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underemployed.” She called the gentleman she had been cleaning for, Mr. D: “I told him what God had laid on my heart to do. And that was to help other women, especially those in the shelter. They didn’t need a ninety-day shelter that said you could lay your
women and children. So, she went back to Mr. D to explain the situation, crying because she didn’t know how to write a grant! His gardener heard her and said her sister wrote grants. “And that’s who wrote my first grant.” And the rest is history.
head here and then in ninety days get out; they needed to be reformed. And so, i presented Mr. D with a business proposal and he lent me $1500.“ “I took that $1,500 and got an apartment and then went to hospitals that were detoxing people from addiction. . . and June 1st, 1996, I picked up our first two women, and I said, “We’re in the halfway house business.”
“I'm humbled that He chose me—somebody whom God set free 33 years ago—and told me to go back and get others. And that became my life mission. Helping others.”
Still working three jobs, Lucy needed help. A woman from Cascade house, Constance Willis, lived with her two children “in the hood, in a very dangerous situation. I told her to come to help me do this, and I would put her and her children in an apartment, and she became my housing manager.” Within ninety days, they had twenty-four women. “It kept growing. Literally, every single thing that I ever needed, when I said it, God provided.” In the beginning, they found clients from detox hospitals, and that clientele tended to have insurance. “Connie said to me, ‘Lucy, when are we gonna help women of color from the hood?” Many women were scared to ask for help, fearing losing their children. Lucy said, “We need to find money so they can bring their children.” And sure enough, she received a phone call from Mercy Care informing her of a grant to help
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