She made the all-academic team, and was the Washington state 2020 Truman Scholar.

She plans to get her master's degree and then from her many years of experience behind bars, to focus on changing the prison treatment of addicts.

She knows from which she speaks:

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Ginny, one of seven children, was born to a mentally ill, drug addicted and drug-dealing mother and to a father, who when she was four, went to prison for multiple armed robberies.

Her mother started her on marijuana at age six, and meth at age 12.

At 14 she was smoking crack and at 16, she was raped by one of her mother's drug customers.

Ginny Burton childhood picture. photo: kutv.com

At 17, she made her first of many suicide attempts. The father of her first child was shot to death, and she had a second child in an abusive marriage.

Child protective services took both children.

She started shooting heroin at 21 and by 23 was a hardcore heroin addict.

Ginny Burton mug shot. photo: foxillinois.com

As the years passed there was homelessness, armed robberies, jail cells, prisons, guys that beat her up, someone she shot, car thefts and they all had one thing in common:

Drugs!

Her last arrest on December 5th, 2012 saved her life, as she was apprehended in a stolen truck.

Sick of this criminal life, she pleaded with the court to send her to drug treatment and there she got clean and has stayed clean.

Ginny Burton as she graduates from the University of Washington. photo: foxillinois.com

"My story isn't an accident," she told KOMO TV News Anchor Eric Johnson.

"I think it will be used for everybody else. Maybe I can be some kind of Pied Piper, to help people recover their own lives. That's what I care about."

Editor's Note: To learn more kutv.com/news/nation-world/from-12-year-old-meth-addict-to-honors-college-scholar-the-redemption-of-ginny-burton.

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