A bundle of untamed energy, Nakiah Cherry Chinchilla has always followed the path that calls her soul—whether to be a party girl, a television exec, a teacher or a writer—but she also is attuned to when her heart and soul tell her she hasn’t quite found the thing she is meant to do. In this part one of a special double episode, find out how, staying true to your heart can be a guiding force, even when life throws trial after trial your way.
Guest Nakiah Cherry Chinchilla felt as though she was born a generation too late, as she has always felt a call to advocate for societal change and for help people. But she also has listened to the call to go out on the town and live it up. Upon leaving college, she entered into the fashion industry in New York, taking on public relations and operations roles with big brands such as DKNY and fashion magazines such as Allure and Elle. Although it was fun to rub elbow with designers, photographers, and hip hop artists and get to go to glamorous shows and parties, at some point she started feeling as though she needed to do something with more substance. She moved to L.A. but quickly went to the Bay Area and, as a stop-gap before she found her next thing, became a pre-school teacher. The kids and school leaders loved her and told her she was great at it. But she’d heard that before. Just because she was good at something didn’t mean it was the thing she needed to be doing.
Having found the man she was going to marry, she moved back to New York to pursue a career in television. She worked at Viacom and quickly moved up and around, from Nickelodeon to MTV and even helped launch Logo, the LGBTQ network—all while getting pregnant and having her son. Around the time she began contemplating a leap from television, her home life became very confusing when her husband began exhibiting odd behaviors.
In this episode, find out from Nakiah how staying true to your heart can be a guiding force, even when life throws trial after trial your way…on today’s Roads Taken with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode's Guest
Nakiah Cherry Chinchilla, is a data scientist and engineer focused on the use of data and technology in making significant changes in the lives of people everyday. Her interest center on the creation and development of technology, apps, games and advanced bionics for special needs children, disabled citizens, and underserved communities. Though she has extensive work experience in public relations for fashion and media companies, she has developed hard-won expertise in neurodegenerative diseases, data analytics, assistive technology, digital media, and special education advocacy.
Part Two of this Roads Taken story will be available wherever you get your podcasts on April 11, 2022.
Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley
Music: Brian Burrows
Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com
Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com
Leslie Jennings Rowley: Attention all members of Dartmouth's Class of 1996: Our postponed 25th reunion is happening July 22-24, 2022 and registration is now open. It's only fitting that our episode today features our 25th reunion chairperson, Nakiah Cherry Chinchilla. Be sure to visit dartmouth1996.org to find out everything she has planned for us and sign up today.
Nakiah Cherry Chinchilla: That’s always been a sort of a trope that has followed me where, when I decided I want to stop doing something and do something else and I explain the reasons why, the people around me are like are you never going to be satisfied? Are you going to be perpetually unsatisfied, but it's, it's like a feeling you have inside of you when you know you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing. And so I, I tend to follow that feeling.
Leslie Jennings Rowley: A bundle of untamed energy, Nakiah Cherry Chinchilla has always followed the path that calls her soul—whether to be a party girl, a television exec, a teacher or a writer—but she also is attuned to when her heart and soul tell her she hasn’t quite found the thing she is meant to do. Find out how, staying true to your heart can be a guiding force, even when life throws trial after trial your way….on today’s Roads Taken, with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley…
Today I am here with Nakiah Cherry Chinchilla, and we are going to talk about the full embrace of life and the drive to keep going and kind of the indomitable spirit of this amazing woman. So thank you so much, Nakiah, for being part of this.
NCC: Thank you for having me, Leslie.
LJR: All right. So we are going to start with the same questions I ask of all my guests and they are: when we were in college, who were you? And when we were getting ready to leave, who did you think you would become?
NCC: Wow. Okay. So when we were in college, I remember once I was referred to as queen hippie. I was a student who came into school thinking I was going to major in philosophy and French and go to law school, but ended up falling in love with history, majored in history and women's studies.
I was someone who likes a good time to be sure. I was an Andrew Mellon fellow for a while, until I started flaking on turning in my assignments. And then I stopped being an Andrew Mellon fellow. Because I liked when I went on my off time in New York, I spent more time socializing than I was working on my research.
LJR: So you were in New York having fun.
NCC: I was in New York having fun during my, I think my junior summer, I was supposed to be working on my Schomburg research fellowship, which was focused on how the communist party embraced black people during the Harlem Renaissance. But instead I was kind of partying because during that time of my life, I was going through different things and my social interactions within the friends I made, which later on would be very significant to me. And later in life, that was my main goal was to maintain these relationships with the people around me.
LJR: But I got the sense that that wasn’t an automatic thing.
NCC: I went through a small period of time, which is the only period of time in my life where I guess you would say I was, not technically, but slightly manic depressive. I went through a period of depression because for me I'd come from an all black community and all my schools have been predominantly black until I went to a boarding school, my junior year of high school. And I had never been anywhere where I was the minority and where, and there was no, like I can always go home when I was at boarding school. I could, when I went home to my family there were lots of, lots of black people. My family at the time, we lived, moved back and forth from New York and North Carolina. But at the time we were living in North Carolina where my parents were from, which is a small rural community that is predominantly black is the county of north Berkeley county is 80% black. And first of all, my parents didn't even know what the Ivy league was. They did not want me to go to Dartmouth. They wanted me to go to Rutgers. But Dartmouth gave me tons and tons of money. And my parents were like, well, if you're going to go, you need to go where they give you some money. So I went to Dartmouth, we went and actually was one of the best decisions. Is there a couple of times in my life where I feel like I've made definitive decisions that defined the course of my life. And one of those was choosing to go to Dartmouth.
But when I got to Hanover, there were only really about 40 to 50 black people in my class that I knew identified as being black. So it was,it was a big, it was a stark contrast to my life previously. So I, that took a while for me to adjust. So I spent a small period of time during my time at Dartmouth depressed and angry. I've got over that.
It was the relationships that I built while I was there really helped impact me for everyday sense, really for the rest of my life. So at Dartmouth I could say I was, I was just Nakiah was actually the first time I'd been using my given name because growing up, I was always known as Nikki. So there were all these people calling me Nakiah. So it sort of gave me a chance to create this new identity, which it took me, I guess you would say the four years I was there to really develop. And I was someone who advocated for women's rights and women's liberty. The one time my parents saw me when I was at school, on the news, it was when they were talking to the girls about Playboy coming to campus, and I had an interview with the local news and New Hampshire, in West Leb. And they could see it. My parents, my mother called me. She was like, what is going on? Why are you on the news talking about Playboy? Of course I did not pose in Playboy in any way, shape or form, even though there's nothing wrong with that. But I was one of the people that went to interview because I felt that women should be allowed to have full autonomy over their bodies, which I still feel to this day. That has never changed.
But that was so funny. My mother was like, what are you doing there? I was just somebody that, if there was something happening I wanted to be in it. I wanted to stand up for things. I wanted to fight for things. I had always felt like I had been born in the wrong decade because of all the things that have happened before us, all the civil rights movement and things like that. And as I was coming up, I used to always fight my parents and say, we should be doing this. And they'd be like, you, why? There’s nothing really…My parents had sort of old school and that was their movement, they weren't involved in the civil rights movement. And for them, it was like, you don't have anything really to be worried about it. You're good. You're going to college, you know, you're, you're doing these things. What are you tripping about? Because I was like we said that still so much more we could do. And they were like, oh, you're always looking for a fight. And I was, but on the other side, I was also a Dartmouth football cheerleader, something that I totally loved, I was super excited about. And that I still support, even though I was friends with a lot of hardcore lesbian feminists, I would say. And they would come to the football games after halftime when it was free and they would throw stuff at you. Well, we were cheering as they wanted me to quit so bad, which was all, which was, they were like, can you please have your friends up to him and stuff? I was like, they do not listen to me. They want me to quit. This is their idea of trying to harass me and to quitting by harassing the whole cheerleading squad. So of course I didn't quit. It was a whole thing. And I was something I greatly enjoyed. That was my only athletic aspect of my whole four years of college. Other than when I worked at the, I worked at the gym. Even though sometimes if I have an outlet on Friday, I will open the gym late on.
LJR: So it was your fault?
NCC: I would come there and people would be already at the gym and I'd be like, oh, sorry, my bad, you know, I was open at eight. It's nine a clock, my bad, I overslept, you know, stuff like that. But you know, those are the years where, where you learn how to do it. Cause that was the first real job I ever had, that in the copy center and the bagel basement, you learn what, how to show up for work and do work and stay at work even when you don't want to be there when you have some place else you'd rather go. So that was my first real time learning that.
So I guess my time at Dartmouth, I was just Nakiah. When I left, I saw my life as being something much different than it is now in much different…I would have never, I feel like that girl and me are two totally different people at this point in my life.
I wanted to just be out. That explains why, as soon as I left school, I went into fashion because I just wanted to be out. I wanted to just go to parties and be social and like dress well. So my first job after school was at Donna Karen was at DKNY in New York. And I actually worked for the PR department and for Donna Karen herself, which was great because as a new employee, that was a big deal to do stuff and meet with and sit in on meetings with Donna. So that was a big deal. And I also had a clothing allowance. So, so imagine leaving school. I got my first apartment. Actually I eventually got my apartment first. I lived in my parents' house. So living in my parents' house and looking for an apartment. I was getting paid, not very much money, but I was getting all these free clothes and they were designer clothes. Cause at the time Donna Karan DKNY it was a big deal in like 96, 97, whatever. And I was so excited. And we'd just be like at all the fashion shows. And this is when fashion and hip hop was first emerging. Cause I remember one of the first things I noticed at in 96 was when Jay Z and Diddy came and sat and went to Donna shows and then it was like, oh, there are rappers at the show. This is a big deal. And this was like really in the days where fashion and hip hop were really starting to become connected. And New York City at the time, this was pre 9-11, the late nineties, we had a budget surplus. The internet has started, it was a whole new world and it was very, very, a very, very exciting time, especially if you were a fashion society sort of party girl, cause that was the whole thing you work at these fashion magazines. I didn't know what the time I was just trying to work at fashion magazines. Cause you know, I love clothes and that's all I cared about was fashion and So you work at as sort of like a modern day version of a finishing school. Cause it actually was because I learned a lot of things about from like Polly Mellon. I worked for her when I was at Allure and she was like one of the oldest living fashion editors. She taught me the importance of sending thank you cards. There was a whole thing about learning how to dress and learning how to talk.
LJR: But you said it got super old and it was just the scene...
NCC: The scene got old. I remember it was in 2000. I was working at Elle magazine. One of the best things I will say about that time is that I took my mother to Paris for 10 days and she got to sit front row at fashion shows at the Louvre. And that was something my mother had always wanted to go to Paris. And I, one of the things I did at Elle magazine is that I managed the Pret a Porte, and the couture shows and I handled cause I worked for Gilles Bensimon. First I was working for the booking department, but I was doing such a good job that Gilles Bensimon hired me over to work for him as his executive assistant. And at that time I was the only black person on the editorial side of Elle magazine. There was, one black girl in beauty and there was one black person that they hired after me in the advertising side. But in terms of the fashion, there were no black people till I got there, which was interesting but that was also the time where I was starting to get less enamored of fashion.
But after a while, you go to all the fashion shows, you go to all the fashion parties, you do all that. And I thought that that would be something that could sustain me for the rest of my life, but it turns out it was not.
And I started to feel like I should be doing more of my life. Like I should be trying to help people or do something or something. And I remember telling one of my bosses at one time, and one of my colleagues, they were like, what are you talking about? What are you going to do to help people? That's so naive to think that you could help people.
And I was like, you can help people. You know, other than I was like, the most we're going to do is tell people what great clothes they're wearing. And, you know, fashion is art in that sense, but we're not, we're not bettering anybody's life. We're just making them look better, which I thought would be enough for me, but it turned out it wasn't.
And I didn't know what I was going to do, but I knew that I wanted to try something different. I wanted to move to California. And so I quit my job. I moved to LA, but I was only, this is like early 2000 and only been in LA like a couple of weeks. I was actually staying with a member of the class in 96, my best friend Wendal, Scott Reader.
And I realized that LA is not a place you need to be without a car. Cause one of my other best friends lived there at the time too, but I didn't have a car. And I was like, I can't really do anything here. I can't go anywhere else. Wendel’s at work? Heather’s at work? And I'm out here, like trying to what am gonna catch the bus? And so I was like, you know, and my other best friend who had been my roommate at Dartmouth her mom told me to come up to Berkeley And I hang out with her there. So I went up to Berkeley and I just hung out. Cause I also have friends who a bunch of guys, I had been really close to who were living in the bay area at the time.
And I was like, oh, I can hang out with them or something. I figured out what I want to do. There was a point where I was like, maybe I want to, my cousin who had been living in Israel at the time. And I kept thinking, oh, well maybe I'll go there and become a photojournalist or something. It was just, I just really, I had barely scratched the surface of 25 and I was really just trying to figure out where my place was in the world. So I was open to anything, but I knew I wanted it to be of substance. I don't know why I thought I was going to be a great wartime photographer, even though you, I might've been, but yeah, that was, that was not maybe the best idea of mine. And, but I always had these things that I was like, oh, well, no, I want to try something that not many people are really trying, but while I was trying to figure that out, I was just sitting around bored during the day, like, I was thinking about grad school. I was thinking about maybe changing my mind and going to law school. But I was like, eh, I don't know if I want to do that. And then I remember Susan saying one day why don't you come hang out at the preschool where I teach and hang out with the kids? And I was like, okay, whatever. I like kids, you know who doesn't like kids? I come from a big family, I have nieces, nephews, nephews, who I helped raise. So I went to a new school, which is the oldest school in Berkeley,: no meat, no sugar, no violence is their motto. And I went to hang out and I hung out a couple of days and she was like, you know what? The kids like you. Why don't you take some classes while you're here and you can teach kids.
So I ended up being a preschool teacher for two years and it was while I was working there. And I actually, I loved it. I loved being around the kids. And I remember it. This is something that's followed me later on in life. I remember Susan saying, you're so great at this. Why don't you do this? And I've had people tell me that so many times in my life, like, you're so good at this. Why don't you just do this? But I did not feel it inside. It's like, yeah, I'm great at teaching, but I do not want to be a teacher. You know, it was fun. I love being around the kids. It was the balm I need after working in fashion for so long, I didn't realize at the time, but it was just, it was just everything I needed to really bring me back to a place of that was closer to my real true self.
LJR: Also at this time you were finding yourself in relation to someone else, right?
NCC: So one of the moms took me out one night and we went out to this place called the lucky, lucky lounge. And there was this guy there and he was with these two other girls and he was drinking orange juice. And I was like, who comes to the bar and drinks orange juice? And then he came over and started talking to me and we were talking and we ended up talking all night and I let him give me a ride home. Even though when we got to my house, he was like, I was like, do you even remember my name? He was like, and he called me Nakeeah, which has been the bane of my existence because they call me Nakeeah at graduation. And even after rehearsal, they called me Nakeeah at my wedding. So it's like a whole thing. And still even Alexa calls me Nakeeah now. But that is a night I met my husband. And then when I met my husband and a week later we were engaged, which I know, I know at the time I thought it was a little crazy. I was like these feelings I have, they must be crazy. Cause I just met this dude. Yo, I literally just met him. And prior to that, I hadn't really been dating out. It kind of, I had periods of my life where I go through long periods of celibacy. Cause I'm just trying to focus my psychic energy is what I call it, where I'm just like, you know, I'm just gonna just focus everything so that I can focus on these different things that these goals I want to accomplish. And yada, yada, yada, and this was still at the time where I knew I didn't want to be a preschool teacher and I was still trying to figure out what my next step would be. Cause I was like, I can't just do this forever. Cause I'm gonna ended up getting blocked in because I was already starting to feel a little locked in to preschool teacher just saying where I had been in fashion.
And I remember talking to my mother about it and she was just like, are you ever going to be satisfied? And that also has always been a sort of a trope that has followed me where, when I decided I want to stop doing something and do something else and I explain the reasons why the people around me, they are like are you never going to be satisfied? Are you going to be perpetually unsatisfied? But it’s…it's like a feeling you have inside of you when you know you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing. And so I tend to follow that feeling.
So I met my husband. We got engaged after a week. I did not matter to him right away, because I was like, just in case, this might be a bad idea. Let's give it a year. You know what I'm saying? Let's give it a year. [LJR: Yeah.] So we ended up living together. And we were living together for three months when I was, when I said we need to leave and go back to New York. Cause my husband was from Costa Rica and he had been living in Italy and he was he was a great, he wasn't he a great guy and everything, but he did not have the prospects to make the kind of money that I could make to support our family.
And I knew that when I fell in love with him and that we were going to get married, if we wanted the life, we want we would not be able to have that on the salary I was making as a preschool teacher in Berkeley because I was making, this was like 2000. I was making like $10, an hour was a preschool teacher because caregivers are underpaid, still daycare centers and make less than $10 an hour and 2022. So that's something that definitely needs to be changed.
So we moved back to New York and my dad, who was a truck driver at the time, he had a place in New Jersey with my uncle. And so we stayed there with them for about three months till I got a job. And then me and Mike got our own place in Brooklyn. But that's when I decided, okay, what I really want to do is what I wanted to do when I was little, because when I was little, I used to collect TV guides and I would like read. They still are in my parents' garage. I collected TV guides for like four or five years. I would just read them. I would read the listings and this and this. I knew everything that was happening on television. I'd be like, you know what? They should change this to this, this and this. And that was something that I wanted to do as a kid. And so I decided I want to work in television because I always wanted to work in TV. You know, I wanted to run a network. That's something I wanted to do that I never even thought was possible. I was like, you know what, I'm going to try to get a job in TV. So I applied to several different places and I ended up getting a job at Nickelodeon. I started all the way over, even though I had all this experience previously, I had to start from scratch. So I got a job as an admin assistant for MTV networks, working at Nickelodeon in the communications and public relations department. And that's where I met a mentor who actually helped me navigate through that whole scene. His name was David Bittler and he was great, super smart guy. And he really helped me really focus my energies on what I wanted at that time. So I ended up moving up very quickly at the network super fast. Oh my God. Super, super fast. And I got super, I got promoted a bunch of times and I actually won a couple of cable, I won a women in cable and television award. I was one of the top 20, I guess, rising leaders in cable and TV. I forget what year that was, but I think maybe like, oh five, it was oh seven.
Cause I was pregnant and I was just doing a lot of things. I was, I helped launch Logo, which is at the time was the only gay network. I was the only heterosexual staff member for quite a while there. It actually turned me into a low key LGBTQ advocate because at the time 2005. I remember one time we got a bomb threat because we were launching the gay channel. Everybody had to leave the building. And I had to basically go on tour across America. I was traveling a lot at the time because you know, Logo was very skeleton crew of a network at the time.So I was not just the PR person. I was also photo person. I had to write a legal writer for talent and I had to give it to the legal department. They were like, actually, this is really good. And I was like, well, I guess, whatever. And then I was also the marketing person while they were looking for marketing people, just a bunch of different things.
So I actually had to go on a tour of all the gay bars in America at the time.And first we have a panel talk about how it'd be great to have a gay channel and answer the questions, a lot of ignorant questions as well about what's what a gay channel would do and things of that nature. And then I'd have to call all these papers and explain to them. And I remember I would call some of the gay publications and everybody thought I was a drag queen because my name was Nakiah Cherry Chinchilla.
And so that was that was a little bit of a big deal. That was actually one of the things I was proudest about in my life that I helped get that together. But then after we launched and we started doing things, then I started wanting to do something different. But then I started working for corporate and three networks corporate, which was great. And so doing investor relations, but then I wanted to do something different. And then, so they would, I kept wanting to do something different and they were very open to me, move into it because, you know, MTV, MTV networks at the time, it was owned by Viacom, but also on like 20 channels. So they were open to me moving around within the Viacom family.
But eventually I knew that I wanted to do, and they even paid for me to go back to school to get a PR certificate, to go to NYU, to learn writing, because at the end of the day, I wanted to write.
LJR: All of this, Nakiah, when you had an infant.
NCC: Oh yeah. I had a baby. Oh, so that was the thing. So in 2007 I had Auggie August Gianpiero King Chinchilla. So yeah, so when I traveled for work, I would take Auggie with me. So I'd be in LA like two weeks out of the month and I would have argued with me and I would have friends of mine that didn't have anything to do babysitting.
Mike had been modeling for awhile and he did this great ad, which I was totally unconnected to for VH1, which actually now the ad is up in Auggie's room and it was, he was on taxi cabs all over the city and it was such a big deal for him.
And it was just like so weird when you like, oh my husband's on this taxi. It was like a funny, funny time. But once I decided to have a baby, I was like, you know, I love that you are a mom, an actor. Not really, but because I had never signed up, I had always said, I'd never want to date talent because actors and models. They need a certain amount of adoration. And also they I've always felt that. And they also need to be able to do all these things that I kind of did not really want my husband to be doing. I needed somebody who was going to be helping me because I was doing all these things all the time. So if you're off traveling who is going to be watching our baby? Even though I did have a nanny, it's like, but who I need somebody to be the parent that's at home. And so Mike's got a job at Homeland Security, which was great.
So anyway, so I was working at MTV and eventually that got old. Towards the end of the time was that MTV Network—as much as I love my job and my job was so much fun; everybody thought I had the best job—I'd be in my office with the door closed crying sometimes because that feeling inside of me, that I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing, was back. Even after I thought at one time, I'd want to run a network, but then it was just like, that's not really, what I want to do is that would be great because I feel like I would be good at it, but just because I think I'd be good at something like actually doesn't mean I will be. And also just because something seems fun and interesting doesn't mean that that's my, that's my life.
But I actually left MTV to work for this company called Oberon media, which was crazy because this was right before the, this is in 2000 late, 2008. And it was right before, right around the time of the crash. And the main funding of the company was Lehman brothers. So I ended up resigning, but they had me sign a non-compete clause that I couldn't work for any other media company for 18 months.
So, and then shortly after that, I went take my son to spend some time with my parents. And then I started the process to move to LA and we ended up moving to LA in November of that year, I came first and my husband came a month later.
LJR: Nakiah, what was the pull? Why LA?
NCC: Because I knew I wanted to do something more creative and I wanted to write. And so the best, even though you can write in New York, the best place to do that is really in LA. And I hadn't been talking to him one of my best friends and we want to try to write together.
During this time…so my husband was always such a pleasant mild-mannered guy, but then after like two or three years, he started, he started having problems with running. Right. And he would try to run and it'd be like some stiff jerky thing. And I was like, oh, that's weird. And then at some, every once in a while, he'd have these outbursts. And, and then like 2007, 2008, he was diagnosed with Tourette’s. And he was having a lot of nervous ticks and I was like, something's going on with him. And the doctor was like, oh, he has to read. And so I was like, okay, whatever. So sometimes he would have little outbursts and say fucked up shit. And I'd be like, okay, that's this Tourette's okay. So by the time we got in well LA I think actually the time I spent my parents when he was in New York alone, because one thing that I learned later on about Mike is that our relationship together had been very codependent. I didn't realize he was very dependent on me. I was basically not dependent on anybody. I managed to everything, but he was very dependent on me on keeping on everything together. And when I went to live with my parents, I didn't want to go to live with my parents. I moved in with my parents because it was like, I didn't have to work. I'd rather stay at my parent's house and have them spend time with Auggie and, you know, hang out with my mom and my aunt, my great aunt who was living there. I think that that was stressful on him. And I think the stress exacerbated what we would come to find out later, it was this Huntington Disease.
So we, when we got to LA, I was there first Mike came after a month and for the first year it was okay. But difficult because it would go to the point where one day a week, Mike would just spazz out and flip out about things and just be screaming all day about things. And I argued be at school and I'd be like, peace I'm out. I would just leave. And I thought I would try to talk to people about it. And people would tell me how, you know, sometimes husbands are assholes. I was like, really? Cause I’ve been married to this dude for like seven years and he is, this is, this is some new assholery. And I feel like that's just, you know, that's sometimes how marriage is.
And I was just like, I don’t know. Something’s off. And something in me said that this was not just normal marriage stuff. ‘cause it got to the point where one day a week he would be flipping. The rest of days he'd be his regular happy. He was a very pleasant. He was like, anybody tell you about Mike. He was the most pleasant happy-go-lucky laughing, extroverted guy. Everybody loved Mike. But then one day a week he would just be acting super crazy. I don't want to say crazy. I feel like that encompasses so much, but it was just the only thing I could say at the time, that really explains how he was acting. And then it got to be where it was two days a week. And then it got to be where it was three days a week and I was like, something’s up with this dude. And then it got to be where four days a week he would just be screaming. I ask him to take out the trash and he would just scream about it for like 18 hours nonstop. And I was like, Whoa. This is not okay. Like this, you are tripping. And at first it was the kind of thing where I would scream back because it's like, you know, if somebody yells at you, you yell back. And I was like, wait, why did I even yell? This is nonsense. I was like, Am I gonna have to get a divorce? Cause I remember the day before Auggie was born two days before he was born, Mike and I went to see Spiderman. This is when I knew something was up for real, for real. Me and Mike want to see Spiderman and he couldn't stop his foot moving. And he was tapping on the back of the seat in front of him. And the guy got mad and was like, stop tapping your foot. And he's like, I'm not tapping my foot. And I'm like, you're totally tapping your foot dude, like stop. And I didn't realize at the time that he couldn't stop and instead of saying he couldn't stop, he just denied that he was doing it. And then it turns out that him and a guy ended up yelling at each other in front of Spider-Man Three. I never even got to finish the movie. And I was nine months pregnant. I was like two weeks and my due date and, and we had to leave the theater because he was I wanted to fight with a guy saying he was having a seizure, which he was in fact doing. So when we get outside, I was like, why are you tripping? Like, what's going on with you? He was like, he said, I was telling him, I was like, you were totally tapping his seat. I saw you, you were tapping his seat. And he got so mad at me that he ran away from me when I was nine months pregnant. And I was like, are you fucking kidding me right now? And I was like trying to talk him, but he was so mad. He was like, you don't have my back. I was like, I'm just telling you the truth. You were tripping. And he was like, no, dah, dah, dah, you just taking his side. And he just like went off and then he just ran away from it, literally started running so that I could catch him. Cause I was pregnant. I don't know if I'm being married to this man that in my head, I went to my girlfriend's house. I didn't even go home because I was so stressed out. And that's actually why I ended up having a C-section because I was so stressed out and I was having cramps. And so Sunday morning I called my doctor's office and my doctor, cause I had a whole doula. I had a whole midwife thing I was going to do and my doctor was not in. It was three days she was off, right? And the other doctor there was like, I'm concerned that you might be having problems. I want to induce you tomorrow. And I was like, really? And she was like, yes. And I was like, okay. And my girlfriends was like, what? You about to have the baby?
LJR: And you did have Auggie. But things still weren’t making sense with Mike, right?
I knew then and there that something was off and that's something, that's something, you know, you put in the back of your head, like, that's fine.
You know, he was a great father. He was so loving and he super apologized for running away that time. And I think a part of it is that later on I realized when I learned more about what was wrong with him was that he didn't know what was going on himself. So it was totally beyond his control. So fast forward we moved to California and that first year, like 2010, it was crazy. But by Thanksgiving, it was getting really difficult. I didn’t know what was wrong with him.
LJR: And then he cut you off from being able to speak with his doctor, or having the doctor tell you anything that was going on with his health, right?
NCC: So I didn't know what they were talking about at that point. And she couldn't tell me, but she did tell me she was concerned and that she wanted to make sure that me and Auggie were safe. Cause she was having concerns that she was worried about our safety. And I was just like, what the fuck does that mean? Can I get no details? But of course you can't.
It wasn't like he was being violent. It was more like he was just railing and it was more like an sort of an emotional, abusive kind of situation. He would just be screaming at the top of his lungs and basically terrorizing my ears almost. And so I was just like, this is I did not sign up for this shit, but I got to figure out a way to frickin get out of this situation.
So finally in April 2011, I told him I was leaving. And I was in the bay area and the bay area, I got a job at the old preschool that I worked when I first met him.
LJR: In the Bay Area?
NCC: In the Bay Area. And I was going to go back and work up there. And then when school started in fall, Auggie was enrolled in the school. So I was his preschool teacher and I put him in therapy because I wanted to make sure I put him in therapy. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was actually very good that I did that because it actually helped us later on, but I wanted to make sure that he had the tools to deal with whatever was going on with his dad, because at that point, his doc, I was still calling his doctor sometime and be like, Mike's calling me, yelling at me doing all kinds of crazy stuff. She's like, I think Mike is psychotic. I was like, what do you mean? You think he's psychotic? He was fine. How do you just go from fine to psychotic? She was like, I don't know. But clearly that's why I was telling you to make sure you and Auggie were safe because I think he's exhibiting some psychotic elements and some schizophrenia elements, aspects of both. And, and I was like, what the fuck does this mean? And so, so we were living in Berkeley. We were living in Berkeley and I actually applied before I went to Berkeley for all get to go to this charter school in LA called Ocean Charter School, the only Waldorf public charter school in Los Angeles. I had also got him into a really good school in Berkeley, but when I found out he got into the good school in LA, I decided to go back to LA and just start working and to be in school because then he could have a better relationship with his father.
But the day I remember talking to Mike the day or two, before he, we got to LA and it was really weird because he kept saying, oh, you're going to die by heart attack. I was like, what the hell are you talking about? Cause he kept saying, oh, you're going to die. You're going to die by heart. It wasn't even like he was threatening to kill me. Even Mike and everything was going on his brain wanting me to die. Just wanted me to die by natural means, which I can laugh about now because that's my, even all the things that were going on in his brain, you know, he, him not wanting me to live and be, and be away from him with Auggie. He just wanted me to die by a heart attack, which I was like, what does that mean?
But the day all you started kindergarten, Mike went missing. He wasn't at work. None of his coworkers knew where he knew where he was. He wasn't at his apartment, his two roommates didn't know where he was and I couldn't get any information.
And it was crazy. He was missing for like, at that time he had, he went missing for a week and a half before I knew what had happened. And I remember I called the cops. I called everybody and I actually contacted the job and said that he was out sick. He was he was out sick and he'd just be using sick days because I didn't want him to lose his job. And because that was secure that was the sole income for both of us.
And I remember calling the cops, because I'm his wife. Cause we were still married because I hadn't filed for divorce yet. And the cops were like, well, he's not in the morgue and he's not in jail. And that's all we could tell you. And I was like, well, what is that? My husband is missing. Like, do something. And then about a week and a half, maybe like nine, 10 days later, I got a call from a doctor at a mental hospital in Penmar, and they said, your husband gave us your phone number and told us to call you. We think he has had a psychotic break. And I was like, what? And I was like, so what do you guys want to do? They were like, well, he was on a 48 hour hold and now he's on a 5150.That's when I learned what a 51 50 is.
LJR: I don’t know what a 5150 is. What is it?
NCC: 5150 is a mandatory psych hold. If you're acting in such a way where you might be a danger to yourself or others, the police put you in you have to put on a 48 hour review. And if you don't pass that review at a 48 hours, it gets extended to 14 days. And after 14 days it gets extended to a month. And that after that something else has to occur. You have to be really really like violent or something like that for them to do anything past that.
LJR: So Mike was on a 5150 because…why?
NCC: Cause he was in the street claiming he was Jesus. [LJR: Oh.] And he got put in a 5150 and then he got put on a two week hold and they were telling me that they were going to probably extend that for another 30 days.
And so they released Mike after 30 days and he got picked up three hours later and he, they started the process again and he got two-day hold, 48 hours, 14 days, and then month. And then that was around the time his month hold would be Thanksgiving. And, and I remember the doctor calling me and saying, listen, you should come get him and you should take him. I was like, and I had my own apartment by then. It was just me and Auggie. And I was trying to make everything work, work. Rather. I started doing freelance fashion stuff. I got back into fashion cause that was easy. And I was like, Mike can’t come live with me. I can't manage him. I can't do it. And also I'm trying to divorce this man. I can't, I can't do this. And I remember I had a conversation with my parents about it and it was a conversation that I will never forget because my father was like, we do not sell people away in his family. And I was like, y'all are fucking killing me, Daddy, you're killing me. Because I was like, that’s an in-law. You know what I’m saying’? Even though my parents have really loved him and taken him in and they were like that, they were like, that's your son's father. He is sick. Something is wrong with him. Like, you can't just throw him away because it's convenient. Even though everybody else I knew it was just like, you better not bring him home. Like he is acting crazy. He said, you're going to die by heart attack who knows if he's psychotic or schizophrenia. They didn't even know. They were like, you better not bring him home. You do not do it. Do not feel guilted into it. But of course I'm someone that is very ruled by guilt, especially when it comes from my parents. But a part of me felt like, you know, I did say I did pledge to love this person through sickness and health. And clearly something was going on with him, health wise and, and he was refusing to take meds. And I just, I felt like maybe I, if I brought him home, he could spend some time. That was also because Auggie wanted to spend some time with his dad. Auggie missed his father because he they'd had a very loving relationship. Even when Mike had been yelling at me, never yelled at Auggie, never. He never wanted to discipline Auggie. Auggie, basically, was a wild baby running around the house, doing whatever. Mike never wanted to say no to him. Never wanted him to feel like he was not loved at any point because Mike's mother had abandoned him.
So I brought Mike home right before Thanksgiving and he was, and he was really mellow. They had him on some meds that made him really mellow. And I got him to take the meds, even though sometimes he would spit out when I wasn't looking. So I had to make sure he was following them, but I said that he could come home with me, but only he could stay at me only if he took his medication and it got in.
And that's when it really became our relationship changed. And I became sort of his ward and it became the kind of thing where it was so funny because he went from being boyfriend, girlfriend. But from being my boyfriend to my lover, to my fiance, to my husband, to my co-parent, to my fucking nemesis, who was, who was harassing me for like a year and a half to my ward and then eventually to like my best friend.
LJR: And so ends part one of the Roads Taken by Nakiah Cherry Chinchilla thus far. Come back next week for part two as she unravels her husband’s medical mysteries, creates the world her son needs, and stretches her own skills and abilities on that ever-presented quest to quench that feeling inside prompting her to do what she’s meant to do.
While waiting for the continuation of this story, I urge all members of our Dartmouth Class of 1996 to check your email or go to Dartmouth1996.org to find out more about all the hard work Nakiah has been putting into our 25th Reunion. Registration is now open for the in-person event, July 22-24.
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