Jennifer Askins will be the first to tell you that a car accident in March of 1997 changed everything. She was a young woman in her twenties, a Trico graduate trying to figure out her path, when the crash left her a paraplegic. She has been in a wheelchair ever since. What she might not volunteer as quickly is what she built from that moment forward, because Jennifer Askins is not someone who spends much time looking backward.

Askins graduated from Trico in 1993, part of a family with deep roots in the school. Her mother, Janie Juhl, went there, along with her aunts, her brother Josh, and her sister Jessica Blair. After graduation, she enrolled at John A. Logan College and began working toward a certificate in medical transcription. The accident interrupted those plans, but it did not end them. She went back, finished her certificate, and took a job doing transcription at Chester Memorial Hospital. "After my accident, I became a very firm believer in bucket lists," she said. That belief would shape just about everything that came next.

In the early 2000s, Askins made a decision that may have surprised some people and defined her completely. She was single, in a wheelchair, and she wanted to be a mother. So, she adopted. Bailey came home from Guatemala in May of 2002, followed by Nathan in 2005. She raised them on her own until she met her husband, Jim Askins, a fellow Trico alum, in 2011. They married in September of 2013, and Jim adopted both children. Bailey and Nathan both graduated from Trico.

Between raising her kids and working office jobs at a Chester physical therapy practice, Askins kept her bucket list close. One item on it had been sitting there for years: open a coffee shop. In August of 2021, she did exactly that. The Wicked Bean opened in Campbell Hill, just a block off the main highway, and it has become exactly what she hoped it would be.

The Wicked Bean is a full-service neighborhood spot with a kitchen, a full coffee and drink menu, and a loyal morning crowd. Her mother, Janie, makes the biscuits from scratch. The breakfast menu runs from bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits to a popular steak, egg and cheese bagel. Lunch brings paninis and wraps. The shop bakes all of its sweets in-house, from cookies and brownies to cakes and bars. They also serve Lotus energy drinks and house-made flavored sodas that Askins calls fizzers. Open Tuesday through Friday starting at six in the morning and Saturdays at seven, the place even delivers to Trico schools on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Several of her employees are Trico graduates themselves, and two current Trico students work there on Saturdays.

"Without the community, there is no way I would be able to do this," she said. "I would have already closed." The Trico community showed up for her when she announced the shop, and it has kept showing up ever since. That kind of support, she believes, is what a small school district does for its people.

The bucket list is not finished. Askins is now researching the development of accessible Airbnb properties, starting near Kentucky Lake, with plans to eventually expand. Her goal is to create vacation rentals specifically designed for wheelchair users, with options like roll-in showers, single-level layouts, and beds at varying heights to meet different needs. "Everybody has different needs," she said. "My plan is to have lower beds in some rooms, higher beds in some rooms, so there is something there for everybody."

When asked to put her philosophy into words, Askins kept it simple. "People always think that they have tomorrow," she said. "What if there is not? If you live your life like there is always going to be a tomorrow, you push off what you should have done today." She does not stay mad at the people she loves, she said, because life is too short to hold back. "There are probably a lot of people around here who would love to do something different. They just do not have the courage to do it."