by: ADAM WISNESKI Multimedia Producer Monday, February 08, 2010 2/11/2010 10:17:36 AM She was falling. Fast. Smoking weed, drinking and hanging out with the wrong people. Cheyenne McKinney went from someone who was doing a lot at Booker T. Washington High School to someone who no one thought would graduate. She had lost her motivation, her inspiration to do anything. She lost her Pops. He died in April 2008 and she didn't know what to do. Then she took a second look at Orlando Hawkins. He had been a friend at Booker T., but had gotten in trouble and was arrested. But he found a way to stop falling out of a good life. He became a boxer. She wasn't sure if it was going to work for her. Her mother certainly didn't think so when she drove her daughter up to Keith Reed's boxing gym near Apache Street and Cincinnati Avenue. "I'm not letting you get out in this ghetto neighborhood," McKinney recalls her mother saying. "Go ask that man who the boxing coach is." Soon they met the man inside the building. A thick-framed man, 6 feet tall, 275 pounds, with a gold-tooth speckled smile. He wasn't like her Pops, a man she called "her heart." But Cheyenne quickly found out Reed would serve a different role. She would eventually call him her savior. "As soon as I met Coach Reed, it's like, that's the turning point in my life," McKinney said. Back then, almost two years ago, the Reed Foundation boxing gym in north Tulsa was rough. "We just had a real raggedy building, you know, you could ...
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