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November 20, 2018

Life’s Tests

Shurene Premo has overcome many hurdles in her life, and hopes to one day pay it forward. Her goal is to provide counsel and support to people in her community struggling with addiction. Premo knows all too well what that struggle is like.

Shurene Premo on the campus of San Diego State University.

Shurene Premo doesn’t mince words when she explains what her college education has meant to her.

“It pretty much saved my life.”

Premo, a Western Shoshone woman from the Duck Valley Indian Reservation, is a senior at San Diego State University. She is majoring in social work, and hopes to one day counsel people in her community struggling with addiction. Premo knows what that struggle is like.

“I was a blackout alcoholic by the age of 14,” she says.

Her addiction, which eventually included drugs, lasted nearly 15 years. She attended rehab nine times before finally getting and staying sober. The last time she used, she proudly states, was September 15, 2011. By then, she was living in California where she had been introduced to Wellbriety, a movement of Native American men and women who promote and advocate for sobriety in Native American society.

“I picked up a lot of good tools there, which I still use today,” she says.

Premo (standing to the immediate left of the sign), with other Western Shoshone college students who worked last summer as interns in their respective communities, supported by Barrick.

Once in California, Premo, who had earned her high school diploma in 2008, decided to return to school. Funding for her post-secondary studies is partially provided by the Western Shoshone Scholarship Foundation.

“Barrick has helped support my education for the past seven years,” says Premo, who has obtained invaluable experience the past five summers working as a Barrick-funded intern for the Duck Valley Tribal Social Services program.

While Premo overcame addiction, life threw another curve at her in 2016. On the way home from a concert in San Diego, she was shot in a drive-by shooting—a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fortunately, her injuries weren’t life threatening, but the incident shook her to her core.

“Someone wanted me gone off this earth,” she says. “It was really hard to take in.”

Despite being urged by family to return home to Duck Valley, Premo chose to stay in school. She was attending Cuyamaca Community College at the time and awaiting word on her application to San Diego State. It was a difficult time. Premo reduced her course load and broke down frequently in the months following the shooting. Then her acceptance letter from San Diego State arrived and the dark cloud lifted.

“God tests you, big time,” she says. “You can just sit there and give up, but I didn’t do that. I wasn’t going to let that incident define me.”

Premo plans to pursue a Master’s in social work. Eventually, she hopes to run her own social work service for Native Americans using her experience, education, and knowledge of Native American culture to help her people recover from addiction.

“If we can get back to our ancient ways, we are going to heal.”

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