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Ties that bind

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Lady Stewart was back on drugs, back in jail, and her mother was preparing to bail her out because she couldn't stand the thought of her daughter being behind bars.

Tee Higgins, Lady's son, was 8 years old and too young to comprehend the wreckage crack cocaine inflicted on his mother's life for more than 16 years.

Two years earlier, Tee's older sister was the one who told him his mother had been shot in the head by a boyfriend.

Now, on Aug. 18 of 2007, Lady was so exhausted and overwhelmed and spun -- "sick and tired of being sick and tired," she says now -- that she didn't really care if she lived or died.

In a moment when there seemed to be no hope, somehow she found clarity. She told her mother not to bail her out. She told her she was right where she needed to be, with a roof over her head and away from the streets of Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Clemson wide receiver Tee Higgins and mother, Lady Stewart.
Clemson wide receiver Tee Higgins and mother, Lady Stewart. (TI File)

When she went to sleep that first night, she told herself that if she woke up the next day she wasn't going to touch crack again.

Last August, Lady celebrated 12 years of sobriety. To be more precise, it wasn't much of an actual celebration; her new life as a doting mother to two and a grandmother to one has become so routine that she forgot about the Aug. 19 anniversary until her daughter KeKe reminder her.

"Everybody's rock bottom is different," Lady says. "I had hit my rock bottom, to the point that I didn't care about living. I told myself: 'You've got to get right. Your kids need you. They didn't ask to be here.' So I had to start loving myself again."

Tee Higgins is a certified superstar at Clemson. He is headed for NFL riches, whether after this season or next. He has been destined for this for some time, dating to his early high school days when he was the most gifted player on the football field or basketball court and did breathtaking things.

But Tamaurice William Higgins does not carry himself like a superstar. He is soft-spoken and private. The first word friends and loved ones use to describe him, whether back home in Tennessee or at Clemson, is "humble."

When asked to recall his favorite moment at Clemson, Higgins can choose from an assortment of stupefying plays he has made himself. Instead he cites a garbage-time touchdown scored by Will Swinney last year during a smashing of Louisville, marinating in the genuine joy of seeing the coach's former walk-on son bask in big-stage glory after his first career touchdown.

"With all the things Tee has missed out on, he should be the entitled kid," said one of his former high school coaches, Kwayu Graham. "He should be saying: 'Give something to me. Look at me.' But instead, he's selfless."

Higgins' family with former Clemson wide receivers coach and now South Florida head coach Jeff Scott.
Higgins' family with former Clemson wide receivers coach and now South Florida head coach Jeff Scott. (TI File)

You can't tell Tee Higgins' story without telling his mother's story. And you can't tell his mother's story without telling his sister's. And you can't tell all their stories without learning of Tee's grandmother and two aunts.

It’s all intertwined. They're all intertwined. Family is why Tee and his sister are thriving, and why their mother is alive and free from the ravages of crack cocaine. Family, and a strong faith in God.

"By me displaying my faith, that has helped my kids know and trust in God and know that God can and will deliver," Lady says.

Camillia "Lady" Stewart was a good athlete in high school, but she was also known for her quick temper and fists if anyone crossed her. She was in trouble regularly as a juvenile, and when she was 15 she became pregnant with KeKe.

Lady graduated high school in 1990. A year later, she began smoking crack. She says now she was battling depression and didn't know it.

"When I would get stressed out or mad, that was the first thing I would do is go get some drugs and get high just to take the pain away," she said. "I was around friends that did it and I got hooked."

About a year later, Lady was arrested for possession of what she said was about $120 worth of crack. She was sentenced to eight years in prison. She turned 21 years old behind bars and was out on probation after a little more than a year.

Four months later, a positive drug test put her back in jail where she stayed for 14 months. In the meantime, her daughter was being raised by Lady's mother (Betty, now 68) and two sisters (53-year-old Denise and Amanda, 52).

Lady said she was clean for four or five years thereafter and met Eric Higgins. Tee was born in January of 1999. Lady and Eric broke up in 2002, and soon thereafter she began using again.

Lady began seeing a man who was both her boyfriend and her supplier. On Oct. 18, 2005 he shot her in the head. She says she doesn't remember why he shot her; she said it was not an accident.

"All I remember is eating and getting high when it happened," she said.

Higgins was a 5-star signee in Clemson's 2017 recruiting class.
Higgins was a 5-star signee in Clemson's 2017 recruiting class. (TI File)

She was in critical condition at the hospital for eight days and had a metal plate inserted into the right side of her skull with more than 160 screws. Soon after leaving the hospital, she took a shower and began experiencing brain swelling. She said she still encounters short-term memory loss from the shooting and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.

KeKe was 17 years old at the time, a star basketball player for Oak Ridge High, and Tee was 6. On the day their mother was shot, KeKe went to school to pick up Tee.

"My family told me not to tell him," KeKe says. "But I felt like he would understand that she was shot and she was hurt. I felt like he should know that something bad happened, and we could or could not have her. She could have died. And I didn't want to just tell him, 'Oh, mama died.' I wanted him to understand she had been shot in the head and was seriously hurt. So I told him. And he understood that."

Lady has previously told the story of, around this time, Tee not being all that interested in playing Pee Wee football. She has said she would entice him to continue playing by promising to buy him his beloved Hot Wheels cars after games.

The truth is that it was his aunts who were doing more of the mothering during this time, taking him to the store after his games and buying him a miniature car for each touchdown scored.

Graham, the receivers coach on Tee's high school team and a longtime family friend, remembers the family bond closing in and growing tighter during Tee's childhood when his mother was in and out of jail.

"His grandmother is a strong woman. And his aunts were so important in his life. When you saw him, you saw them. And his aunts had kids, too. They raised him as if he was theirs. They've always been a close-knit group that stayed together. His aunts and his grandmother encircled him, and then when KeKe was old enough she was the mother figure for him."

The future first-rounder is shown here in Charlotte (N.C.) earlier this month with ACC Commissioner John Swofford.  Higgins earned MVP honors of the ACC Championship game.
The future first-rounder is shown here in Charlotte (N.C.) earlier this month with ACC Commissioner John Swofford. Higgins earned MVP honors of the ACC Championship game. (Getty)

Lady thinks back to that time, during her recovery from the shooting, and winces: She had two beautiful kids and was miraculously fortunate to still be alive. This was a second chance, the gift of a scared-straight moment staring her right in the face. The opportunity to do whatever it took to get her life back together and move on.

An opportunity that went right into her lungs and away after a few weeks when she started smoking crack again.

"I started sneaking," she said. "None of my family knew. I'd have different people come get me, friends that my family didn't suspect were getting high. But then my family figured it out when I started doing stupid stuff. Stealing their money. Stealing their jewelry.

"I just didn't want to stop. I loved the feeling that it gave me."

Admirably, Lady is an open book when asked to discuss her past. She has shared her testimony to church groups in Oak Ridge, but this is the first time she has shared everything publicly in full detail and color.

She has decided that full disclosure is a fundamental part of sobriety, coming to matter-of-fact terms with her mistakes not just within herself but to the outside world as well.

But that doesn't mean some parts of her story aren't difficult for her to get through. Her tough, proud persona begins to break down when she gets to the part about leaving her son at home to go get high.

"He didn't know what was going on," she said. "He had no clue what I was doing. But he would see different people in my house. He never really knew his mom was smoking crack and having people come over to smoke crack.

"There were times when I would leave him at home, or with my uncle or someone I trusted. I would go score my dope and come back. I remember a couple of times..."

This is where she starts to cry, stops and composes herself.

"A couple of times I thought he was asleep. I'd go up the road to get my drugs. When I got home one time he wasn't in there: 'Oh my God, where is my son?’ As it turned out he woke up crying and walked two doors down to my mom's house. This was when I'd leave him at home late at night, 1 or 2 in the morning."

In 2006, KeKe graduated from Oak Ridge and left for Middle Tennessee State 150 miles away near Nashville. She was there for just three days, and she says the need to take care of Tee back home home was part of the reason she returned.

In the summer of 2007, KeKe was pregnant and about to give birth to Lady's first granddaughter. Lady remembers her daughter telling her: If you don't get yourself together, you’re not going to see your granddaughter.

"Didn't matter to me," Lady said, "because drugs were all I wanted."

On Aug. 18, Lady was arrested and passed out as she was being cuffed. Paramedics were called to revive her.

"I don't know if I was just overwhelmed or what," she said. "I was high at the time. But I think I was just sick and tired of being sick and tired."

Later that day was when Lady told her mother to keep her bail money and leave her in jail. The next day, Aug. 19, was when she woke up and proclaimed to herself that she would never touch crack again.

Higgins now has nearly 130 receptions in his Clemson career.
Higgins now has nearly 130 receptions in his Clemson career. (TI File)

Four days later, Ze'Yana Stewart was born. Lady was allowed to have a contact visit in jail to meet her granddaughter.

"I'll never forget that," she said. "It hurt. That was the first time I held her. The first time I held her was in jail. But she was so beautiful."

Where Tee was too young to comprehend his mother's addiction, his sister spent most of her childhood and adolescence fully attuned to the gravity of it.

"It was just hard not having my mother around," KeKe said. "Everybody else, all my friends and cousins, they had their moms. I was just wishing mine was there. I mean she was around. She just wasn't stable."

Lady: "KeKe went through it with me. Junior high and high school, she saw it all."

Lady says she spent the next four or five months of 2007 in jail. During that time she began going to Bible study and thinking deeply about how she was going to change her life.

"I wanted to be around my kids and be around my family. I wanted to be able to have things. I wanted to be able to buy my kids things. Just seeing parents with their kids made me want to strive even harder. I didn't want to keep embarrassing my daughter. She was a big part of it."

A judge let Lady out of jail but told her mother to take her straight to full-time rehab: "She brought my clothes and everything. She wouldn't let me out of her sight."

Betty took her daughter to the Knoxville Area Rescue Mission (KARM). This was her ninth rehab stint over her 16-year addiction, and she spent almost a year there.

Where previously some of her stays in rehab were far away from her hometown, as far away as Louisville, this time she was a mere half-hour from her support system.

Her mother, sisters and daughter would come visit. Tee would stay with her overnight on weekends, and both would cry on Sundays when it was time for him to go back home.

The love and support from her family were instrumental in Lady becoming stronger each day, more confident that she could exist in the real world without sliding back into the cycle of getting high, going to jail, then to rehab and violating probation and back to jail again.

She went from rehab to her mother's house, where she and Tee lived for five years. She earned back trust by telling her family where exactly she was going when she left the house and when she would be back. She began going to church regularly.

"At first, it was like I couldn't do right; everybody thought I was still using. But my mind was made up when I went to jail."

In 2010, KeKe decided to go back to Middle Tennessee State to pursue her education and basketball. By her senior year, she started 32 of 33 games and led the team with 52 made 3-pointers. She was also named to the Conference USA Commissioner's Honor Roll.

During that four years, KeKe's daughter was back home in Oak Ridge. Lady was entrusted with caring for Ze'Yana, and she viewed it as a second chance to show that she could be a good mother.

She has been clean for every second of her granddaughter's life, and she treasures that fact.

"That was a big deal for KeKe to trust me with her, given my history," Lady says. "I thank God she was able to trust me with her child."

KeKe and Tee could look back on those crazy, traumatic times with resentment and blame their mother for all that was lost.

Instead, they think about what they gained: They view her experience as a sort of sacrifice that showed them how not to live. Without that example, maybe they end up going the wrong way.

This is deeply reassuring and empowering for Lady, who recalls a college paper written by KeKe that emphasized this lesson.

"She had to write a paper on a role model, and I was her role model. She told her story. She said I saved her in showing her what not to do. And I look at it as a blessing, because God used me to keep my kids on the right track. They didn’t have to go out there and experience drugs and everything because they saw that in their mother. Even though what I did was wrong, I was the best example for them. Knowing that they didn't turn their backs on me, knowing my daughter still loved me and didn't hold that against me, that helped me."

Lady, now 47, works as a caregiver for the elderly. KeKe is attending nursing school and is on track to graduate in April. Lady is proud of the fact that she was able to be a normal mother to Tee during his middle- and high-school years, proud that she can fully luxuriate in the brilliant career he has composed at Clemson.

Higgins committed to Clemson on July 4, 2016.
Higgins committed to Clemson on July 4, 2016. (TI File)

Late last week, Tee surprised the family by returning home earlier than planned for a brief visit before he went back to Clemson in time for Sunday's flight to Phoenix for the Fiesta Bowl against Ohio State.

Cynthia Russell, the director of KARM's Serenity Ministries program in Knoxville, remembers working with Lady during her last stint in rehab. She still keeps in touch with her and says she is one of the success stories.

"Since she completed our program, she hasn't had any problems with drugs," Russell said. "Her children are back in her life, and she is living a productive life in the community. She's a good mother, and she is stable. That's what our program hopes to produce.

"It really all depends on the person's desire. Because if they're not done using drugs or alcohol, they will go back to it. So it's basically the individual's choice to live a clean life. And it requires that they cut off those people, places and things that contribute to them staying in addiction. And I think Camillia has done that. She has a healthy support system. I just pray that her story captures a lot of people's attention and helps women who really want to recover, and that it'll give hope to someone in our community."

Occasionally, Lady says, she'll run into some of her old friends from another life. The people in the streets who helped lure her away from her children. The people she went to when she thought her son was home sleeping.

The people from another life.

"Some of those people are still out there," she said. "I talk to them. I even tell them I'm going to pray for them. I don't even think about smoking crack anymore. I don't think about going back out there. The thought is not even in my mind. God wiped that slate clean. It was a choice I made. We've all got choices. You can either make a good choice or you can make a bad choice. At that time in my life, I was making all bad choices."

Now Lady Stewart chooses the family that chose her.

"They're proud of me, and proud to be around me," she said. "That makes me so happy."

FROM THE TIGER FAN SHOP: Click HERE for more in-season DEALS on officially-licensed CLEMSON apparel and gear!

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