Sprinter Baldwin Is Back on Track

A race that took less than 12 seconds thrust Jasmine Baldwin of La Puente Bishop Amat to the forefront of the high school track and field scene last month, but she’ll tell you her emergence as an elite sprinter would not have happened were it not for a caring, compassionate, father figure she met a little over two years ago.

Baldwin, who will compete in the 100 and 200 meters and in the 400 relay in the Southern Section Division III preliminaries at Cerritos Gahr today, set school records of 12.3 seconds in the 100 and 17 feet 5 inches in the long jump as a Downey freshman in 2001. But she did not compete at the high school level in 2002 or 2003 while living and being schooled at a group home in La Verne.

Baldwin, whose mother died of diabetes in 1998 and whose biological father has little contact with her, reveals few details about her past but acknowledges her life was often in turmoil.

“I’ve been put down a lot,” she said. “I was told that I wasn’t going to be nothing. That I wasn’t going to be this and I wasn’t going to be that and I was never going to amount to anything, and that stuck in my head all through my life.

“It’s still in there, but I realize that if I want to be a better person I have to have a lot of self-esteem and self-confidence in myself. That’s what I really need.”

Baldwin, who ranks third in the nation this spring in the 100 with a best of 11.54 and is among the top five in the 200 at 23.83, says her life began to change for the better more than two years ago.

That’s when staff members at the David and Margaret Home in La Verne, where Baldwin was residing, arranged for her and two other girls to begin training with the Southern California Cheetahs youth track and field team at Mt. San Antonio College. And that’s when she met Steve Foss, a sprint coach for the Cheetahs and Bishop Amat who is a few months away from officially becoming Baldwin’s adoptive father.

“I just saw so much in her that was going to waste,” said Foss, a 56-year-old divorcee who has three adult children. “And I’m not just talking about her track stuff.... She needed the opportunity to be exposed to better things in life and to have a chance to make decisions and not be stifled by ‘I can’t do this or I can’t do that.’ She needs to be able to make up her own mind that she can do anything she wants to do and be successful and be happy.”

Baldwin doesn’t recall exactly when Foss asked her if she’d like him to adopt her. But she remembers she was happy when he did.

“I knew right then and there that something was going to happen and change,” she said. “I’m basically very happy to be with [Foss] because without him, I wouldn’t be where I am today. Basically, I just thank God for him, for putting up with all the stuff that I did. It’s been hard at times, but we’re trying to make it and everything. He’s a good parent.”

Baldwin, who will attend Mt. SAC in the fall, ran some noteworthy times during her first season under Foss and lowered her bests to 11.85 in the 100 and 23.89 in the 200 last summer. But she was a relative unknown at the high school level when she clocked 11.60 in the 100 to edge senior Shalonda Solomon of Long Beach Poly in the Mission Viejo Trabuco Hills Invitational on April 3.

Solomon, the No. 2-ranked girls’ sprinter in the nation last year, came back to easily defeat Baldwin in the 200 at Trabuco Hills. But Baldwin proved she wasn’t a fluke in the Arcadia Invitational a week later when she ran 11.54 in the 100 to finish four-hundredths of a second behind Solomon and 23.83 in the 200 to win a race that included returning state 100 and 200 finalist Jennifer Nash of Tracy Merrill West.

“I’m a little bit taken back,” Foss said when asked about Baldwin’s performances this season. “Like, ‘What do I do now?’ I’ve got to step back and think about things.”

Baldwin, who has lived with Foss for the last year in West Covina as his foster child, attends a small private school in Arcadia called Arroyo Pacific Academy but is eligible to compete for Bishop Amat because Arroyo Pacific does not field athletic teams. Baldwin acknowledges she still has self-esteem issues, but Foss says she has come a long way.

“She use to just sit down and start crying and you’d ask her what was the matter and she couldn’t express herself,” he said. “Everything was an issue. Everything was a problem. But now it’s all changing.

“[Her life] was difficult. And now she’s moving on and that situation is behind us.”

Ernie Gregoire, a coach with the Southern California Cheetahs since 1967 and an assistant at Mt. SAC since 1968, saw evidence of that last month when he drove Baldwin home from a media luncheon promoting the Mt. SAC Relays.

“We got talking.” Gregoire recalled. “And at one point she said to me, ‘Coach. You know what? I’m really happy.’ ”