Graduate found support, love at Rogers

The first 18 years of life have been pretty tough for Jessika O’Harran.

But this month, she’ll achieve what she once never thought possible or even important – graduation from high school.

“Jessika is proof that lots of bad things can happen to you, but it doesn’t have to turn you into a perpetual victim,” said Barb Farnsworth, intervention specialist at Rogers High School. “I am proud to know her.”

Born to a mother and father who were heavily into drugs, O’Harran moved back and forth between them.

Her mother, Rayma, eventually straightened her life around and, not wanting her daughter to follow in her footsteps, became overprotective, O’Harran remembers.

Things did not go smoothly for her at either household, and O’Harran endured depression, an abusive relationship with a boyfriend in middle school and her own marijuana use. She skipped school, got bad grades and began cutting herself.

“I think I did it so my mom would see I wasn’t OK,” she said.

Clearly, it looked like O’Harran was going to become one of those statistics, a kid with potential who acts out and then just drops off the radar.

But when O’Harran got to Rogers, several good things happened.

She and her mother, a cancer survivor, drew closer. She met Farnsworth and drama teacher Kris Freeland, both of whom wrapped their arms around her and helped her see her own value. And she met Christopher Perea, who has been her boyfriend all through high school.

Perea is opposed to drug use, so, for him, O’Harran quit. And slowly, she stopped cutting herself.

“I began to see what a loving relationship really is,” she said.

“When I first got to Rogers, I realized that the four years I would spend in high school really matter, that those grades I would get really matter, that no one in my family had ever graduated from high school and that nothing was going to keep me from graduating,” O’Harran said. “This was when I needed to grow up.”

So with the support of her mother, her boyfriend and her Rogers family, O’Harran set herself to the hard work of bringing up her grades – to the point that she is graduating with a 3.2 grade-point average.

But another crisis was coming – her mother’s cancer returned.

“That put me in care mode,” O’Harran said, and she devoted all her time, except during school hours, to her mother’s care. That consumed her sophomore and junior years.

Rayma O’Harran died last July.

Jessika O’Harran didn’t want to return for her senior year. “But my mom would have been really mad,” she said. “I understood I couldn’t quit because she died. I’ve got to do life. But still, it’s hard to be a daughter without a mother.”

But O’Harran has done her senior year quite nicely, including performing in two stage productions at Rogers, “Evil Doings at Queen Toot’s Tomb” and “Alice in Wonderland.”

“I love acting and being on stage,” she said. “I just love the feeling I get when I can make a whole audience smile.”

O’Harran and Perea and some friends are saving money for an apartment.

“But there will be no moving until all of us have jobs and can afford to do this,” she said firmly.

O’Harran also is saving to attend culinary arts classes at Spokane Community College, perhaps in a year.

“I know I can be difficult to deal with,” said O’Harran, who still suffers from depression. “And I know I’m a fairly average person in most things, but I am blessed with the friends I have from drama at Rogers, having the teachers I’ve had, Chris being in my life.

“And I know that my mom is always with me.”