Every year, United Way of Allen County and its agency partners tend to the needs of thousands of people, instilling in them the hope of a better life. These are just a few of the stories.
Freddie Diaz grew up in abject poverty in Mexico, one of seven children in a family of nine barely getting by in a one-room shack.Every day, he walked five miles to school hungry, he never owned more than two pairs of pants, and at the age of 8 he began pumping gas for 50 cents a day - just so he could help keep his family afloat."I was," he says, "so sick of being poor. It was sickening poor."Yearning for a better life, he crossed the border into California at age 16 to look for migrant farm work and found it. But the conditions were less than ideal...Read more...
Darnetta Harris was 12 the first time someone molested her. That time, she says, it was a drunken family friend. The next time, it would be a relative.She lost her innocence, she says, against a grim backdrop of violence and substance abuse in a southeast Fort Wayne apartment complex. She heard gunfire at least once a week, and she and her siblings would sometimes crawl on the floor - just to be safe. She also watched pushers deal drugs on the sidewalks outside her home in the plain light of day.She was afraid to tell anyone about the men who forced themselves upon her - afraid that her family would be mad at her. She figured it was her fault and became convinced that her purpose in life was "for guys to use me.""I felt like I couldn't depend on anybody," she says...Read more...
Jenni Showalter may never know for sure how her 14-month-old son became a quadriplegic. Her guess is that someone hit him in the head at a babysitter's house, but it is a guess neither she nor police were ever able to prove.All she really knows is that one morning in 1987 she took Kevin to the babysitter's house healthy and walking; he had learned to walk just one week earlier. By afternoon, Kevin was in the hospital and doctors were trying to save his life.Kevin spent five weeks at Lutheran Hospital and another three at a rehabilitation facility in Chicago. When Kevin returned home to Fort Wayne, he came under the care of Turnstone Center for Disabled Children & Adults, a United Way agency partner.Read more...
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