Wilhelm started out poor, his father had died serving for the Empire, leaving Wilhelm and his mother to poverty in a crummy apartment building on Coruscant. Wilhelm attended school for general education and kept decent grades, his mother worked as a nurse in a medical clinic. Though hard times were ahead of him, his mother had been killed in a shuttle crash, Wilhelm had been only 17, he was forced to get a job at a local convenient store to pay rent he had still been attending his last year of school.