Yashica Robinson White always thought that after completing her medical training she'd ply her trade in Atlanta, perhaps at Grady Memorial Hospital.

Bita Honarvar/AJC (ENLARGE)

Yashica Robinson White was expecting her third child when she graduated from Morehouse School of Medicine in 2004.

Courtesy of Yashica Robinson White (ENLARGE)

Yashica Robinson White and her daughter, Morgan, are outnumbered by the men in her life (from left) son Jamauri Robinson, husband Dexter White and her other son Quintavious Simmons (wearing glasses).

Courtesy of Yashica Robinson White (ENLARGE)

Yashica Robinson White performs an ultrasound on a maternity patient at the University of Alabama-Birmingham's Russell Clinic.

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Her plans just took a detour into Opelika, Ala.

That's where the Southside High School graduate will join an ob-gyn practice in August after wrapping up a four-year medical residency at the University of Alabama at Birmingham this weekend.

Practicing in Opelika, near Auburn and her hometown of Notasulga, Ala., will allow her to pursue her interest in treating the medically underserved and to fulfill her National Health Service Corps loan repayment obligation. Both are in Lee County, which has one hospital, East Alabama Medical Center. Her plans also include serving indigent patients at a clinic in nearby Tuskegee. "I'm looking forward to it. This is what I've been working for," White said. "I know it's not serving the underserved in Atlanta, but it's within my original goal."

Hers is an improbable journey from poverty and dysfunction to academic success and professional achievement that The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has followed since her graduation from Southside in 1994.

White has proven the naysayers and their gloomy predictions wrong. She offers no hint of bitterness at those who wrote her off as a could-have-been because of her tough circumstance. She lost a father to murder at age 2, birthed two sons by 12th grade, buried an alcoholic mother that same year, and supported herself and her children before finishing high school, all the while living just above subsistence.

As at Southside, White graduated with honors from Alabama's Talladega College, a private historically black institution she attended on full scholarship. She graduated from the Morehouse School of Medicine in 2004. "I'm not one to hold grudges," she said. "When I look back on it now, it was more a motivation for me. I'm the type of person who will try to prove people wrong."

The married mother of three and self-described "survivor" insists she struck the words "quit" and "failure" from her vocabulary early in life. Stubbornness and family support and encouragement helped her keep her resolve during tough times, such as her high school years, her mother's death and failure to get into medical school on her first try.

"I've always been headstrong," said White, 32. "Once I make up my mind, I'm somebody who sets baby steps and starts tackling that. Giving up is something I would never allow myself to do."

Expert juggling skills also came in handy as a head of household, teen mother and struggling college student. During her four years at Talladega, White made the roughly 200-mile round trip to Atlanta nearly every weekend to help with her two boys — Quintavious Simmons and Jamauri Robinson — who were in the care of Lillie Johnson, her grandmother, and Quintavious' grandparents, Gladys and Caleb Simmons. White added wife to her multi-tasking in 2001 when the then-medical school student married Dexter White, whom she met at Talladega.

She was pregnant with her third child, Morgan White, now 3, when she graduated from Morehouse and began her residency at UAB. "I just never thought twice about it. It was just my life," White said. "I guess when you believe there is no alternative you do what you have to do."

White also has been good with a dollar. She saved money from working and stipends to buy her first home — a $63,000 three-bedroom house in Decatur — during her senior year at Talladega.

Patrick Robinson couldn't be prouder of his little sister, "Chee-Chee."

"Honestly, to this very day I don't know how she did it because I couldn't ..." said Robinson, 33, of Decatur. All along she has kept her eyes on the prizes that success can bring — a good job, stability, real home, a complete family and the opportunity to help others.

Another biggie: making her children proud. That began with her firstborn, Quintavious, who came along during her ninth-grade year at Crim High School in Atlanta.

"I had to make a living for him and myself ...," said White, who with her brother grew up living from place to place. "I didn't want to rely on other people to take care of us. I worked so we could have a better life than I had."

Quintavious, 17, remembers how she always has managed to be there for him and his siblings, Morgan and Jamauri, 14.

"It's really amazing what she has been able to do," said the future dentist. "I know how hard it is to have a child that young and still accomplish what she has."

White wants to share her amazing narrative with young people, especially those facing the kind of life circumstances she's overcome.

"I have a story to tell," she said. " I'm somebody who has been there and can tell them honestly 'You can do it'."

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