Like so many kids who are products of the down-South trailer parks, Mandy was raised by a single parent with too many bills, too few hours in the day, and a fridge full of beer. In this case, maybe bucking the trend a little, was that it was her mother. A hard-working woman making the Disney-minimum wage as a park custodian, she wasn't often around, leaving Mandy to her own devices. There was always just enough money, but never more. Money for clothes, but not anything designer label; money for food, but hardly ever to go out and eat; money to keep the car running, but never enough to get it totally fixed (or, forbid, by a new one). Like the rest of the kids in the trailer park, she went to school on the bus, got ridiculed as part of the group, tried to learn, came home, forgot about homework, and just…did what the other trailer park kids did for fun.
Despite the poor grades and ridicule from a lot of the more well-to-do students, Mandy soon found that the boys paid her quite a bit of attention. She had no way of knowing, through her teen years, that her powers were manifesting in such a way to make that happen. Puberty for her hit like a Mack truck, and she went from the trailer park tomboy to rocking hottie. With a mother who was seldom present in any sober state following her 12 hour shifts at the park, a freshly sexified Mandy found herself picking up a job at a local strip club at age 17, thanks to the help of a "computer prodigy" boyfriend of hers at the time to help her with a fake ID.
In her time at the club she made a lot of money as a featured dancer, eventually earning enough to set her mother up with a fine small home and the new car she could never afford. A short stint in rehab on her daughter's buck set her straight. All in all, despite the somewhat dubious occupation (which, at the same time, was helping Mandy hone her powers more and more), life was really on a positive upswing. She had a career where she was raking it in (and one in which she was good at, despite mediocre grades, no college, and having been the 'ugly duckling' through elementary school), a totally stress free relationship with her mother that she never had before, and even two cute little dogs who she got to be mommy to!
When the bomb went off, it was a shock to her as to the rest of the world, certainly. It wasn't until the big reveal that things got a lot more visceral for her. For the first time, she started hearting things like Registration and the Linderman act, the revelation that there were others like her out there. Her whole life had been spent thinking that her power was unique, something small-scale, some little quirk about her body. Maybe someone in NYC could answer her questions, things about herself that her mother never could explain. So, leaving the safety and comfort of her Florida home, she set out for the bombed-out city, knowing full well that both answers and gainful employment could be found there (afterall, this is still NYC, and there must be strip clubs there since sex always sells no matter the human condition).