Page 20 - Desert Lightning News So. AZ Edition, June 2 2017

20 June 2, 2017 Desert Lightning News www.aerotechnews.com/davis-monthanafb
Overcoming adversity, Airman finds home in Air Natl Guard
by Tech. Sgt. TRACi howeLLS
131st Bomb Wing
whiTeMAN AiR FoRCe BASe, Mo. — He slowed the car to a stop and pulled into the parking lot. Shutting the engine down, he looked around the vehicle.
Everything he owned was crammed into the small space that had become his home for the past few months. He glanced at the brick building: Air Force Recruiting dis- played proudly on the sign above the door.
With no family to see him off, no friends to leave behind, Colton Elliott closed the door to his past and opened one to his future.
Elliott’s childhood had been difficult as far back as he could remember, he said. Growing up in Salt Lake City with parents who struggled with drug addiction, his home life was never stable; he had been back and forth from his home to foster care more times than he could count. Finally, when a school counselor noticed bruises on the little boy, family services removed him from his mother’s care permanently. He was 8 years old.
‘I never felt at home’
“I was shuffled around the foster care system for a few years after that,” Elliott said. “I never got too comfortable in any one place. I never felt at home.”
He was still being shuffled around from one foster family
Facebook.com/DesertLightningNews
to another when his real father came back into the pic- ture. Finally clean after years of drug use, he was granted custody of the 10-year-old Elliott. The two of them moved into an apartment, and from there life got a little more predictable.
“It was the most stable years I had growing up,” Elliott said. “Those years felt relatively normal.”
Elliott had lived with his father for almost five years when life began to unravel again. His dad often left the 15-year-old home alone to care for himself for days on end. The days turned to weeks and eventually the weeks turned to months.
“He didn’t say a word to me,” Elliott said. “The time away got longer and longer until he never came back. I haven’t spoken to him since.”
Without any family to turn to, the high school sophomore began living life on his own, picking up a job at a local restaurant where he washed dishes in order to pay the rent for the apartment he had once shared with his father.
“I got a free meal for working my shift, and at the end of the night they would let me take home leftovers,” El- liott said.
He often skipped classes to pick up shifts at the restau- rant to make ends meet. Despite only attending class half the time, he was still able to make passing grades. The school left messages about his absences on the answering machine at his apartment, but never investigated his situ-
Ang photo by Airman 1st Class Halley Burgess
Air Force Staff Sgt. Colton Elliott, 131st Bomb Wing photojournalist with the Missouri Air National Guard’s, poses for a photo at Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo.
See ADVErSITy, Page 21