It’s 5 p.m. on a Monday and two women from across town bustle into the sparsely furnished North Denver apartment. They are loaded down with boxes and bags. They beeline their way to the kitchen, and soon out comes dinner. Homemade.
These “church ladies” from Smoky Hill Vineyard Church contend with rush-hour traffic every Monday in order to provide a half-dozen or so women and a handful of youngsters with a good meal. The women who partake of the largesse are grateful for the TLC. They are making their way out of the sex-for-sale industry with the help of Street’s Hope, a faith-based, non-profit rehabilitation program. Seven days a week, participants are welcome to drop in at the North Denver location any time for refuge or assistance. They are required to meet for dinner and meetings on Mondays.
Programs like Street’s Hope are saving lives. Women who have lived on the hem of society are supplied with the basics: food, clothing, shelter.
Linda G. is five years clean and sober. She’s off the streets for good. She has her “dream job” at Street’s Hope and is now 100 days into what she feels she will do for the rest of her life. She is a bridge – a human one. A bridge that, for prostitutes, represents a death-defying crossing over the abyss of prostitution, addiction and self-annihilation.
Linda is no longer the wrecked child of an alcoholic mother – the bartender mom who, while pouring drinks, dealt drugs on the side. She’s no longer the child who watches as Mom brings in man after man on that treadmill of dependency and dysfunction. Gone now is four years on the streets and crack cocaine. Turning tricks to buy the room, the drug, the drink. “Rape, guns, knives, homeless – a mess,” Linda says.
Narcotics. Arrest warrants. County jail time. Arapahoe House, in-patient detox. Her small children were carted away by social services – for good. Drug possession, an arrest warrant, caught, handcuffed, sentenced … locked up, in the state facility in Pueblo.
Then, eight months later, back on the streets, she hit bottom. To understand what happened to Linda, maybe you have to believe in miracles. Still turning tricks, still drinking and using – and in spite of the pitch black of her existence – she would read a passage from a little Bible she carried with her and “feel better, encouraged.”
The eddy of hopelessness surges up and down through the human traffic of Colfax Avenue. That was Linda’s home. It seems in that whirl impossible to escape. But, Linda recalls believing, with her little Bible and wisp of hope, she was “loved by good, and something good [was] going to happen to me.”
And it did.
She met Street’s Hope founder Leanne Downing, who helped her find a place in state-run programs established for substance abusers. Through Street’s Hope, Linda began building her life’s skills toolbox.
“I’d always believed,” she said, “that sex was the solution with men, the catch-all for any problem.” Street’s Hope marshaled a new set of beliefs. Up to 12 women like Linda are immersed into the 2- to 3-year program. They are guided toward all-encompassing life changes by individual mentors and group support. Some participants, through Street’s Hope, pursue a GED or even post-secondary education, and along the way the program provides assistance such as child-care, tutors and additional educational resources.
The program’s licensed counselor specializes in sexual issues and abuse. In some cases, one-on-one counseling extends to spouses and children. A supervised 9-to-5 day shelter houses women and their children. The mentoring program places each participant with a compassionate woman who helps transition them into a functioning and productive life – replete with social and independent living skills.
The program has some paid staff; Linda, as the new program director, is among them. But behind the scenes, the 1,779 hours of logged time by 138 volunteers in 2005 alone tells the story of the breadth of reach that Street’s Hope has encouraged throughout the community.
The human bridge – from a life of hopelessness into a life of promise – is joined firmly together by volunteers who raise funds and mentor and give rides; provide dental work and technical assistance; remove tattoos; and volunteer accounting services, financial support and help with the facility’s overall development.
And on Mondays, they bring dinner.
Linda Harmon King (lindaking33@ comcast.net) lives in North Denver. She is a freelance writer and mother to three teenage boys.
