![]() ![]() Samantha had been on the streets since she was 12. ![]() After a few months, one young woman emerged as the star of the “Volunteer Notes,” and one of the stars of my life: Samantha. Thus began a series of e-mails I called the “Volunteer Notes.” Every week, I updated my friends on the rotating cast of characters I met at the shelter: Mandy, the meth addict with the beautiful singing voice Marisol, the gangbanger who wanted out. I hit “send,” and my friends’ responses were rapid: Oh, wow. I just couldn’t keep it to myself, what these girls were dealing with every night while we blithely made dinner, watched TV, surfed the web. I poured it all out in an e-mail to three of my best girlfriends, told them everything I’d seen, thought and felt over the course of my four-hour shift. Cheryl owns one sweatshirt, one pair of pants, and no bra. She has a two-year-old daughter who’s currently in foster care. So far, what I’d found was blowing my mind and breaking my heart.Ĭheryl is nineteen and pregnant. ![]() Now 34 and (relatively) stable, I wanted to give something back to the place that had helped save my life I wanted to find a young woman like the one I’d been, and make a positive difference in her life. I’d just come home from my second shift as a volunteer at a homeless shelter for teenagers, a shelter where I myself had spent a few months at the age of 15. About a girl: Among troubled young women, a standout It all started with an e-mail. ![]()
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