Student Fights Overmedicating of Foster Youth
Cal State East Bay’s Tisha Ortiz shares difficult past to help change the future for others
A swimming pool. Flashes of a video game. A TV with burn marks down one side. They’re fragments of Cal State East Bay senior Tisha Ortiz’ earliest memories — and the only ones she has of a place called home.
Tisha was just 4 years old when Child Protective Services knocked on her door for the first time, where her parents’ drug and alcohol abuse had taken precedent over feeding their toddler.
“I’m guessing it was a neighbor or a family member that called,” Ortiz says. “My first foster mom told me that it was impossible to get me to eat when I first came to them. I was skin and bones and I wouldn’t eat anything until I was physically in pain. I literally didn’t know what hunger was or how to eat.”