In the back space of a parking lot on Tucson’s south side, a class of around 20 grade school students line up as they prepare for physical education on a small, asphalt field outside of the Arizona Academy of Leadership.
“Are you ready Emilio?” asks teacher Randiesia Riggs. “On your mark, get set, go.”
Three young boys dart out to a bunch of hula-hoops, the first of four obstacles. They throw them around their waists and start twisting their bodies.
A few turns later Riggs is running the obstacle course herself. “Don’t give up Reyes, don’t give up, Reyes, don’t give up!” she yells as she follows a boy with a sunken face and droopy arms in disappointment atbeing in last place.
She calls out the students who hid in the back of the lines, hoping they would be skipped, and passes them some words of encouragement as she puts them up front for the next run.
“What does my t-shirt say?” Riggs asks.
“I can do all things,” the students mumble.
Riggs has made it her life goal to help her students and many others understand and embrace these five words.
Riggs, 31, is the founder of the non-profit organization I Can Do All Things, whose objective is nothing short of revolutionizing social services for the minority community by teaching people that they don’t have to be poor.
A Ph.D. candidate and 12-year Marine Corps retiree, Riggs has overcome incredible odds in her life that influenced her to teach others that no matter how bad their situation is, they can succeed.
Riggs was born in Los Angeles, Calif., and raised by her mother and stepfather. Her family became homeless when she was seven years old.
During the next seven years, life in hotels on skid row in downtown L.A. was anything but encouraging.
“I saw people get pushed out of windows, people get killed, my mom and dad would be missing for weeks,” she says.
Her mother would often spend the rent money on drugs, putting Randiesia and her two brothers out on the streets carrying brown garbage bags with a few clothes and blankets.
Riggs would often spend her time alone at school, in the library or running track- anything to avoid the drugs at home, the gang life that her brothers were influenced by or the metal chairs that her mother would swing across her face when she was coming down from a high.
With no mentor or guidance, Riggs overcame a suicide attempt and managed to maintain a 4.0 cumulative grade point average and graduate from a magnet high school with honors. However, none of it seemed to matter because she never imagined that she could live any other lifestyle than poverty.
After high school, Riggs took up a job at Burger King.
“People would drive through the drive through and ask me…‘what am I doing here’?” she says.
Throughout childhood nobody ever told her that she could go to college or that she didn’t have to accept being poor, she says.
Riggs transformed this idea into ICDAT’s main program which is geared toward 16 to 24 year olds. Still in development, the program will remove impoverished or troubled youth from their home environment, place them in transitional housing and provide them a peaceful place to eat and sleep while changing their perceptions about financial stability and success. It will also teach them survival skills, and most of all, assist them with the transition into college.
“Instead of thinking poorly, remove them from the generational poverty they come from and teach them something new,” Riggs says.
While teaching at APEX, a school near the airport, students would tell her that they wanted to be a pharmacist’s technician. They didn’t know that they could be the pharmacist, she says.
“She’s the reason why I’m in college right now,” says 18-year-old Jessica Bennett, an assistant of Riggs with ICDAT.
After working at Burger King, Riggs decided that she was getting out of poverty and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps.
Having faced some of the toughest challenges in her life, Riggs was ready to take on anything. She passed boot camp with ease, but would soon be confronted with situations that she never anticipated. Raped twice in the Marines, Riggs says she also faced unbelievable discrimination as an African-American female.
“She is a very aggressive, outgoing young lady,” says Wanda Reed, a close friend who considers Riggs a daughter. “She has no fear.”
Never reporting the rapes because she didn’t want to be black listed, Riggs had a goal to make it to the top in the Marines and become an officer. Taking advantage of her options, Riggs attended the U of A while undergoing extensive training at Fort Huachuca.
After 12 years of service and passing officer candidate school despite a 40-foot fall onto her neck, that she recovered from, Riggs snapped after years of over-the-top discrimination and checked herself into a mental health hospital, she says.
“I was so irritated…the fact that someone treats me like I’m less than somebody,” she says.
Ending her career in the Marine Corps, Riggs decided to go back to college and finished a masters degree in 2006.
Ready to redirect her energy, Riggs took a job as a teacher at APEX.
Many students would come to school high or pregnant, and some wouldn’t come at all because they were in jail, Riggs says.
Not long after, her enthusiasm slowly deteriorated and she became discouraged and stressed out in her attempt to make a difference.
“I was sorting clothes one day and I was like, I can’t do this anymore,” Riggs says.
At that moment a vision came over Riggs, giving her willpower and an image of ICDAT.
Today, she is the wife and mother of two boys. Riggs teaches art and P.E. at the Academy of Leadership twice a week. However, she is looking to end her job soon in order to focus more of her time on ICDAT, which she currently spends an unpaid 60 to 70 hours per week leading. Finding direction in religion, Riggs is also active in her church. She does bible studies as well as outreach with her ministry. Riggs also teaches an exercise class and performs religious dancing with a group of young women. To top it off, she is on her way to obtaining a Ph.D. in organizational management.
“If you’re not pushed to do something then you’re not going to ever go beyond what you know,” Riggs says. “I truly believe that I can do all things. I believe that whole heartedly.”
When Riggs applied this effort to ICDAT, its goals and achievements became unstoppable. Last summer ICDAT served more that 9,000 meals to Tucsonans.
This year, ICDAT, along with the Agape Christian Community Church, provided Thanksgiving meals for the families of the Primavera apartments. Apart from the countless events that are intermingled in ICDAT, Riggs is looking to develop and focus more on its three main programs: the Transition to College, Sister Circle and Fathers Being Fathers.
“She’s a good role model,” says Sue Kiley White, deputy director of the Y.E.S. Network that Riggs is a partner with. “She doesn’t want to see other people go through what she went through.”
In Riggs’ Midvale home on Tucson’s southwest side, more than 20 women of all ages gather at four tables laden with cookie supplies. The lesson for the day’s Sister Circle meeting is making gingerbread women and understanding the correlation between looking good on the outside while having ingredients on the inside that they want to forget about.
The purpose of Sister Circle is to build self esteem in women, as well as teach them about public health, life skills and cultural practices, says Riggs. In a receding economy, a mother can always sell some cookies if she has to, she says.
Riggs is currently looking for a leader for the Fathers Being Fathers program. It teaches men that it is better to stay a parent than leave their child.
The program teaches conflict resolution and provides time for men to hang out with other men while bringing their kids along, says Riggs.
The current challenge that Riggs faces is her attempt to expand ICDAT by purchasing a ranch on Tucson’s west side. It will house the 16 to 24 year-old students and provide a larger meeting space for the other programs.
But the program has not gotten funding to pay for the ranch and if it’s going to expand, it will need experienced volunteers to offer their skills as teachers or leaders.
By the community helping ICDAT, it is helping itself by improving individuals to become productive citizens and lowering crime rates by taking troubled kids off the streets, she says.
If ICDAT can get the funding, Riggs would like to open the ranch as early as 2009.
Although this larger goal remains close at hand, Riggs achievements are evident in the influence that she has on others.
Reed is also looking for grants to open Ms. Wanda’s House, a shelter for pregnant girls.
Some people say that it’s Riggs personality that draws you in.
“She makes you feel good about helping,” says Kiley White.
Jennifer Moss is one among many individuals that Riggs influenced to continue higher education.
“She knows how to bring out the best in you,” says Moss.
Although Riggs looks back at her life and recognizes her achievements, a sense of accomplishment would be in vain at this point in her life.
“I can’t say that I’m proud of myself sometimes,” Riggs says. “I always feel like I haven’t done enough.”
However, it’s a mutual feeling as to just how much Riggs can accomplish.
“What I’m seeing her do now is only the beginning,” says Reed.
For more information on I Can Do All Things you can contact Randiesia Riggs, executive director, 241-3465
