by Moe Zilla

Created on: May 22, 2010   Last Updated: March 22, 2012

Before winning her way into the May 25th "Top Two" series finale, Crystal had already traveled a difficult road. Her parents had divorced when she was just two years old, and according to A&E's Biography, eventually Crystal "witnessed physical fights between her biological mother and her new stepmother, while her father "was sent to jail on domestic violence charges" after a fight with Crystal's 15-year-old stepbrother. So when her father appeared in a sentimental video segment before her performance, Crystal had found herself tearing up. "I love my dad," she said later. "He'd go through hell or high water for me..."

24-year-old Crystal Bowersox had just finished an inspirational performance of "People Get Ready (There's a Train a Coming)" on American Idol's "Top 7," week when she'd spotted her father in the audience. And then, on nationwide TV, Crystal started to cry. "He hasn't been out here to see any of the shows yet," she explained later. "He was wearing sunglasses, because, if he cried, he was trying to hide it.  And I looked up and saw the mirror of his sunglasses and I was, like, 'I know he's crying.'"

Crystal is now a single mother and a diabetic, and once told Idol's viewers that her infant son was "the only reason I'm here. I want to make sure my kid's got everything he needs." It was when her baby Tony was born that independent-minded Bowersox first decided to audition for the show. And Simon Cowell, the show's most critical judge, later told her "I love your personality, because you're real." With dreadlocked hair, a stud in her lower lip, and an enormous sunflower tattooed on her back, Crystal definitely presents a tough and "alternative" look.

She carried her hopes through a hard childhood, growing up in a tiny Ohio town named Elliston - population: 75. Though Crystal was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was seven, Bowersox played her first professional gig just three years later at the age of 10. Her talent was recognized at a very young age - soon after a first-grade performance as Suzy Snowflake in a Christmas play - and one blogger has even discovered a video clip of one of an amazing singing performances she gave when she was only 13 (saying that she already sounded like Jewel).

By the age of 14 Bowersox was already performing 30 miles from home, according to one newspaper article, at a 70-year-old bar in Toledo  "in the center of a blue-collar neighborhood, within a row of squat houses." The hardship continued, and

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