Running to the top

As she laced up her new shoes and started a series of warm-up exercises, Jamerika Haynes could not stop grinning. She lightly jogged to the starting line and bounced in anticipation of the race ahead. She turned on her iPod, looked up once and then took off running in a crowd of hundreds of other WSU community members in the Campus Run, Saturday, March 28. The 5K (3.1 mile) race was the first of several she plans to finish this year.
“If it wouldn’t have been for me answering the phone during the race I probably could’ve [finished] in a half hour,” Haynes said laughing. She completed the race with a gun time of 41 minutes.
Haynes started training in January for the Tacoma City Half Marathon set for Mother’s Day weekend in May. She said her friend has been trying to get her to do a race for three years but she never had the time or energy before.
“Now that I have the opportunity to do it, I just said ‘hey why not,’” Haynes said.
Friend Ria Buford, 26, said that attitude is what brought Haynes to this point. Haynes spent time in the foster care system before being adopted.
“I feel like she’s been through more than the majority of men and women her age, or most people of any age, with the foster-care system and so on,” Buford said. “In that sense her whole life is a marathon. She’s not trying to win it, she’s just trying to finish it and be satisfied with herself and how she performed.”
While at Tacoma Community College, Haynes earned two academic scholarships by running for Miss Pierce County. As part of her platform, she got involved in advocacy for foster children. She said she had a pretty good experience with the foster care system, but many children do not. She joined Passion to Action to help.
“It’s a youth advisory board,” Haynes said. “We went to different state functions [to] talk about experiences and make suggestions about how to help improve things for the kids.”
Haynes also started the Facebook group, “Sick and Tired of Police Brutality” in defense of Malika Calhoun—the teenager whose abuse by police was recently caught on tape, and many others who are victims of this.
Haynes wrote on the website, “I am sick and tired of these people thinking they can use citizens as target practice and punching bags.”
Buford said Haynes likes to stay involved.
“Nothing can stop her,” Buford said.
Indeed. Haynes is a broadcast journalism student who hopes one day to own her own production company with a motivational speaking component.
She said she would like to branch out too: “It’d be really nice if I could own a hair store, maybe a restaurant … and maybe work as a booking agency as well for up-and-coming talent, possibly have my own talk show.”
But she said she has get through school first.
“I want to make sure that … working with the school news station and working with my program, I can survive my internship when I get to the news station,” Haynes said. “If I can do that I’ll be happy… I’m a determined person. Whatever I put my mind to; when I start something, I finish it. I always try to be a reliable person. I always try to have a plan. That’s what got me to Wazzu considering that I have been putting myself through college for the last three years. I guess all that I can say is I’m bound and determined.”
Buford said she has no doubt in Haynes’ success in school, the marathon and beyond.
“She is very organized and very self-sufficient, practical, and resourceful, very resourceful,” Buford said. “It’s certain that she is going to do it. No matter how the training goes she is going to be in that marathon and she’s going to do the whole thing.”