Korky

Korky was born in Hollywood. She has a life story made for the silver screen.

Her whole life she has been associated with the “brown image,” she said, “I’m a proud Hispanic!” The second thing she talks about is having spent her life dealing with the trauma of being molested at age six during her mother’s wild parties. The family moved to San Diego when Korky was six, and her mother developed an obsession for men who were in the U.S. Navy, Korky said, so there would be long, late parties where she and her brother huddled in the corners wishing they would leave so she could sleep. Korky remembers her mother was “too busy drinking to feed them. There were lots of beatings,” she said.

In spite of that, Korky graduated from San Diego High School at age 16, and lettered in four sports: weight lifting, softball, volleyball and track. Then went to City College to study nursing. She was set to join the navy when she learned during the fitness exam that she was pregnant. She was devastated; the navy was her ticket out of her circumstances. Instead she fast tracked through her program and interned at the Naval Medical Center after her son was born. Her assignments there had her working with female doctors, which she said she loved.

The timing of her move to UCSD emergency room (the knife and gun club, she called it) coincided with the infamous patient who showed up with an arrow through his head. “What people don't know,” she said, “is that a guy with a bow showed up and asked “Is he fucking dead yet? I want my arrow back.”

Taking time off to be a mother seemed like the right thing to do, in light of her own less than ideal upbringing. Too energetic to devote herself solely to mothering, she found part time work as a certified billing specialist, then as an armed guard at Barona Casino. About this time she walked into a bar in Lakeside where she learned her biological father hung out. She introduced herself by name. Unaware of who she was, he tried to pick up on her.

In 2005 she discovered her husband was having an affair. “I fell apart,” she said. “I wandered to Mexico to stay with friends.”

After coming back to San Diego Korky was sleeping in her truck. Someone broke the back window and raped her. She fought back, stabbed her attacker. Sentenced to 15 years in prison, she appealed the long sentence and was released after 22 1/2 months, she said. But now she had a prison record, and no one would hire her or rent her an apartment. She started trafficking pot across the border. That all ended when she was caught with 274 pounds. She was sent to Las Colinas and served just shy of a year. She made friends in prison. Some of those people watch out for her on the streets, she said. But she still worries about the rapist coming back for her, since she’s still sleeping in her truck. She worries about rival gangs to the one she was part of in prison.

Korky said she’s going to try and get back into the medical field some day. She has faith she can do anything if she puts her mind to it. “God is my best friend,” she said. “I just put one foot in front of the other. You’ve got to change the places you go and the people you’re with. I’m real.”