Welcome to Pace Escambia-Santa Rosa

Loni readily admits that her home life wasn’t always the best. She says, “In ninth grade, my mom started dating an abusive drug addict. But I was an all-star softball player and thought ‘no one can touch me, nothing can harm me – I’m a jock.’ I was wrong. The constant drama at home started affecting me and bled into my school life. I started skipping class and ditching school. Things continued to escalate with my mom and her boyfriend while my grades dropped. I started using pills and weed to calm my constant anxiety. Eventually my mom broke things off with the boyfriend and filed for a restraining order, but only after he threw her through a window, pinned her to the ground and threatened to kill her.”

In the middle of her challenges at home, Loni found out she was pregnant and thought she had no choice but to drop out of school and become a teen parent. An unexpected miscarriage led her to refocus on high school, but classmates bullied her for losing the child. She and her mother found Pace Center for Girls at a time when she had no interest in graduating, but once she gave Pace a chance, her GPA rose. She looks forward to graduating high school then going to college to study graphic design and get an MBA.