DETROIT (WXYZ) — A former Miss Michigan and the first African American to win Miss USA is speaking out about homelessness and how she was living out of her car before winning the title.
Carole Gist, who won the crown in 1990, is a Detroit native and graduate of Cass Tech High School, which, she says, she attended while couch surfing and, at times, living out of her car.
Gist told her story during an interview with 7 News Detroit Anchor Carolyn Clifford.
Watch the full interview below:
Gist says she became homeless while her mother and biological father dealt with substance abuse issues. As part of the process, she became emancipated at 17 years old.
"I had mixed emotions and hormones raging, and just probably a bad attitude about why can't people take care, why can't they take care of their kids?" she says. "I just figured like, if they can't do it, if my parents can't do it, then it's you and me, God. So I just did what I had to do to survive."
"For a while, I lived in and out of my car. I had friends, a couple, it was really only 2, but I would go over to work on homework, a project together, and I would stay the night, and then one night turned into, like, a few. So sometimes I was couch surfing, so to speak, but the other times I was in my car. And I would go into the school early, before gospel choir practice, under the auspice of putting my track uniform or my practice clothes in my athletic locker, because they didn't allow students back there. It was a security guard there, but then that's when I would take a shower, brush my teeth, and get ready if I had been staying in my car. But, yeah, it was very, it, it didn't have to last too long, but it, it, it definitely, it has, when you go through that, when you lose your home, and you don't know where your mom is, this is before she went into an in treatment program, and you're going through these things, it's like, well, I, I can't even actually worry about them right now. I'm just worried about making it through today and keeping my grades up and going to college and get, you know, coming out debt-free, graduating, getting a scholarship. That was my blinders."
