10-4 Magazine / March 2026 69 talents besides being a kick butt truck driver. Smokey had artistic skills, too, and was teaching Trevor how to draw box trucks when he was only three years old. Smokey stopped drawing so much when Trevor got older and got better at it than he was. Smokey and Cheryl could both write and, as we all know, Trevor excels at that, too. Working at UPS loading trucks, Trevor saved up enough money to buy his first truck – an old Freightliner – that he drove to his high school graduation. During his senior year he split his time between school and a trade school where he was enrolled in the diesel mechanic class. Years later, someone would find a picture in a drawer that Trevor drew all those years ago and they used it on the back of jackets that the students enrolled there can still buy today. On occasion, Smokey would need a co-driver, so he taught Cheryl the skills to fill that role, and she eventually got her CDL. She remembers going to Hunts Point in New York with him and tells stories of what it was like to be there (and how happy she was to leave). When they had three trucks, she sometimes would have to jump in and make a few rounds on her own. When she wasn’t trucking, she would pack all six kids in the car and head to Cle Elm, WA to meet up with Smokey. With the run he was on back then, he couldn’t get any closer than that to home. While they were there, they would stay in a pink hotel that the kids called The Pink House. When the kids were older, Trevor and his brother Ryan would sometimes go along with mom on one of her solo runs. One time, she remembers the boys thought it would be funny to set a CB up in the bunk. She thought she was talking to another driver ahead of her, but she couldn’t understand why she couldn’t see him. Finally, it was too much for them, and when she realized that it was them and what they had done, let’s just say mom was not happy. However, this mother’s revenge came swiftly. Stopping at a Pilot truck stop, Cheryl got the chance to talk to the manager and told him what horrible children she had. He jumped at the chance to help teach them a lesson. When they were leaving the store, the manager, along with a security officer, stopped the boys and accused them of stealing. Funny enough, whilst secretly writing this story, Trevor told me this same story during a phone call. He recalled staring angrily at his brother and thinking, “What did you steal?” But his brother was staring back at him and thinking the same thing. They both knew they hadn’t taken anything, but for a few terrifying minutes, their mom relished how they squirmed. The moral of this story: don’t mess with mom! Back in the day, Trevor would draw pictures on napkins while he was waiting for his food, and some of the places actually pinned his pictures up on the wall. I got to meet Trevor because our mutual friend Darien Stephens told me about this young driver and the poems he wrote. We met up with Trevor and Alicia at Harris Ranch in Coalinga, CA for lunch (Alicia was with Trevor on that trip because it was her birthday). We talked on the phone for about 45 minutes and when we met up, he had a poem written on a napkin. It was the August 2006 issue of 10-4 that I got to write about that meeting and introduce our readers to this multi-talented young man. I talked to Dan about how he should be writing for the magazine, and he agreed. In January of 2008 the first “Poetry In Motion” column was published. When you talk to Trevor there is always passion and excitement in his voice, whether he’s talking about an idea for a poem, his latest project restoring a truck, or an idea he has had since he was 11 about a special wrap for his trailer. Funny how it works sometimes. I hadn’t quite finished this story, as I got busy and distracted by a truck show. As I went to finally write the ending, who should call me, but Trevor himself. He was all excited about his new trailer ideas, which led to some reminiscing (like the shoplifting story), and then he asked me if I’d like to hear this month’s poem for his Poetry in Motion column. The times Trevor reads his poems to me are near and dear to my heart. I had to smile inside while he read this one to me. He had no idea I was writing about his mom this month, as I wanted it to be a surprise, and he helped me with the perfect ending. This month he did include Cheryl in a line of his poem, saying, “Mama taught me to be humble and kind.” Trevor reminisces in many of his poems of times on the road with his dad, but if it wasn’t for his mom, he wouldn’t even be here. And as he says so perfectly in the last lines of this month’s poem, “Mystified to think about, the things I’ve seen and done. And all I might’ve missed, if I’d been someone else’s son.” Happy Birthday, Trevor, from Mom and Mama Kim! n
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