Fighting Back RAKEEM WILLIS by Michael Kinney As manager of Everything’s OK Dispensary, one of the first faces a customer sees is Rakeem Willis. Better known as Kemo, the 32-year-old stands behind the counter dressed crisp and fresh, and looking to help people find the perfect strain or edible for the right occasion. To see Willis today, it would appear life has been treating him well and he has everything going for him. However, Willis will tell anyone who asks that has not always been the case. More than a decade ago, he almost lost his life (twice), his ability to walk and the use of some important internal organs all because he was living a life he isn’t too proud of today. Because of that, Willis had to endure things that most young men entering their prime never have to face and he didn’t know if he could handle those challenges. “The biggest thing I learned is how strong. I never knew my strength,” Willis said. “I didn’t know how strong I could get. I had days where I was like, man, just go ahead and take me. I would ask God. I would literally pray, like please let this be the day. But I overcame that. I overcame some of those dark days that I had. My strength just became incredibly bigger.” Willis grew up the son of a single mother who was constantly moving back and forth from Oklahoma to Texas. He described his mother as a rolling stone. As he got older, Willis found himself attracted to the streets and the parting life. By the time he was out of his teens he was drinking heavily, ‘popping’ pills and living that rock and roll lifestyle. “I was experimenting with life,” Willis said. “I was 21 at the time and following the crowd of what everybody else was doing, trying to be cool.” After partying in Duncan (Ok.) one summer night in 2011, Willis and a friend were heading through Lawton. Willis realized he was too inebriated to drive, so he handed the keys to the car to his friend, who also had been drinking heavily. “We were driving, passing the east side of Lawton, and right as we were passing, boom. I just remember boom, that’s all I remember. Boom,” Willis said. “I opened my eyes, man, and I was in the grass. It was crazy. We crashed and we hit a pole, but when the car hit the pole, it shattered the windshield.” According to Willis he flew through the windshield and landed outside the car in the grass. The next thing he knew his friend had run up to him saying they needed to get out of there. “I’m lying in the grass. He’s like, ‘Get up, man. We gotta go. We got to go. I just crashed. I got up to try to run
away,” Willis said. I fall instantly. I just feel this sharp pain go down the bottom of my spine, down my whole spine. I just freeze up and fall back on the ground, and I’m like ‘I can’t go. I think I’m paralyzed.’” As if he didn’t understand the gravity of what Willis told him, the driver of the car kept encouraging him to get up and run and saying they needed to get out of there. “He just left me. He ran off and he was like, ‘I’m going to go find some help.’ That’s what he told me,” Willis said. “And he ran off and I don’t know where he went.” His friend never came back and to this day he has never heard from him. Willis was laying in the middle of a back road, well after midnight and unable to get up or move. His phone was nowhere to be found. At that moment, Willis thought he was going to die. But then a car came from around the bend, pulled up on the wreckage and spotted Willis all alone. “She gets out the car and she came over to me, and she’s like, ‘Sweetheart, don’t move. Just lay here.’ She helped me out, laid me down flat and just told me to lay there, don’t move,” Willis said. “So, she called it. She actually
