Psychiatrist Stays Close To Home And True To Her Childhood Promise

Dr. Yamanda Edwards, the daughter of a truck driver and a stay-at-home mom, grew up just a few miles from Martin Luther King/Drew Medical Center, at the time an iconic yet troubled hospital in South Los Angeles.

As a child in the 1990s, she knew little of its history — how it rose from the ashes of the Watts riots. And she knew no one in the medical profession.

Still, she wanted to become a doctor. "I didn't know how I was going to get there, but I wanted to get there," she said. "I was determined."