Mama was born in 1939 at the end of the Great Depression. She became pregnant at age seventeen, married her Cuban-born boyfriend with who she had three children before the was 21. She left her husband when the kids were very young, which made life very hard. As the two boys got older, they turned to drugs and alcohol, whereas daughter Tia listened to Mama and went to college; and later joined the infamous Los Angeles Police Department where she promoted up through the ranks./p>

This is Tia's story about the mother-daughter bond-and the horrible disease-the two women shared. Tia calls it...