Payton Washington earns national title, a year after surviving a shooting

That weekend, her all-star cheerleading team was going to compete at The Cheerleading Worlds, and, as perennial contenders, they were likely to win. A few weeks later, she would graduate high school, and then officially join Baylor University's acrobatics and tumbling team, a program with seven national titles.

All she'd been working toward the past 14 years would finally be realized. She just had to get through one last week of practice.

For nearly a decade, Payton regularly made the 300-mile round trip from her home, outside of Austin, Texas, to her cheerleading gym, near Houston. She carpooled with a few of her teammates to share the burden of the drive, using a local HEB supermarket parking lot to meet and change cars, arriving back from practice late at night.

"HEB was well lit on the sides, almost like a football field, so that's why we went there," she said. "Because who would do anything bad to you at HEB?"

Monday had just turned into Tuesday when the carpool pulled into the parking lot after practice. One of Payton's teammates left to get into her own vehicle, then returned in a panic, followed by a stranger.

"I was literally on my phone, and then I just heard it," Payton said. "My ears were gone because my window shattered. That's when I turned and ducked."

But no amount of maneuvering would help. Payton had been shot.

ANGELA WASHINGTON WAS 20 weeks pregnant when she found out something was wrong. A cyst covered one of her baby's lungs, and doctors determined the baby wouldn't live through the pregnancy. They offered Angela options for termination, but she decided to carry to term.

Against the odds, Payton was born Feb. 4, 2005. But she would still need to undergo a risky procedure to remove part of her lung. The doctors gave Angela a few months with Payton before operating.

"They didn't expect her to make it through surgery, either," Angela said. "But she did."

Doctors advised Angela to get her daughter involved in activities that would improve lung capacity, so the pair joined a "Mommy & Me" gymnastics class. When Payton excelled, Angela introduced her to competitive cheerleading. It wasn't long before she was out-performing peers at her local Austin gym, prompting Angela to find a team in Houston that equaled Payton's talent. The intercity trips strengthened their mother-daughter bond.