When you ask Lisa-Marie how the has helped her, her voice starts to gets a bit shaky and a shimmer of grateful tears starts to appear.
Lookout basically saved my life, she says, nodding her head. Basically, they saved my life.
In the fall of 2010, Lisa-Marie (whose last name is withheld) was close to death, hospitalized for kidney failure after many years of prescription painkiller use.
I was broken-hearted, working three jobs, and I was taking all these pills and I wasnt eating, she says from our booth at Starbucks.
After leaving the hospital, she returned to a world without a job, without an apartment, but with the same addiction problems and an abusive ex-husband. Her parents took her in, but only under the condition that she stayed clean. When she relapsed, she was asked to leave. She moved in with a friend in Whitehorse who also kicked her out because of the her drug use. She returned to Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»where, aside from her son, there wasnt much waiting for her.
I had nothing to come back to I had no friends, I had no family, I had no job, I had no apartment. All I had was a storage locker.
On her first and only night living on the Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»streets, she was lured into a back alley where she was brutally beaten and robbed. Not wanting to face the streets again, Lisa-Marie moved into her storage locker where she stayed for two nights. It was after those two nights she approached Lookout Society shelter in North Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»for help.
They took me in, she says, her hands wrapped around a warm cup of coffee. Nobody in the whole world cared about me and finally there was somebody who actually wanted to help me.
Since 1971, the Lookout Society has empowered homeless people to help themselves by providing secure housing, connecting them to other needed services and supporting them as they deal with any issues they might have. The society has 22 locations around the Lower Mainland. To help fund these important but costly services, the society will be holding its annual HArts for the Homeless fundraiser on Nov. 23.
The money raised at the gala, makes a big difference, says Karen OShannacery, executive director of the Lookout Society. Its huge.
HArts has raised more than $100,000. It hopes to beat last years $46,000, which bought furniture for a new 129-unit housing project.
More than 9,600 people currently rely on Lookout services. Its all about the people who fall in between the cracks and cant be housed elsewhere, OShannacery says. Weve learned extremely early that it isnt good enough to just put a person in a bed overnight. What we really need to do is provide them with support, we need to link them to the services and resources that they need.
Not only did the Lookout Society give Lisa-Marie a safe bed, but they helped put her life back on track helping her apply for employment insurance, providing counselling services for addiction and abuse; and simply being there for her when nobody else was.
While obviously damaged by her past, Lisa-Marie is also cautiously optimistic about her future. As she tells her story, there is almost an air of disbelief in her voice as she explains how shes sitting in front of me this afternoon.
Lookout staff are the only people who get me, who completely understand me because some of them have been there themselves and they deal with it every day. Theyre the people I trust, theyre like my family. They really care. The staff work so hard to make the smallest difference in anybodys life.
Last August, on the 16th to be specific, Lisa-Marie graduated from the nursing unit clerk program at the Canadian Health Care Academy. Coincidentally, August 16 was also the one-year anniversary of staying off of the painkillers that damaged her life for so long.
Tonight, Lisa-Marie and her son, who is now nine, are having dinner together and seeing a movie. Shes clearly excited.
This is big. Ive spent so much time re-building my relationship with him. This is him here, she says, her blue eyes lighting up as she looks at his team soccer photo. Isnt he great?
Tickets for the HArts for the Homeless are $110 and are available at LookoutSociety.ca or by calling 604-255-0340.
