**PRESS** NEWS CHANNEL 9 Interview .....Local Boxer Overcomes Tough Past, Eyes 2012 Olympics

Oxon, Hill, Md. (WUSA)--When she steps into the ring, Tyrieshia Douglas transforms.


"When I throw the first punch it's done, the monster just comes out of me," says the boxer from Southeast D.C.


Douglas has fast hands and big dreams, specifically the London Olympics in 2012 which will include women's boxing for the first time since 1904.


"The Olympic team is looking for the best, and she's one of the best," says her coach Calvin Ford. "The only thing she has to do is show them and she's going to do that."


Her three brothers introduced her to the sport, now she's trying to master it. At a recent event held by promoter Wanda Bruce she won the "fighter of the night" award stopping Quishana Fowler in three rounds.


"She is very skillful," says Bruce. "You wouldn't even know that she's 114 pounds, she's very powerful."


Douglas trains at Uptown Boxing Center in Baltimore, but to get a true idea of what she's really all about you have to go back a tumultuous childhood in Southeast.


"Nobody else was there for us in our family," says Douglas. "They used to say I was gonna have babies or be a crackhead or one of my brothers was gonna be dead."


Douglas and her siblings grew up in the foster care system, their mom and dad struggled with addictions.


"My mother was in the streets, my dad was in the streets, my grandmother, our whole family either using or selling drugs," says Douglas' brother Dewon.


So Dewon had to grow up fast and become father and mother.


"I have a father but he was our father, he had to do some crazy things for us to eat," says Tyrieshia.


And because of that a brother-sister bond has been formed that to this day is unbreakable.


"I get the sense of joy from watching her like a father would watching his son or a mother watching her daughter," says her brother.


And they both hope the U.S. Olympic team realizes she's the woman they want for 2012.

Dave Owens, WUSA9.com