Collin County Living Well Magazine May/June 2019 | Page 16

BEHIND
THE
OLYMPIAN
By Lisa Jenkins-Moore
T
oo often we gaze into others’ lives with rose-col-
ored glasses. We peruse the picture perfect Face-
book and Instagram images believing the stories
they tell. But there is always more to the story…
Stephen Lambdin (born in Rockwall, TX) competed with
Team USA in taekwondo at the 2016 Olympics. His moth-
er, Naomi Lambdin (we know her as “Noni”) is a long-time
family friend. While HBO and other primetime networks
have featured Stephen and shared his story, I’m telling a
different story—one of a woman who
came from less than nothing and pro-
duced an Olympian.
Noni was born in October of 1956 to
parents who were hardened criminals.
Dregs of society, they committed incest,
polygamy, forgeries, thefts, and drug re-
lated crimes. They abused alcohol, cig-
arettes, drugs, and their children. They
seemed to lack even basic human de-
cency; in fact, animals take better care
of their young than her parents did of
her and her siblings. The children suf-
fered immeasurable abuse, going days
without meals, and frequently being
sold to pedophiles for money.
Noni’s childhood was heinous and
horrifying, cruel and unimaginable
even in today’s iniquitous culture. She was beaten, had
a swastika carved into her young skin, and locked in a
burning room to die, among other wicked acts. Often, her
parents would leave her at a church or with a group of
people promising they’d send money to take care of her.
They never did and eventually Noni would be sent to the
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COLLIN COUNTY Living Well Magazine | MAY/JUNE 2019
streets. She’d re-unite with her parents only to endure the
cruelty again.
Noni believes God gave her an incredible imagination,
one she used to escape the reality of the pain being inflict-
ed upon her. She explained, “I was blessed with a vivid
imagination, and I would simply spend my day walking
around the city with my mind off in some fantasy. I would
imagine that I lived in a big fancy house and I was swim-
ming in my own pool, or traveling around Europe. To this
day I believe that imagination was a
gift from God, a coping mechanism
that was necessary for my survival.”
As Noni entered her teens, her parents
began running scams on churches.
They’d enter as a needy family, stay
long enough to get financial assistance,
and then move on to the next church.
Then they came to a church in Dallas—
here, Noni found a real family, a church
family. Though her parents threatened
to kick her out of the house, she contin-
ued to attend because she had never
known kindness and friendship like she
experienced within the walls of the Dal-
las church. Two of the women who im-
pacted her life were my now departed
grandmother and great-grandmother,
Barbara Jenkins, and her mother Clara.
They embraced her and were genuinely interested in her life.
Noni shared, “I had never experienced anyone asking how
I was, and this was truly amazing to me. I would spend my
day in school looking forward to seeing these people again.
I can honestly say that this was the first time in my life I had
experienced friends and felt loved.”