In 1988, she was the fifth-grade class vice president at Seat Pleasant Elementary School, with plans to make something of her life, when Abe Pollin arrived at the school to make a speech. Pollin owned the basketball team then called the Washington Bullets and the nearby arena, the Capital Centre, where the team played. And he offered to pay for college for any Seat Pleasant fifth-grader who graduated from high school.
Seven years later, Alston had shown her promise, and Pollin kept his.
She was an honor student, a member of the newspaper staff and a student government leader when she graduated from Central High School in Capitol Heights. Pollin put her through the University of Maryland at College Park, where she received a bachelor’s degree in criminology and criminal justice.
Then, she decided to take a break.
“I had a friend in my physics class at Maryland who said she was going go Ireland to figure her life out after college,” Alston recalled. “I thought that was so freeing and liberating, I decided I was going to backpack through Europe. My mother told me: ‘You are not white, and that’s not happening. You can go into the military, get a job or go to law school as you have always talked about doing.’ ”
She worked as an intern at the Justice Department and looked for a law school. When a friend invited her to attend a Bible study one day at the University of the District of Columbia, she saw an opportunity.
“At one point I went upstairs from the Bible study to admissions,” she said.
Law school, she said, was “the best three years of my life.” As a law student, she worked at a clinic that helped HIV/AIDS patients organize their affairs for their children.
She took a year off after law school to study for the bar and spend time with her infant daughter. She then worked as chief of staff for the Maryland commissioner of correction until she became co-owner of a Lanham law firm where she practices family and business law.
When Pollin died in 2009, she started to contemplate running for office.
“When Mr. Pollin passed away, it made me think about all the things in life that I wanted to do that I hadn’t done,” she said.
On the day of the primary in September, she was racked with anxiety. Her campaign had been staffed by relatives and friends from as far back as elementary school, and they were with her that night at her Mitchellville home as she waited for the results.
“At one point, my sister took me to Buffalo Wild Wings down the street so I could just breathe,” she said. “We waited for what seemed like an eternity for the results to come in. . . . Even when they did, I didn’t believe it. I drove everybody crazy because I wanted the official results.”
On her first visit to her House office, she and Smith, her chief of staff, argued over where to put her desk. “I wanted it positioned so that I could look out the window. She said that looked stupid,” Alston said. “My desk now sits so that I can look out the window.”
Her days run from about 9 a.m. until “whenever,” she said. Some nights she stays over in Annapolis. Sometimes, even though she might not finish until 2 a.m., she heads back to Prince George’s to spend a few hours with her husband, Kendal Gray, an accountant, and their 8-year-old daughter.
As she prepared for the vote on same-sex marriage, she expressed confidence that she had done the right thing. On the day she disappeared, she said, “I needed to think. I needed to pray. I needed to sort it all out.”
She has. “Now,” Alston said, “democracy just has to take its course.”
The Post MostMost-viewed stories, videos, and galleries in the past two hours
Loading...
Comments