For homeless advocate Pamela Atkinson, it was encouragement from others as she was growing up so poor her family scrounged newspapers to use for toilet paper.
And for the Rev. France Davis, it was advice from his father, a man with a third-grade education who made sure his son learned all he could.
All six recipients of this year's fourth annual Pete Suazo Social Justice Awards point to a life experience that made them want to find a way to give something back to their communities. In accepting their awards on Friday, they encouraged others to do the same.
"We were taught that you do what you can," said Thorne during the award luncheon sponsored by the University of Utah's College of Social Work. "You never know whose life you can touch, and what ripples that will carry forward."
Today, Thorne, a Pomo Indian, is a longtime judge, nationally recognized figure in tribal law and advocacy, and sits on a racial and ethnic fairness task force. But as a young man working in a liquor store in a poor California neighborhood, it was a customer who asked him how he was doing that helped keep him on the path to his dreams.
The man asked Thorne if he planned to work at the store for a long time, and Thorne replied he had bigger goals - he would attend Stanford University's law school. A year later, a disillusioned Thorne was ready to drop out until the same customer came into the store and asked him again how he was doing.
When Thorne told him the truth, the stranger took 40 minutes of his own time to remind Thorne of the dreams he had shared one year earlier.
Other recipients of this year's awards, established in honor of the late state senator:
* Silvia Stubbs, an Argentinean immigrant and College of Eastern Utah teacher who established a day-care center for students when kids were being left in their cars while their parents went to class. Stubbs brings early childhood programs to outlying areas, including the Navajo reservation.
* Phyllis Nassi of the Huntsman Cancer Center Institute is a member of the Otoe Missouria Tribe and the Cherokee Nation. She travels extensively working with minority communities to improve their cancer-survival rates through knowledge and early detection.
* Davis, pastor of First Calvary Baptist Church. Davis marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in civil rights demonstrations, and he now works to ensure equality for Utah's black community. His church has established housing and HIV outreach programs.
* Atkinson, who works directly with the homeless and collaborates with nonprofit and government organizations who serve them. Atkinson helped establish health care clinics for children as vice president of mission services for Intermountain Health Care.
* Your Community Connection of Ogden/Northern Utah, a nonprofit organization that runs programs that include a domestic violence victim shelter, transitional housing for people working toward self-sufficiency and life skills classes for adults and youth.
