A Single Mom Has Big Plans

By James Mason

The social networking website Myspace is one of the Internet’s most popular destinations. Its users are able to set up a personal profile meet new people, reach out to old friends, post multi-media items, and blog among other things. Using Myspace’s search tool, I too was able to catch up with an old friend.

I reached out to an old friend Keyla Wynn, who is a 22-year-old resident of Moreno Valley, California. She is currently employed as a manager at Radio Shack and is the proud parent of a baby girl.

After graduating from Moreno Valley High School in 2003, Keyla took some psychology classes at the Moreno Valley branch of Riverside Community College. However, Ms. Wynn only took classes there for one semester. “I didn’t really know what I wanted to do,” Keyla said. “I knew I didn’t really want to do psychology, but I needed some time to think.”

After leaving school in January 2004, she began to work while trying to figure out what she wanted to do in life. While things remained steady for most of 2004, in the fall of 2005 her life changed forever. On October 3rd, 2005 she gave birth to a baby girl Kaelana Tanisha Johnson.

Now a mother of a young girl, Keyla is more determined than ever to make sure her baby has all of the things she never had growing up. Unlike her parents, “I gotta be there for my baby,” she said. “There were some things that I never got from my parents when I was a kid growing up that I want Kaelana to have. Most importantly, I know that I gotta support my daughter.”

With a new focus, Keyla is planning on re-enrolling at Riverside Community College in the fall, changing her major to Business Administration. She plans on transferring to a 4-year college in the Inland Empire area, like the University of California-San Bernardino, after doing two years at RCC.

She is no longer dating her baby’s father, Adrian Johnson, but they are still friends. She wants to get married and have more kids some day; however she has no interest or time to date anyone at the moment. Our conversation was the first one we’d had since early 2004.