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Charity | Community centers launched by McDonald’s heiress spread help and hope | Lynn Vincent

SAN DIEGO— Three years old and decked out in a pink and green bikini, Kahmyah Stuart ducks below the surface of a turquoise pool at San Diego's Kroc Center and flippers away like a seal. Trouble is, Kahmyah doesn't know how to swim with her head above water. Neither has she realized the importance of coming up for air. So her grandmother, Kim Ervin, 45, trails her, bounding along the bottom of the pool to be there when Kahmyah, inevitably, pops up sputtering.

"She's fearless," says her great-grandmother, Anita King, 65, watching poolside. "She's just go-go-go. She doesn't realize what can happen."

Indeed, Kahmyah does not yet realize what has happened to her family. Ervin's 24-year-old daughter, who lives in Oakland, has relinquished custody of Kahmyah and her sister, Kaleah, 1, to King, who lives in San Diego. Kahmyah's mom is "going through some things, trying to do something for herself, going to school, working," says King, a slim and regal African-American who wears her hair slicked back into a ponytail and looks 15 years younger than she is. "I have custody as long as it takes, until—" she pauses, then finishes this way: "—when and if she gets herself together."