Jacqui Yawn of Santee is a regular at Comic-Con who devoured “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy before the movies arrived and bought Harry Potter books the moment they dropped.
She’d love to appear in a Marvel film — if not as a superhero then maybe an extra.
But casting directors, beware: Don’t patronize her.
With a master’s degree in English from San Diego State and a recent paralegal certificate from UC San Diego Extension, 33-year-old Yawn knows her fantasy fiction (and the law).
She’ll tell you how Peeta in a “Hunger Games” book lost his infected leg to amputation — but the movie showed him miraculously healed.
What else does she know?
How to speak up for the disabled.
Three months before this past week’s Miss America and Miss Universe pageants, Yawn was crowned Ms. Wheelchair California 2022. The event, selecting for ambitious advocacy and not skin-deep beauty, was held virtually.
In a speech Sept. 11 and replying to a judge’s questions, Yawn told how she’d seek to expand public awareness of wheelchair users and fellow disabled people in magazines, TV commercials and other mass media.
Lead judge Margarita Elizondo, Ms. Wheelchair California 2013, asked her how she’d fight for inclusion of people with disabilities.
Yawn said she’d seek to have media depict their “normal everyday lives … not just the sole focus of an inspirational story, not just a super athlete” as in the Paralympic Games.
Even in normality, her own life is remarkable.
At age 4 months, Jacquelyne Yawn was in a Hyundai driven by her mother when it hit a Mercedes on Carmel Valley Road in Del Mar.
That Friday afternoon — Sept. 16, 1988 — her father, Michael, got a voice mail from his wife but had trouble understanding her. His daughter — now the oldest of four siblings — was Life Flighted by helicopter to Sharp Children’s Hospital in Clairemont Mesa.
He couldn’t see Jacqui at first. It wasn’t until midnight that he spoke with a doctor, who ruled out surgery because of a spinal cord injury. (Broken at the C2-3 vertebrae level but stretched at C6-7.)
“For the first 48 hours, we didn’t know whether or not she would survive or be on a breathing machine for the rest of her life,” Michael Yawn said in a phone interview. “It was really touch-and-go scary. Said a lot of prayers.”
One of the hardest parts: Not being able to pick her up when she cried.
- Watch: Jacqui Yawn delivers her pageant speech (38 minutes into video)
- Watch: Yawn crowned Ms. California Wheelchair 2022 (33:30 into video)
Most of the damage came from what the Yawns call an NFL-like injury — compression and swelling around the spinal cord. (Jacqui’s mom, now living in Idaho, suffered a black eye and bruised wrist and went home to Ocean Beach that night.)
Yawn learned to use a powered wheelchair. And then she took up water skiing, jet skiing, tennis, soccer, “you name it.”
She attended Clairemont Mesa’s Charles A. Lindbergh-Albert E. Schweitzer Elementary till fourth grade, then Carlton Oaks Elementary and West Hills High School in Santee.
“Go Wolfpack,” she says, invoking her alma mater’s mascot. “What was great is that even though I couldn’t participate in the sports teams … they still allowed me to get letterman’s jackets” after competing in club sports.
She played soccer and basketball before graduating in 2006. Awarded varsity patches for both sports. Around 2008-2009, her club won a national soccer title in Atlanta. Yawn was named MVP.
On Montezuma Mesa, Yawn was allowed to register for courses first — even before athletes. She thus arranged to have as much as an hour between classes. Time to journey from one end of the far-flung campus to another.
One of her master’s papers was on “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” a first-person narrative novel by Sherman Alexie. Yawn discussed how some communities are more accepting than others. A second master’s paper was on a Virginia Woolf book.
So once, while working as a cashier at the Santee Barnes & Noble bookstore, she was off-put by a customer who said: “Oh my gosh, it’s so awesome seeing someone like you here! So did you get this job on your own or did you get help?”
A co-worker nearby mouthed: “No way! Did she seriously just ask that?”
She encountered more sour scenarios.
One of her high school counselors said: “Now, if you’re feeling depressed, you can talk.” (She wasn’t blue, but went home that day and reported: “Dad, the lady is kind of depressing me. Am I supposed to be depressed?”)
Later she was hired for a T.J.Maxx store job over the phone. But when Yawn arrived in person, she was told: “Oh no, no, no — the person on the phone was wrong. We need to interview.”
Yawn yawns: “The interview itself took five minutes and then I never heard back from them.”
Despite these slights, she holds her head high.
“She’s always cheerful and outgoing,” says Michael Yawn, a retired Navy lieutenant commander who worked in submarines and as a diver. (“If it was underwater, I did it,” he says). “I hear this all the time time from friends and people: She’s always so happy.”
Jacqui doesn’t have a mean bone in her body, he says.
“Always straightforward. Even as a youngster, she would be the first one to go out and say hi to somebody,” he said. When one of her great-grandparents passed and people were asked to speak at the funeral, Jacqui was the first to volunteer. “She was probably 8 or 9.”
Yawn describes her own state of mind: “I kind of look at everything in a positive light. I take things with humor. If you can’t laugh at yourself, what can you laugh at?”
Her parents were a good influence, with dad sharing a running joke while spotting others in a wheelchair: “Oh, you’re disabled? So you must know this other person in a wheelchair.”
But Michael Yawn frowned when he first heard of the Ms. Wheelchair California pageant.
“My first thought was: Is this a scam? I never heard of it before,” he said. “I wasn’t skeptical, just uninformed. She told me…. Fortunately, it wasn’t a swimsuit competition.”
Since his daughter had been barred from other girls activities, like becoming a cheerleader, the pageant opportunity was “awesome,” said Michael, who remarried this year.
Pageant judge Elizondo of San Diego is a dancer and motivational speaker who founded the group Rolling With Me to highlight fellow authors who use wheelchairs.
“While the two other women [in the pageant] were definite potential winners themselves … Jacqui did a phenomenal job and was very well-rehearsed in how to respond,” Elizondo said. “What I loved … was that she was able to tie many of her responses back into her platform, which is representation of the disabled in Media.”
In a Facebook chat, Elizondo continued: “For a young woman at her age, nature of injury combined with her level of injury, Jacqui has achieved a lot in her lifetime. She [is] a very goal oriented and driven individual who will continue to succeed and be an awesome example to society that no matter what challenges life may put before you, your drive and willingness to persevere through those challenges will get you anywhere you want be in life.”
Angela Piazza, Ms. Wheelchair California 2019, is co-state coordinator for the Ms. Wheelchair California Leadership Institute, which stages the pageant. She’ll be helping Yawn during her reign, which ends in September 2022 and includes a trip to Grand Rapids, Michigan, in August for the 50th anniversary Ms. Wheelchair America pageant (moms and married women eligible).
In March, Yawn will join Piazza and Ms. Wheelchair America 2022 Christine Burke (who also is Ms. Wheelchair California 2021) at the Abilities Expo at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
“Additionally, Jacqui will participate in the Disability Capitol Action Day typically held in Sacramento,” Piazza said. “Jacqui also schedules several events in her community every month to increase the visibility of people with disabilities.”
She rolled in the Ocean Beach Holiday Parade this month, for example. In November, she took part in ceremonies dedicating Santee’s Veterans Memorial and Bridge. (And she’s still planning an in-person official crowning, which she hopes is televised.)
Under the pageant winner’s contract, Yawn will have to pay her own way to Michigan and other events. She’ll create a Facebook page to seek donations (but the pageant site also accepts money on her behalf.) She can be reached via Instragram.
Even after 2022, she expects many more fruitful chapters.
She’s a three-year veteran clerk at the new downtown San Diego Superior Court, but her dream job is to work for the port or the city of San Diego as a paralegal. (She’s open to a private law firm, depending on the job.)
“I love mental challenges, so as a paralegal that would be so much fun to do,” she says. “Take on cases, do research and talk to people. My favorite stuff as an English major was always investigating things.”
She did research “old school,” tracking down books. Her favorite legal topics — estate law, real estate property law and civil litigation.
“I feel like [“Big Bang Theory” character] Sheldon when he does those contracts,” Yawn said.
And she’d like to see the San Diego Comic Convention do a better job accommodating disabled fans.
After attending most of the past 11 years, she’s learned to appreciate the separate wheelchair line for Hall H. But she didn’t dig a stunt one year in the Marvel line.
“Remember the Lion King Simba when he sees all the wildebeest coming straight down at him? It was that feeling from the exhibit hall coming in towards Marvel,” she says. “Oh my God, all these people coming towards me. They’re pushing me around and my chair almost tips over.”
Worse yet, two able-bodied men wore disability attendant badges and professed to be with Yawn, saying: “Yeah, yeah — we’re with her. We’re her attendants.”
Yawn told security: “Dude, I have no idea who the heck they are.”
She says ADA sections at Comic-Con have gotten a little worse over the years — with people faking disabilities “in order to cut in line. I kid you not.”
Comic-Con is aware of such deceptions, which have only led to reduced access.
“That’s what’s sad: Sometimes Comic-Con is just getting rid of it because people are taking advantage,” Yawn said. “Art exhibit hall used to have a separate disabled line. … But because too many people were abusing the system, they were clogging up the fire safety [space]. So rather than find a way to fix it, they said: OK, let’s just get rid of it.”
Perhaps someday she’ll be the star people clamor to see.
Her ultimate dream is to appear on the silver screen — even if it’s a role in the background.
“What’s really cool is what Disney has done in the new ‘Eternals’ movie — they had a character who was deaf play a role,” she notes.
With other Marvel characters: “Even though you’re different, you can still accomplish huge things, you know? They don’t emphasize the other-ness. It’s just a part of their story.”
In a blog post titled “The Journey Begins,” Yawn said that when she won the California pageant, “I think I broke my mouth at the end of the day from smiling so much.”
How’s she doing now?
“I’ve been smiling since Day 1 of this pageant,” said Santee’s second Ms. Wheelchair California (after Corey Petersen in 2011). “It’s been a great opportunity and honor to be a representative for that community.”
