My very first attempt at drawing a female character of mine, and a very important character in my written series. Cho Hee Ahn was the mother to my fursona Rob, and his twin brother Jake, the protagonists of my series. A refugee from North Korea, Ahn's life was shaped by the trauma that never seemed to leave, a tragic life that was cut too short by circumstances that were out of her control.

Ahn was born on the 29th of April, 1949 in Pyongyang, Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) to her military general father. Related to the Kim family, Ahn grew up initially with the privileged life of being the niece to Kim Il Sung. Her father and mother had been anti-Japanese guerrillas fighting in the mountains of Korea during WWII where her older brother Bae was born in 1943. Her mother was a cook who doubled as a sniper, a strong woman who bore the brunt of the fighting. Her father became a decorated general in the Korean War as part of the Korean People's Army allowing a infant Ahn to enjoy a brief privileged life of the North Korean elite.

Everything changed in 1955 when her father was arrested and executed for refusing to murder political dissidents. In a instant, a privileged life of being the niece of Kim Il Sung ended with her family being thrown in a concentration camp for political prisoners. Once here, a young Ahn was brutally abused by prison guards. As a young girl she was raped repeatedly, forced to work in coal mines in the extreme cold, gather firewood, and psychologically tortured by watching her mother and brother be tortured, and watching prisoners be executed in horrific ways.

The abuse endured for nearly four years until her mother managed to muster the strength to escape in the winter of 1959. Chased by prison guards, Ahn, her brother Bae, and her mother managed to make it to the DMZ where they made attempted to cross the river. Bae and Ahn managed to make it across the river with the help of their mother, but sadly she expended the last of her energy to get her children to freedom and drowned, leaving Bae and Ahn as orphans in a unknown world.

While Bae was quickly adopted by a wealthy South Korean architect and taught architecture, Ahn was simply left as a orphan taken in by Jesuit priests in Seoul. She was raised by the Catholic church for the rest of her childhood and teenage years. Ignored and shunned by South Korean society for being just a orphan from the North, Ahn came to the United States in 1970 after being reunited with her brother after a decade long pause. She wished to pick up the shattered pieces of her life to move on, meeting her husband Raymond Barion (1952-2009) in 1972, where they married in 1973.

Ahn had three children with Ray; their first born son Troy Alec Barion born in June of 1975. After many failed pregnancies, Ahn was presented with twins in 1982; named Jake and Rob Barion. Her marriage was perfect until Ray was horribly burned in a workplace accident in 1985. A explosion during payload checkout of a satellite left Ray severely disfigured and burned, the extreme pain and disfigurement turning her husband into a raging psychopath who abused her and her three kids.

Her life went downhill as Ray's mental condition deteriorated further, things hitting near rock bottom with the death of her oldest son Troy in 1987. At the age of 12, Troy was struck by a car when chasing after his basketball, dying in the hospital a few hours later. To cope with the increasing pressure of a failing marriage and the death of Troy, she turned to alcohol more and more, slowly herself falling victim to despair and misery.

The stress took its inevitable toll on Ahn, prematurely aging her slowly as she struggled to deal and accept with Rob's diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome, and the bullying that came with it. The final straw in her marriage came with the coming out of her son Rob, the violent reaction by Ray to having a homosexual son being the breaking point of keeping a failing marriage going.

Ray and Ahn were divorced in 1999, but sadly the damage was already done. The stress of her past life, a failed marriage, and the news that Rob was nearly murdered in a gay bashing pushed Ahn beyond any hope. She was sadly found dead at Christmas time, December 25, 2000 by her father-in law and brother in-law.

A kind and gentle soul, Ahn was dead by 51, a life cut too short.

This photo of Ahn would be dated to around 1990- her workplace photo for a local bank.