk
PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRIS BERSBACH
In this installment of our “Meet Your Neighbor” series, SLO LIFE Magazine sits down for a conversation with Sonja Polk. She has recently begun speaking out about her troubled childhood. With the help of her Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) she found her way into a local foster home and turned her life around. Today, at 32, she has climbed her way into management at Diablo Canyon where she oversees the training of the security force that guards the nuclear facility. Against all odds, she maintains a positive outlook and shares that message with our local youth. Here is her story…
We like to take it from the top, Sonja. So, where are you are from?
I am a fourth generation local. My great-grandmother and her sister moved from Colorado Springs to Shell Beach in the early 1900’s. ey lived in little farmhouses. ey had chicken coops as cupboards and actually used the nesting boxes as storage for dishes and other kitchen items. My great-grandmother’s husband passed away in the war, and she had a daughter with him, my grandma. So she and her sister, my great-aunt, just decided to start a new life and move out to California. ey came out here on their own, which was pretty unheard of in those days.
What did they do when they got here?
My great-grandma’s sister opened a restaurant in San Luis called Pop’s Place, or Dad’s Place. It was on Higuera near the high school. ey both bought homes in Shell Beach, a block away from each other. ey raised their families. My great-grandmother lived in that house until she passed. My grandma was raised in that house in Shell Beach; she actually su ered from some di erent things, anxiety and depression. I’m sure that my great-grandmother just wanted to provide a good, solid, stable life for her, but my grandma had issues that were a little neglected. Back then, if people had some kind of chemical imbalance, it was shunned and not really dealt with. My grandmother was a beautiful woman and she found love. She ended up pregnant with my mom, but was divorced six months into the pregnancy. My mother did not know her biological father because she was raised with another man who she assumed was her dad.
Did she ever nd out the truth?
When my mom was ten years old, she was walking home from school and her stepfather, who she thought was her dad—she was daddy’s little girl— he drove up next to her and told her that he wasn’t her real daddy and that he couldn’t see her anymore, but that he would always love her. And that was absolutely heartbreaking to her because she was so close to him. She got into a system of looking for that fatherly love. And she looked for love in all the wrong places. I know that’s cliché, but that’s what happened.
What form did that take?
She wanted no part of society, really. She decided to run away from home. She got pregnant very young and moved out into the middle of nowhere outside of Grass Valley. She lived in a commune-type environment with mountain men, hippies, and bikers and became heavily involved in drugs and alcohol. She had two kids with one guy. He ended up passing away from a drug overdose. en she was with my father, and he ended up passing away from a drug overdose. And she ended up having a fourth child with my dad’s best friend, and he passed away. So, she had four kids by the time she was twenty-one and was addicted to drugs and alcohol. But, even worse, she was addicted to abusive men. So, we dealt with a lot of abuse. Growing up it was physical, emotional, psychological; it was just the whole gamut. Most of the guys she dated were on disability, so they stayed home all day, cracked open a beer for breakfast and drank all day. By the time we got home from school it was a bad situation. Lots of violence. We had the living snot beat out of us when we were kids. Almost daily. It was crazy. Crazy. Just completely unacceptable. Complete nonsense.
is is all so hard to believe… you are just so positive and well-adjusted.
I remember stealing cans out of our cupboards and taking them to the canned food drive at school because I was thinking about the children in Africa who were su ering. Of course, I didn’t realize that those cans were coming right back to us. [laughter] It’s true, they would go to the food bank then back to us. Honestly, you can look back at my pictures as a child and, no matter what was happening, I always had a smile from ear-to-ear. We were forced to play outside all day and I was just so happy to be outside. We got really good at climbing trees and getting up on our roof to get away from my mother’s boyfriends. But, no matter what, I was just so happy
constantly. I’ve just always been a happy-go-lucky person. And I have always thought outside of myself and wanted to help others. Plus, we didn’t know any better when we were younger. I realize that I have a lot going for me now, but I also realize that it can be gone tomorrow. But, I am still going to be the same person inside. That’s really all that matters.
So, when did things start to turn around?
When I was eight years old, my grandfather—my mother’s birthfather— came back into the picture. He decided to teach us kids how to swim. None of us had ever learned how to swim. My mom never learned how to swim, so she never taught us. He was taking us out to the Avila Hot Springs every weekend during the summer. And one day he took us swimming, and we never went back home. He kept the four of us at his house. And he told my mom that she was not allowed to see us until she got clean. I guess she cleaned up her act right away, and still is clean to this day. That was serious enough for her, to have all of her four kids taken away, to straighten up. We ended up split-up and traded and shuffled amongst family members and friends. A few of us ended up moving into foster homes. I moved to a group home in San Luis, and that’s where I was assigned a CASA. I was thirteen and I hadn’t talked to my mom in five years. I didn’t realize that she was clean, but I hadn’t really forgiven her for everything at that point. I just wanted to forget and move on.
What happened next?
I was placed in a foster home here in San Luis with the people who would become my mom and dad, Susan and Jim Polk. The experience was shocking to me because there was so much structure. There were schedules. Every Wednesday I had to make dinner for the whole family—they wanted to teach their children how to cook. We all had chores. We had boards. We had graphs. We had charts. We had diagrams. We had schedules for everything. After school we had this, >>
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above right Sonja with her adoptive parents, Susan and Jim Polk. middle Sonja as a child in Shell Beach. bottom Sonja’s grandmother (the young girl looking at the camera) with her aunt and an unknown child standing in front of her uncle’s airplane after he landed it at Pismo Beach. this, and that. It was not even close to what I had experienced before. It was absolutely shocking. My mom will tell you that I am the prodigal child. They always say that I was one of their worst children. [laughter] That I was off-the-charts difficult, but that I came back and changed my life.
I think people can understand why you went through a “difficult” period...
I think I just had to… well, I rebelled. That’s what I did. I rebelled against the whole system. But they didn’t let me go. They loved me unconditionally. And no matter what I did, they still saw potential in me and wanted to help me. They taught me how to talk problems out—how to communicate—instead of just yelling and fighting. That was shocking to me. We communicated, we talked, we discussed things. We made plans, we made memories. It was really, really good. It was just very instrumental and life-changing. They sent me to private school. They sent me to finishing school to learn to be a proper lady. [laughter] They set me up with dance lessons, and softball, and I had school pictures for the first time. It was just a completely different lifestyle that they exposed me to. They traveled, they were educated, they were cultured. They appreciated politics and economics and taught me a lot of things that I never learned and had never been exposed to before. But, I did, I rebelled at first. Then I grew up.
And how are things now that you are all grown up?
My parents have a tradition in their family, that when their foster children grow up and turn thirty-years-old, they adopt them. So, two years ago they made it official and adopted me into the Polk Family. It’s really great, I love it. It’s so silly, it’s so random, but it’s so great. I guess I had proven myself by this point that I’m a good child. [laughter] We had a baby shower, and they gave me a baby book. It’s not something I have ever had before. They had pink cupcakes with babies. We played baby shower games. It was so silly and so funny, but it was just so great. They just completely open their home and their lives. They want to give back. They realize that there are so many kids out there that are struggling. And they have really embraced that concept. My mom, Susan, is one of the co-founders of CASA here in San Luis. She brought it here back in the day realizing that our community was lacking in programs that helped children in abuse or neglect situations.
And, what about your birth mother? Are you in contact with her now?
I was encouraged to call my birth mother on Mother’s Day. So after not speaking to her for years, I got in contact with her again. She had gotten herself together and back on her feet. I have completely forgiven her—she is such a sweetheart, but drugs and alcohol just change people. You just never know what people go through. You never know what influences them to make different choices. And I know that I am not one to judge. I don’t have the right to judge anybody. I just want to help people. I talk to my birth mom probably once a week now.
And, your birth grandmother? What became of her?
Well, we hadn’t seen her in fifteen years and I was driving down the street one day and I saw a homeless woman who looked just like my grandma, at least how I remembered her. I thought, “I should have stopped, I should have helped her out, I should have offered.” But, I told myself that if I saw this woman again, I was going to stop to see if it was really her and see what I could do because she was obviously in a bad situation. So, I was driving together with my birth sisters about two weeks later. I was actually right in the middle of telling them the story about how I spotted this woman two weeks prior, who looked just like our grandma. I had just finished telling my sisters how I had promised to stop if I ever saw that woman again and how I was going to offer her help. And, sure enough, right at that moment I look over my shoulder and there she is.
What did you do?
So, I stopped. And we all get out of the car. Sure enough, it was grandma. She was drunk or high or something. I introduced myself and she remembered us. We loaded her up in my car and I had her stay at my house for a few months. Then my sister had her stay at her house for a few months. I tried to set her up with help through the system, Social Security and all of the programs that we have here. I also offered to help her get a job, but she wasn’t interested in anything. Then she disappeared for a few months and we couldn’t find her. Finally, one day the police showed up at my sister’s house and told her that they had found her body. She had committed suicide. I felt that we tried to help. It was hard. She actually had a house, all the bills were paid but she was still dealing with the depression plus drinking and decided to hang out on the streets.
Wow. That’s intense.
Looking back at her old pictures and everything, she was gorgeous and had so much going for her and had so much potential. It’s interesting to see how someone ends up like that. But, on a lighter note, when we cleaned out her house, I got hundreds and hundreds of pictures of the area and my family and my great-grandmother’s grandma. It went way back generations and generations. My mom had always kind of been a hippie and never kept any material possessions, so we had no history. No family photos. Those pictures were a positive that came out of the whole situation.
You always point out the positive side of a bad situation.
Last fall was the first time I had spoke at a CASA event. And all of these things have been things I have tried to overcome and forget. My past is not something I’ve talked about beyond just a shallow conversation over wine with my girlfriends. They’ve never heard all of the details. But, all of these things that I have tried to overcome and forget and leave behind… now I realize that so many people can benefit by the struggles and the experiences that I went through, so I want to open up. I mean, in every speech I cry—just like I’m crying right now, sorry—thinking about the children in the community that are still going through these things. It’s unacceptable. And, just reaching out, we can change those lives. But, it’s kind of interesting because I tried to suppress all of these things for so long, that now talking about it, sharing those things, and seeing how other people are benefitting is so healing.
You’ve definitely taken charge of your life and created your own path. We hear you’ve got a pretty important job out there at Diablo Canyon...
I’m blazing the trail. I’m the first female we have ever had in security training. And I’m the youngest person in that role. I do everything from computer classes to compliance and ethics to tactics and firearms. We’re all certified in all of our weapons. I’m not a firearms specialist, but I’ve always felt there is no limit to what you can do or what you can learn other than those limitations that you set for yourself.
Has anyone ever tried to set limitations for you?
I actually had a guy tell me that “the fall of our nation came with women’s liberation” and that “women should not be in the workplace” and “they should not be supervisors,” and that he was going to do everything possible to stop me from promoting into management. I’ve always been the type of person where I don’t fight back. I understand that everyone goes through different things and may have been raised a certain way that makes them how they are. And he may have been exposed to things growing up; I know it was a different generation. And he was a more experienced guy, he’s older. I understand, but I told him, “Well, this is happening, so it’s just something you’re going to have to get over.” [laughter]
For someone who doesn’t fight back, you seem pretty feisty.
Like I said, I don’t like to fight. I don’t like confrontation. But, I do feel that I have the potential and I have the drive to pursue anything that I am interested in. I don’t think that other people should limit what I am capable of accomplishing. And I think that our world is changing, and I want to be a part of that. I want to teach people that there is a different way, there are different options, that there are dreams that you can achieve. It just takes a plan. And you have to take that plan step-by-step and follow through.
Okay, what sort of plans are in your future? Marriage? Kids?
That is the area that my parents cannot stand. I’m 32, not married, and I do not have kids. Every time I go there my mom says, “I just want grandkids from you.” I’m like, “You already have a bunch of grandkids!” She just wants grandkids from me. I would like to find someone, but it’s hard in San Luis; living in a college town is interesting. It’s not the easiest place to be single in your thirties. I’m sure it will happen one day, and I’ve always said that if I end up married with children I am going to be 100% happy. And if I end up alone at 70 with fourteen cats, I am going to be happy. I don’t even like cats. [laughter] But life is so good—I am going to have a good time no matter what. I’m going to enjoy it because it’s a blessing.
Indeed. Sonja, thank you very much for visiting with us today—your story and your outlook are an inspiration. And, we wish you the best of luck as you continue to reach out to local kids.
Thanks so much; that is very kind of you to say. It was great talking with you, as well. SLO LIFE
