Woman’s Rise From Despair Validates Ways of Welfare

Her letter arrived a couple days ago and began, “Dear Mr. Parsons, I don’t know if you remember me. . . .”

Quite the contrary, I remember her well. Her name is Connie and when we first met on Christmas Eve of 1990, she was in a shelter for homeless women in Santa Ana, trying to put her life back together. She was 23, working as a clerk after the county found her a job and enrolled her in drug rehab. Her infant twins had been placed in the Orangewood Children’s Home.

Our conversation that Christmas Eve was about a life that she had almost frittered away--a good upbringing that she turned her back on because of a new attraction: cocaine.

She spent much of the time talking about the Christmas a year earlier, a holiday enshrouded in a cocaine haze. She and her boyfriend, kicked out of their apartment for failure to pay rent, had taken up residence in an Anaheim hotel.

She talked about a Christmas party that began Dec. 1 and lasted until Jan. 5. To refresh my memory of our conversation, I looked up the column I’d written about her: “I don’t remember anything except that I was high,” she said of Christmas 1989. “The family got presents for the kids, because we couldn’t afford presents, because we had to buy drugs. We must have had 200 to 300 people in and out of the motel room that month. They’d come and buy drugs and sit around with us and get high with us.”

Yes, I remembered Connie well. I remember thinking how young, how well-spoken, how close she had come to disintegrating. And of her twin sons being raised by a county agency.

That’s why the letter this week was like a Christmas present in April.

She wrote: “On the day after Christmas (when we talked), I bought three newspapers and cut out the article you had written and gave a copy to my mother, one to my grandparents and saved one for myself. After reading it many, many times, I put it away.

“Shortly after I spoke with you, I quit my job with the county and started a new position doing medical transcription. My company then moved to San Pedro. Not wanting to leave another job, I made the move with the company, away from the security of my sponsor and my family. . . .

“I moved into a small two-bedroom rental and started a new life. I did not have a car and had to walk to work every day. I started bringing my children home on weekends, taking the bus to Orangewood on Saturday morning, bringing them back sometimes, taking them to my mom’s other times.

“In July of 1991, my babies finally came home for good. It was the most wonderful day since the day they were born. Today my boys are 3 years old, and I am 1 1/2 years clean. I also have a car now. Last week I was cleaning out some things in my closet and found the long-forgotten article. As I started to read, all I could do was cry. It touched me once again and made me realize what I had left behind and what I have accomplished since. I thought about where I was when the article was written and where I am now.

“I don’t know if you’ll ever answer this. I just felt that you would like to know that I have made even more progress and have done nothing but climb up the ladder to where I want to be. Today, my life is good. My children are happy, and I am sober. I couldn’t ask for anything more. Sincerely, Connie.”

She thinks I gave her a Christmas present with that first column back in 1990.

If I did, we’re even now. I’m going to pull out her letter every time I read about how the welfare state is a farce. It was the welfare state that kept her afloat, helped her find a job, helped her shake drugs, took care of her kids when she couldn’t.

It doesn’t take much imagination to know what kind of a drain on society she could have become without the help.

Here’s something else she said from our first conversation: “There were many times when I thought I was going to die when I was doing drugs. In fact, there were many times when I wanted to die, because I didn’t feel I could give them up and I wanted to die, literally.”

So thanks, Connie, for the letter. Welcome back from the darkness and into the light.

And don’t worry, I won’t forget you.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.