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Off the streets, on to recovery

One couple’s journey out of homelessness

• Published May 01, 2006

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The $555 monthly voucher helps pay the $650 rent and is good for a year, with the possibility of an extension. Mike’s disability checks — he was born with a nerve disorder that makes it hard to walk without a cane — combined with the couple’s paychecks from working at Labor Ready and delivering The Olympian help pay the rest of the rent, insurance and other needs.

The one-bedroom, one-bath apartment is a modest one. The entry room doubles as the kitchen nook. The television, the easy chair and the dinner table were donated by The Church of the Nazarene and other local groups.

Twin pewter wine glasses sit high on a shelf overlooking the kitchen. Julie had eyed them for four years in the window of The Finders Keepers Antique Mall downtown and hoped they’d one day be hers.

She bought them for $50 — paying in two installments — as a housewarming gift when they got off the streets.

“Something to say to ourselves ‘we can do anything’,” she said as she fingered the glasses.

The glasses haven’t been used yet. “I still have to clean them up a bit,” she said.

Having sworn off drugs, Mike and Julie are using their food stamps for food.

The difference shows in their faces and bodies. Mike gained 20 pounds in about two months, trading a 34-inch waist pair of pants for a 36-inch pair. Julie gained 15 pounds.

“And we don’t fight as much anymore,” Mike said. “We used to fight all the time. It was the dope.”

Life on the streets

Mike and Julie grew up in households with a history of substance abuse. Mike’s father was an alcoholic and both parents used drugs. He remembers when he was 12 picking his father up in alleys in a wheelbarrow. He and his brothers were in and out of foster homes.

Julie’s father was an alcoholic. At the age of 9, Julie watched her mother douse herself with gasoline, then strike a match. She didn’t know then but discovered later that her mother suffered from depression. After her mother’s death, she moved in with her uncle and aunt in McCleary.

Mike and Julie both began dabbling in drugs or alcohol at the age of 12. Julie started drinking. By the time she was in high school, she was using marijuana.