Imelda "Mel" Golden
A Golden Star
Growing up should be the easiest time of your life. It’s a time when your imagination is allowed to run wild. It seems that the world’s problems bounce right off your sense of youth and innocence. For Imelda Golden, her adolescent elasticity could not protect her from the harmful and dangerous vices that grip some parts of the world.
Imelda was born in Yuma, Arizona, right outside Phoenix. “Living in the projects comes with baggage: Drug deals; thugs lurking; people getting mugged and daily shootings, but that was just a run-of-the-mill day for me,” Mel explained. In addition to the daily storm of danger, a period of homelessness and living in the family car was added to her family of five before they moved to South Carolina in 2006. How did they get through all of these hardships? Mel looked to her mom to be her rock. Mel’s mother made sure Mel and her siblings didn’t know they were living in poverty, or a bad situation. “I thought all kids lived this way,” Mel said.