Deb Ellinger: Serving Women Who Are Sexually Trafficked (Pt 1)

Deb had just lost her own house to foreclosure when she decided to start Elli’s House, which builds relationships with women who are sexually trafficked in Detroit and offers them safe shelter for transitioning to a new life. Their army of volunteers are bringing light to one of the darkest places in our country.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're in your truck driving on the sidewalk and partially
in the street. You're like, come come back? Can you
just come back? And I have people ask me all
the time, when do you just say? Enough? Is enough?

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Never?

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Never? And I watched that and I felt like it
was like confirmation that it's okay to be like, I'm
going to keep trying.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
We're going to talk about that, so don't.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
I won't, I won't question. I'm just so privileged to
meet you.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Oh, first of all, I am just a dude from
so and you've listened to this right yeah, oh yeah,
so you know it's conversational. One of my shortcomings is
I get really excited about what I like people, and
I like these stories. I genuinely like what I'm doing,
and God knows I would have to to keep up

(00:55):
just because him. But so get I get hearing what
you're saying, and I get excited. So I'm trying to
temper my excitement a little bit, not to speak over
my guests too much. Okay, it's the criticism I'm getting
right now.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
So you're working on that.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
I say in a football coach, I mean nobody. I
didn't take the bait for God's sake. So anyway, and
I'll tell you about this in a little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
I can't wait to hear about it.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
So a couple of notes.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Generally speaking, you should be about this farming.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
He also screw at the microphone.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
While we're talking about while we're talking.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Infuriated, But just do what most people do and ignore them.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Okay, well I can do that, really well. I can
do that really well.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, a father, an entrepreneur,
and I've been a football coach an inner city and
the last part it unintentionally led to an oscar for
the film about our team. It's called Undefeated. I believe
our country's problems will never be solved by a bunch

(02:11):
of fancy people and nice suits talking big words that
nobody understands on CNN and Fox, but rather an army
of normal folks, US just you and me deciding Hey,
I can help. That's what Deb Ellinger, the voice we
just heard is done. Deb is the founder of Ellie's House,

(02:32):
a street ministry in Detroit that cares for women who
have been sexually trafficked she tries to help them escape
and enter a treatment program, and today they have two
houses where women can live as they transition back to
a new life. I cannot wait for you to meet
deb right after these brief messages from our general sponsors,

(03:16):
Debbie Ellinger, I have been really looking forward to meet you.
And welcome to Memphis.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Well, thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Yeah, and everybody Debbie Ellinger. But it's a dub.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yes, it is all my friends call me down.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
You're deb and are your friends you are? I get
to call you down. You do all right? Perfect? So
crazy life, amazing story, and we're going to unpack it all.
But first, just who you are, where you come from
as a kid, how you grew up. Yeah, so I
grew some background on who dev is. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
I grew up in the city of Detroit. Love my
city so much still even grew up there, went to
high school, graduated, became a went to police academy, became
a police officer, worked doing that for about seven years,
and then decided I wanted to be at home with kids,
and so I had four kids and raised them at home,

(04:12):
homeschooled them until high school, sent them off to high
school and then just really felt like God was leading
me to do something with women, to empower women, to
love on women, specifically in the city of Detroit. And
so that's how Ellie's House got created.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
Which we'll get to.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah, but you skipped way ahead, did I?

Speaker 2 (04:31):
We got to get back to where dev the root
of depth. Tell me about your parents. Do you have siblings?

Speaker 1 (04:37):
I don't. I'm an only child. I am, Yeah, me too,
are you? Oh that's I do remember hearing this. Yeah. Yeah,
I'm an only child.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
My mom got divorced before she could have.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
Anymore, okay, because you were enough for her, Because that
was it.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
I think I ended up being plenty. Yeah, but the
stories about you, Dev, So tell tell me about your mom,
your dad, Where you came up, and how you came up,
and where in Detroit you came up.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yeah. So my dad came from Alabama, moved was in
the military, moved to the city, became a bus driver.
So we took the bus everywhere growing up when I
was a little city bus. Yes, city bus.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Let me in something. Did your dad wear a gun?

Speaker 1 (05:19):
No?

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Well, no, back, No, there was a time, and you
and I are about the same age. Yeah, there was
a time right before us that bus drivers were actually
armed and wore badges.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Yeah, did you know that? Yeah? I did know that.
He was not in that after he was just after that. Yeah. Yeah.
So I grew up taking the bus everywhere we went.
We lived in a flat in the city on the
east side. Actually we lived in a flat not far
from where our outreach takes place. And so we grew
up there the city. So it's seven and Chalmers area,

(05:52):
Harper and Conners area.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
Got it. I have a reason for asking, I'm sure
you did it.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
I'm sure you do. So that that's where I grew
up and I lived there and had awesome experiences actually
living in the city. People talk about how it's dangerous,
Like I don't have memories of that. I just have
good memories of just relationships and community. Like the community
was really strong and where we lived, and then eventually

(06:18):
it did it wasn't anymore. So my mom worked at
JAC Pennies, she was a manager at J C. Pennies,
and my dad was a bus driver, and we lived
and that part of the city. We lived there until
about nineteen eighty five, and then we moved to a

(06:40):
little community called Harper Woods, which actually borders the city
of Detroit, so we were like four streets off from
the city, and then that's where I went to high school.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
Yes, Harper was.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
Yeah, So then I went to high school and my
parents lived in Harper Woods until about two thousand. They
live in My dad passed away in August, and my
mom lives in a town called Pickney.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
You know, it doesn't get more blue collar Detroit feeling
than a kid growing up inside Detroit with a J. C.
Penny's mom and a bus driver dad. I mean, you,
Jazz were just blue collar folks.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
We were yeah, big time blue collar.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
Did your parents struggle with money or anything?

Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yeah, I mean they did. So we lived in a
flat and downstairs lived an older couple and they had
no kids, and they adopted me. They would call me
their granddaughter. So we lived upstairs they lived downstairs, and
they paid for me to go to private school. You're
kidding me, No, no, in they private high school, private

(07:50):
grade school. So I went to private grade school till
eighth grade and then.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
They did that. Why did they do that?

Speaker 1 (07:56):
Just because honestly they just loved me so much.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (07:59):
Yeah, they were so good to me.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Who are they?

Speaker 1 (08:03):
Teresa and Joe Andiry.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
Wow. And so they had no children, no children, and children,
no grandchildren. I loved you and they just paid for
your school.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
Yeah, and then he passed away. That's actually why we moved.
So he passed away in nineteen eighty four. We moved
in about nineteen eighty five. Teresa moved to Ohio that's
where her family was from. We always stayed in contact,
and then she paid for one year of my college too.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
Are kidding?

Speaker 1 (08:30):
No? No? They were great.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
What kind of school was the private school they sent
you to?

Speaker 1 (08:37):
It was a Lutheran school.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
Were you a fish out of water.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
A little bit?

Speaker 2 (08:41):
Because if you're coming from this blue collar background going
to the private school, was it a little weird? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (08:46):
Fair, Yeah, it was a little weird now that I
think about it, because most people didn't come from that environment.
But great experience. Like I just look at my grade
school years and they were just all positive. It was
just great. It was a very diverse community too.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
I wish that I knew the roads. But my grandparents
are from Detroit. My maternal grandmother and grandfather grew up
in Detroit and met in sixth grade Sunday school class
and married a couple of months before the war, and

(09:24):
my grandfather ended up being a pilot in World War
Two and were stationed in Pittscola. And my grandfather's father
passed young and he was one of six, and they
grew up in a two bedroom apartment somewhere in Detroit.
And I wish, to goodness I knew where, but I

(09:47):
know that he saved up and bought a model tea
and oftentimes it ran out of gas and he just
left it on the side of the street until he
could get gas to move it. And he would tell you, well,
he told me, and they've passed, but that bagging Janice
Sullens was her maiden name my grandmother was the greatest

(10:12):
thing he'd ever done. Because my grandmother grew up on
the other side of Detroit, although they met it in
church now, the other side was the nice side. And
of course I don't know what that is. But the
reason I have this for you is my great grandfather
was an executive with Massey Ferguson Tractors.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
In Detroit, Oh my goodness.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
And they made those things in Detroit. Yeah, And while
my grandmother and grandfather were in World War Two, my
great grandfather, my grandmother's father, relocated to Memphis to open
the first Massey Ferguson dealership.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
That's so cool.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
And after the war, my grandmother and grandfather came to
Memphis rather than going back to Detroit to work in
the Massy Ferguson dealership.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
Wow, that's amazing.

Speaker 2 (11:02):
And so when I knew we were interviewing you and
how much you love Detroit, I am a descendant of Detroit.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
You are.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
You are by way of Massey Ferguson. And the reason
I have this tractor is because this was a salesman's
model that my grand grandfather used to take around and
sell people tractors with. And when he died, my grandfather
got it. My grandfather died, I got it, and it
sits on my credenza in my office to remind me

(11:34):
that I come from a grandfather line, at least on
my maternal side, of people who have always been in
industrial sales, which is what I do. And it all
connects back to Detroit. So I have this weird kinship
to you and your story where you came up. So

(11:55):
anyway connection.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
Between us for sharing that.

Speaker 2 (11:59):
Yeah, it's very cool. So where'd you go to college?

Speaker 1 (12:02):
Fairs State University.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
What is that?

Speaker 1 (12:05):
It's a college in northern Michigan. I guess if you
will near Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
Sure's ball me during the women.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
It's real ball me in the winter. So yeah, so
that's where I went to school. I got a bachelor's
degree in criminal justice and you can go through the
police academy there. So that's what I did, and it
was great.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
Why did you want to be a police officer? That's
not a typical thing for a female, especially in those years,
to want to do.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
Yeah. Part of it was, I think because I wanted
to show people I could do it because it wasn't
the popular thing to do. Part of it is that
because that's just kind of how I'm wired, right, But
I really did love I like risk, I like to
help people, and so that felt like a good way
to put it all together. And I thought eventually I
would go to law school. That's actually what I thought

(12:52):
I would do, so I would start being a police officer.
And then as I got older, I was like, maybe
I'll go to law school because that really intrigued me.
But then I ended up now I'm going to school
for my master's in social work. So like you know, world,
no way, you just don't know. You just don't know
what's going to happen.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
But you graduated from there. I did, And you proclaim
not a police officer first, right, So.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
I worked as a corrections officer for a little bit
and then I got promoted and worked on the road
at the Sheriff's Department. I worked there for a couple
of years. Yeah, so you can work. You start out
in the jail, at least during my time. I don't
know if it's like this still anymore, but you would
start out in the jail and then eventually being on

(13:37):
the road in a patrol car was considered a promotion,
got it so.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
Out there writing tickets and catch a.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
Bad guys yep, doing all that kind of stuff. And
so after six months of working in the jail, I
got promoted. I went to the road and I worked
the road and I did traffic. I did a little
bit of everything.

Speaker 2 (13:56):
Was the jail the city jail or.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
No Home County is a suburb of the city, so
Detroits and Wayne County Macomb County is a separate a
separate area, but it's a pretty big jail.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
So what was your job inside the.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
Jail, basically watching the women that's I worked in. Sometimes
I worked in the men's side, but mostly I worked
in the women's side, So doing checks on them, making
sure they took their medication, make sure they were honoring
the rules and obeying the rules, that kind of stuff.
It was great experience. I actually really enjoyed it. But

(14:34):
my goal was eventually to be on the street.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
Were there drugs in jail at that time.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
No, honestly, not like today. It's so different.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
It's the difference.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
Well, first of all, I would say working where there
was less people, Like the numbers of people inside are
jails and prisons is insane. The numbers are just through
the roof. I would say, that's the first thing. And
I feel like back then, in my time, they it
was just more respectful people just really like you tell

(15:05):
them the rules, you know, the same thing I kind
of do. Now, develop a relationship with people and then
here are the rules. Just honor the rules because we
have a relationship, and that's what we would do.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
So even back then, inmates followed yeah rules, Yeah, for sure.
Do you have any sense of the difference in why
we have such a difference in the numbers of prison
population now is just only when you first became a
police officer. And also why the attitude of the people

(15:39):
inside the jails is so much more vicious and violent.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
Do you have a sense of that, Gosh, I guess
I would have to think about that for a minute.
I would say that drugs is definitely a contributor. So
the drugs are always expanding and growing and becoming I
guess more edgy. And on the streets I talk to
people and we talk about fentanyl a lot. Well, there's

(16:04):
something actually much harder than fentanyl going on. It's called
animal trank. What Yeah, animal trnk. So it's like a is.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
It really animal triquilizer?

Speaker 1 (16:17):
That's what they say. And so it's laced in whatever
you do. Typically we're talking heroin or crack, but mostly heroin.
And if it's in that drug, it actually eats away
your skin. So we've seen two people with it in
our area where it literally is eating away your skin.

(16:38):
And so this one particular person, it was eating away
on their shin. And it's antibiotic resistant. There's one type
of antibiotic that worked, but it's not guaranteed that it
will work. And you have to be at the hospital
for many days, typically like five to ten days for
it to run. Yeah, that is it's great. So we

(17:01):
have stuff like that that didn't exist like back in
my day, Like we weren't working with stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (17:07):
Do you think the do you think the laws are
different or do you think the police approach to people
are different?

Speaker 1 (17:13):
I think both. I think the laws are much different
now than they were, And I think law enforcement's tired.
They're tired, people are tired, and the lack of respect
and from both sides, I would say both sides. I
don't think it's one sided. Here. I go, like, as
a law enforcement officer, it is going to benefit you

(17:37):
to be kind and courteous and develop some kind of
rapport with somebody as opposed to coming all guns of
blazing all the time, coming in hot, coming in hot,
And like I would say that for the same for
people like be honest, be truthful, have a conversation, and
I think we immediately turn to violence all the time

(17:57):
instead of just actually sitting down and having a conversation
and so and it goes on both ways, both sides.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
So I think you have a very unique perspective and
our listeners don't fully understand where you are now, which
we're not going to tell them yet, but we'll just
say that you work with people that are oftentimes the
ones ending up in prison, right. And then you've also

(18:27):
got a degree in criminal justice, and we're a police
officer for six seven years, so you have a unique
perspective because you literally have been an advocate for both
sides of the spectrum. Right. And to hear you say,
it's so different now, our jails are so much fuller,
the lack of respect from both sides is so much different.

(18:49):
To me, It's just a phenomenal narrative on how much
change our society's gone through in just the last twenty
five years.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
Sure, do you have a sense of a remedy?

Speaker 1 (19:04):
I don't. I wish I did. For me. A lot
of things just come down to respect and relationships. That's
what it comes down to me. Like, if we're building
relationships and community, whether we're a nonprofit, whether we're a
police department, whether we're a fire department, whether we're a
business owner, I think there's a lot of value and

(19:27):
power in developing relationships and then holding your community accountable.
And I just think we've lost that, we've lost all
sense of that.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
And now a few messages from our general sponsors. But
first we really want to hear from you about what
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or call or text us at nine oh one three

(20:03):
five two one three sixty six. We'll be right back.

(20:24):
You get put on the street and you run around
writing tickets and catch your bad guys. I guess, yeah, yeah,
what was that like?

Speaker 1 (20:32):
It was awesome? It was yeah, I loved it. I
really loved my job. I mean I got hired at
the Sheriff's apartment when I was twenty one, So I
always make the joke like they gave me a gun in.

Speaker 2 (20:43):
A patrol car at.

Speaker 1 (20:45):
Twenty one, Like, oh my word, it's like, but they did.
But I did really love my job, and I think
mostly because I love I do love helping and serving people,
and I love meeting new people. So my job was
different every day, like I did not do the same
thing every day, which was really cool.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
What's it like to arrest somebody?

Speaker 1 (21:08):
Well, if they're cooperative, yeah, Yeah, they're cooperative, it's wonderful.
If they're not cooperative, it's not so wonderful.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
Did you get scared?

Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yes, I would say there's one time that sticks out
in my head. I had already had my oldest daughter,
and this was actually when I realized I don't think
I could do my job anymore. I had felt like
I lost my edge, and we were there was a
call about guys with guns in like a party bus
type of what Yeah, guys with guns? Yeah, And so it.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
Sounds like, uh, that's that sounds like I don't know
what TV show, but that sounds like a TV show,
something that would happen on Girls Gone Wild or something.

Speaker 1 (21:52):
Right, Yeah, So.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
I just guys with guns.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
Guys with guns on a party talking about.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
Her party that's got a rye. Or we're talking about
bad guys that just happened to be at a bus
the ladder, bad guys that happened to be at a bus. Yeah,
so what are they doing?

Speaker 1 (22:09):
And so I remember I saw the vehicle and I
was like, oh, shoot, what am I going to do?
Is like my first call having a baby with someone
with a gun.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
And I'm supposed to pull these people out there, and I'm.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
Supposed to pull these people over and have an interaction
with them. And I have a baby at my friend's
house who's watching her right now? And I just kept thinking,
I don't know if I can do this. I've lost
my edge. And it was shortly after that that I
decided I just couldn't do it anymore.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
So you go to you go to four years of school,
get the criminal justice thing, You go through the and
and you've got this career. But then all of a sudden,
your maternal instincts you surp your what your your passion
for law and forcement and service and all? Yeah, what's

(23:02):
your husband's name? Jake? Jake? Yeah, so went along this
this track? So far? Did you meet Jake? So?

Speaker 1 (23:11):
I met Jake. We have a very interesting story. So
I met him in ninety seven, early March of ninety seven,
and we were married, pregnant, and had a house by
November of ninety seven. Wow.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah, yeah, Hey, Jake, want to have a baby at
a house? Started life?

Speaker 1 (23:35):
Let's see here we go, let's do it.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
Did you arrest him and force him in this? No?

Speaker 1 (23:39):
I met him at a bar. I would love to
say it was some really cool story, but it's not.
We met at a bar in Saint Patrick's day.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
Well, there you have it.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
Yeah, and it's been ever since.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
And you were a cop, right.

Speaker 1 (23:52):
Yeah, yeah, I worked. I actually was at the bar
with a bunch of people I worked with, and my
husband kept saying, well, now that he tells me, he's like,
I just didn't know if you were with all of
these guys, like were they your dates or what were they?

Speaker 2 (24:05):
And I was like, but I mean, isn't that a
cops story to meet their spouse at a bar of
all days, Patty, that's a cop story. It is maybe
more of a New York cops story, but it was still
a cop story.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yes, for sure.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
All right, and your first kid's name is Madison Madison,
and so how many kids? So but you you you
you get out of law enforcement when Madison is.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
Yeah, so the other three come later, right, Well, so
I have Maddie, and I remember when I had her.
I was like, I don't think I want to go
back to work anymore. And my husband was like, we
did not talk about this, like I know, surprise, and
so so I had her, and then we got I

(24:51):
was pregnant with Laney in two thousand and I left
my job in like ninety eight, ninety nine.

Speaker 2 (24:59):
Got it. Yeah, at this point you're a mom.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
I am a mom, stay at home mom. Yeah, it
was great, loving it so great?

Speaker 2 (25:07):
Is it?

Speaker 1 (25:08):
Yeah? I loved it.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
You know, we Lisa and I have four children. We
had four and four years.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
God bless you. God blessed Lisa, God bless Lisa.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
I didn't you know, I did the fun part.

Speaker 1 (25:19):
She's amazing too.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
She is phenomenal. Yes, she absolutely is. So did you
stay at home mom?

Speaker 1 (25:27):
Yeah? So I had Maddie and ninety eight, and then
we had Laney in two thousand and then we had
Peyton in two thousand and one, so they're fourteen months apart.
And then my son Maguire was born in two thousand
and five.

Speaker 2 (25:41):
And this whole time you're being a mom. I am
What's shape do for a living?

Speaker 1 (25:45):
He's a carpenter. He loves to build things.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
I love it. So at this point you're having just
the normal American life with a little bit over the
average number of kids, and you're living a dream. But
you feel called to do something else.

Speaker 1 (26:03):
Yeah, So a nonprofit in the area asked if I
would be interested in working for them and doing what
Sunday school programs for inner city kids at a church
and vacation Bible schools. So I did Sunday school programs.
I created a program forum, created a VBS program, vacation
Bible School program, and loved it. Loved it so much.

(26:27):
And then we had a girl run away that I
was pretty close.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
To from Bible school.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
Yeah, well she had ran away from home, but she
was involved in our Bible school. She was involved in
our Sunday mornings. And I had the you know, the
local gramma who knows everyone's stuff that's going on, call
me at like seven in the morning and she's like,
you got to turn the news on. This girl's picture
was on the news. She had been missing for four days.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (26:53):
And I was like, oh my gosh, we got to
figure out what's going on. So I texted her and
called her and paid like all the things, and finally
she got back with me, this girl, and I was like,
you need to come home fifteen and she got back
with you. Yeah. I was like you, well, we had
a relationship. So it was interesting because her and I

(27:15):
had had a conversation about what trafficking looked like in
the city, Like if you a lot girls are running
away like crazy in the city, and it can be.
In this situation, it was literally because of a pair
of shoes. She wanted a pair of shoes and her
mom wouldn't buy it for her, and there was just
a lot of tension at their house, and so she

(27:37):
ended up running away. And her and I had a
conversation at the church a few weeks before that about
what trafficking looked like. I did a trafficking presentation for
Team Girls, and we talked about online stuff. We talked
about being approached with these great gifts and these great
opportunities that weren't true, and so we literally her and

(27:59):
I had a private personal conversation for like three minutes.
It was really short, but I was like, hey, I
just always want you to remember the things that we
talked about in here, Like things aren't what they look
like when you're on the street, and so like if
you decide to leave your school or leave your house,
just remember the things we talked about, like people offering
you money for things, offering you purses and shoes, And

(28:20):
she remembered that, and so she said she ended up
going to a friend's house and we ended up getting
her to go back home. But she had encountered all
of those situations, and so she's like, I had encountered
a guy asking telling me he could buy me all
of these great things.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
Deb we got a back up.

Speaker 1 (28:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
Well, people listening to this, they hear vacation Babbo school,
and clearly you're a Christian and faithful because you have
evoked you felt called to do things. When I hear
church in vacation Babbo school, I don't think classes on trafficking.

Speaker 1 (28:58):
Yeah right, that doesn't.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
I imagine a bunch of people making doing arts and
crafts and singing Jesus Lovesman. I don't imagine having conversation
with fourteen or fifteen year old girls about human trafficking,
about prostitution. Give me a sense of what this church looks.

(29:24):
I mean, I'm not envisioning a a white steep church
off in the sound of Music Hills. This must be
a different church situation.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
So it's in a very poverty stricken zip code. A
lot of the houses aren't shouldn't be lived in, but
they are that kind of environment.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
And low socio yep.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
Very low, and kids skipping school, kids not going to school,
kids fighting at school if they did go to school.

Speaker 2 (30:03):
How you getting these people and do a church?

Speaker 1 (30:05):
You just well, we just went around the neighborhood and
asked people to come to church. Really yeah, yeah, you
just you got to be in the neighborhood. You got
to be in the community to just build that relationship
for people to trust you. And that's what we did.
And then they would bring people in and people just
keeping like we had a really strong vacation Bible school

(30:27):
program and Sundays we didn't have as many kids, but
it really was because of us going into the community
and just building that trust.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
So you got out of law enforcement because you feared
for your safety, not really for your own but for
your families. But then you decide, okay, well I'm not
going to have the backing of the police at keV
Larvest and a gun, but A'm I going to the
same neighborhood and knock on doors. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:55):
I know when you say it like that, Bill, it
doesn't sound all that just saying youat what you're no. Yeah,
But honestly, I get asked all the time, like are
you scared.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
I don't feel scared.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
I get that. I never felt scared of classes.

Speaker 1 (31:12):
Yeah, I don't. I don't feel like that. I don't.
And honestly, I think a part, a huge part of
it is just the genuine, authentic love that we show
people like it is just authentic and we're not perfect,
we don't have it all figured out, but we really

(31:33):
love people.

Speaker 2 (31:33):
Well, we'll be right back. So what possessed you to

(31:54):
care enough about the kids in this impoverished neighborhood and
getting them into anything that to be part of positive
that you wanted to go knock around on doors in
the hood.

Speaker 1 (32:09):
I think part of I.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
Say the hood, but I'm picturing the hood.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
It is, Yeah, it is. I think part of it
is realizing that I had privilege growing up. I had
that and most of my all of my friends on
my street did not have that.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
Hold it you had privilege? Oh yeah, going to the
daughter of a bus driver and a J. C. Penny's person,
living in an apartment in an inner city Detroit doesn't
sound overly privilege.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
No, but going to Lutheran school instead of Detroit public
schools was a huge privilege, a huge privilege, Like I
can remember my neighbors.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
But your parents didn't afford you.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
Right exactly. I can remember my neighborhood friends coming home
with like one kid had a black eye because he'd
gotten into somebody hit him at school. I mean this
is in the eighties, right, and I just remember going, Wow,
I don't have those experiences where I'm at. And I

(33:01):
did go to a very diverse school, so I really
learned a lot about different cultures, and I loved that.
I loved being a part of the culture we had
at my school. At the African American culture was so
strong and so good, and that's what I wanted to
be a part of. And that's the kind of community

(33:21):
I grew up in.

Speaker 2 (33:23):
So the girl that disappeared, that the grandmother who knows everything,
which I know, the grandmothers you're talking about. You also
have to answer to those grandmothers.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
You absolutely do. Just be right, You best be right,
and you best.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
Answer for help. But they'll also call you and tell
you when you're messing up.

Speaker 1 (33:42):
They for sure will. And if you don't answer their
phone call, they will call you back five more times
and like too many, or just show up or just
show up.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
I know those yep, I know you do.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
I do too.

Speaker 2 (33:53):
So you got this girl to go home?

Speaker 1 (33:54):
Yep, we got this girl to go.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
But when that happened, it triggered something, inn't you.

Speaker 1 (33:58):
It did because she said to me, could you have
a place where Could there be a place where I
could just go so I could like calm down after
a fight with my parents or a place to go
where I could just sit and figure out how I
was feeling. And I was like, well, I could think

(34:20):
about that. I don't know what that would look like.
And so originally, when I was praying about it and
figuring out what God wanted me to do, I was like,
maybe we would just have like a drop in center
for teen girls after high school. That's how my thoughts
process started. Like it would be a place for girls
to go after high school, after school was done, they

(34:40):
could calm, they could hang out, get a meal, and
just talk through stuff that happened through the day, talk
through stuff going on at their house, and then we
would try to come through figure out problem solving. That's
originally how it started, and then it grew into helping
adult women.

Speaker 2 (34:59):
So why do you care?

Speaker 1 (35:06):
I just I just think that everybody has value I
really do. I and the people we work with aren't
seen as having value, they're not seen as having worth.
I think sometimes that's probably why people don't get involved
with us, because it's a very hard demographic to work with.

(35:31):
And so that's like, those are the people that are
I think are overlooked the most that I want to
be able to go, Hey, you do have value, you
do have worth, and we want to show you what
that looks like.

Speaker 2 (35:44):
So tell us who it is you work with.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
So we work with women who.

Speaker 2 (35:49):
Are women's an interesting word.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
Women and men. To be honest, we work with women.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
I mean some of them aren't legally women.

Speaker 1 (35:57):
Yeah, well we're right, and so women, men, We work
with transgender, any of that population, anyone who's struggling with homelessness,
substance abuse, trafficking, force, prostitution, and we really do just
love them and meet them where they're at.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
But what I mean is some of these ages are
fourteen and fifteen.

Speaker 1 (36:22):
So we work with so all of our clients are
typically eighteen and older.

Speaker 2 (36:27):
Got it, Yeah, but you see.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
We have seen yes, younger for sure.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
So we'll talk about what you do to work with
them in a minute. But what does a I'm picking one.
This is my fictitious world, okay, but you can put
reality on top of this vision that I have of

(36:56):
a twenty year old woman who is walking the streets
selling herself, probably has an addiction, probably has nowhere to
stay consistently with the roof over her head. Where does

(37:19):
that person come from, how does that happen? And what's
going on between their ears when you can actually talk
to them.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
Yeah, so give us that person. So it could be
a wide range of who that person can be. That
one of those people could be from foster care who's
been through the system and aged out of the system
and has nowhere to go. We see that often. But
we also see the person from the suburbs that got

(37:48):
into a fight with their mom or dad and met
somebody online and it looked like a better situation, ended
up on the street, and then ended up addicted and
now can't leave. So we have that situation we have.
I've heard stories from women saying, I watched my mom
do this, This was how she survived. This is how

(38:10):
she put food on the table for us and a
roof over our head, and so this is really what
we grew up seeing. It's generational and we've seen people
who have just come right from addiction and then just
to feed their addiction, just continue to be out there.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
So I can remember when I was a kid, we
used to play Chips, all right, Remember the remember the
TV show Chips, Yes, yea with John Poncerello and the
other guy Jean. Yeah, but anyway, it was a hispanic

(38:50):
dude and a very white guy and they ride their
motorcycles around. Well, we would ride our bicycles around and
act like the Chips people. And of course I was
always the really white dude because he had blond hair
and was light skinned and I look like I look.
And I had a friend named David Leon who obviously
with the name David Leon was John Poncerello or whatever

(39:13):
his name was. Anyway, we just love to write, I mean,
and when I was growing up, always thought, how cool
would it be to be a motorcycle police? Yeah? You know,
do you remember that time in your life what you
dreamed of being? What you wanted to be? Do you
remember that? What was it?

Speaker 1 (39:29):
It was not law enforcement.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
But what was it? You wanted to be a veterinarian? Yeah,
what'd you want to be? Alex a sports broadcaster. You
wanted to be a sports broadcaster. So, I mean, everybody
who's listening to us, I wish they'd go back to
that six to seven eight year old You know, what'd
you want to be when you grow up?

Speaker 1 (39:48):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (39:48):
I bet nobody says a hooker.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
Nope. Not one person I've ever talked to on the
street says I love my job, I love what I do,
and I want to be here.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
Yeah. And so that's the thing is nobody says I
want to grow up be a hooker. No one says
I want to grow up and live on the streets
and use my body. And it's just so devastating because
our country is full of these streets. In Detroit where

(40:22):
you happen to work, you see it every day. And
I'm trying so hard to get the sense of what
drives a human being to live in filth and to

(40:42):
sell themselves and to put themselves in that abuse when
that's not what anybody ever wants to be. And you
say foster care and they get turned out and they
have nowhere to go. I mean that's heartbreaking because we're

(41:03):
talking about a foster kid who has already been crapped
on their whole life, so they're almost systematically falling into
a crack. And then you know, you talk about I mean,
what is it the family business? A second generation thing,

(41:24):
and I want to strangle the mother who even painted
a picture of a life for a child to grow
up like that. But more than likely that mother came
from an incredible amount of traumen dysfunction that even led
to that in the first place. So that's more devastation

(41:46):
obviously addiction, And to think of a young lady who
is probably going through high school or whatever, gets caught
up in a crowd, which I hate every At some
point everybody says they're hanging around with the wrong crowd.
At some point, somebody is the crowd and they're not
hanging around with themselves. So the hanging around with the

(42:08):
wrong crowd is kind of a weird thing because you
kind of are that crowd, so you're hanging around with
the wrong person, which.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
You're hanging around for yourself, the wrong person exactly.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
So I hate that whole thing. But the addiction then
leading to, you know, a place where the only way
you know how to feed your addiction is to fall
into this lifestyle. And then a kid from the Burbs.
For goodness sakes, who meets somebody online and ends up

(42:39):
in this world? But all of it is just so devastating,
It really is, and dev I just can't imagine waking
up one day and saying I want to go be
around these people every day.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
Why I honestly, I just think it is how I'm
wired to love and serve people that are always overlooked.
Honestly I do.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
I often say that it's important that a discipline and
passion meet opportunity if you're ever going to do anything
in this world. And I talk about an army of
normal folks serving as a catalyst for people to find
their passion and their discipline and then listen long enough

(43:30):
to meet an opportunity where they can employ it and
get involved.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
And it's just interesting to me that your passion and
your discipline are people, and your discipline was a law
enforcement person, and it comes from kind of how you
came up and then you see an opportunity where most
people look the other way. It's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (43:55):
Yeah, I think so too.

Speaker 2 (43:57):
So let's Jay think about his wife hanging out over here.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
So it took him a minute to get used to it.
The idea. But as years have gone on, he's gone
out with us, so he sees he knows all the
people I talk about, and he can see how like
the relationships are so great between between all the people

(44:24):
out there. So I think he's in a good place
about it. What he doesn't love the idea because my
dream is that I would move to that area. So
I would love for me and him to buy a
house in our outreach area and live there. And that's
he's not on board with.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
That yet yet is the operative word.

Speaker 1 (44:41):
I'm like, it's got to come eventually, I know.

Speaker 2 (44:45):
So I've read that somewhere, maybe in my notes, or
maybe Alex provided it, or maybe was even in the
email that you reached out to me with, which was awesome,
that you were actually losing your own home.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
We were, Yeah, why so.

Speaker 2 (45:06):
Four children, that's scary.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
It was very scary. My husband lost his job. This
is when two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine
housing crisis.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
Yeah, there's a carpentry probably wouln't get much of it.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
Yeah, he was not having much work, and so we
ended up losing our house.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
You did lose it, We don't. I thought it was maybe.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
No, we did, and the foreclosed on. Yep, we got
four closed on.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
Did you own it? We did, and the bank got
it yep. And you have four children, yep. Were you
not freaked out?

Speaker 1 (45:37):
Yeah? Yeah, a little bit. And then we found a
house to rent. So we rented a house on a
mile road that was about four miles from the city.

Speaker 2 (45:49):
Didn't screw up your credit? Oh yeah, whole life?

Speaker 1 (45:52):
Oh yeah, but now we have a house bill. So
that's good.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
We bought house and no, I know that's great, but
the point is that and sods with when you decided
to get on the street and help.

Speaker 1 (46:02):
People, Yeah, how does that work?

Speaker 2 (46:05):
Well?

Speaker 1 (46:05):
So, when we lived in this house on a mile road,
like four miles from the city, Across the street from
our house was a liquor store and a bus stop
and so we were homeschooling the kids at the time,
and I was like, what could we be doing in
this community? Like, we just have to do something because
we're here. I don't know how long we're going to
be here for, but we might as well embrace the
fact that we're here and utilize this time wisely. So

(46:30):
we started giving. It was the winter time, so we
would provide hot chocolate to the people at the bus stop.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
How can you provide hot chocolate for me a bus
stop when he can't even pay your bills.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
I know, I know, I know.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
Well you keep saying no, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (46:43):
I don't either. I don't know how we did it,
but we did. And my husband would get like pick
up little odd jobs here and there, so like he
can make anything.

Speaker 2 (46:51):
He was not looking at you say and quit spending
money on hot chocolate. We can't pay our bills.

Speaker 1 (46:55):
Maybe he was thinking that, but he didn't verbalize that.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
Wow. Yeah, the reason I'm asking this is not to
take you through a clearly traumatic time in your life.
But everybody's all what not everybody? Oftentimes people are always saying,
I really want to help, but now's not the time.
I really want to do something my community, but I
need to get this taken care of first. You're out

(47:20):
there in the community, losing your home, raising money for
other people when you can't even pay your own bills.
That is correct, that's phenomenal. Yeah, we'll be right back.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
I just remember God telling me you need to do
something in the city, and you need to find the
house to do that in, And I just remember going,
I don't even have my own house right like, we're
renting a house and we are literally living week to
week right now, paycheck to paycheck. And I remember telling

(48:15):
my husband one day when we were in the car
driving together, because timing is everything when you talk to
your husband about some big plan you.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
Have right now, I'm saying, everything we talked to your wife.

Speaker 1 (48:23):
Yeah, this is true.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
Trust me.

Speaker 1 (48:24):
I know, I know, and I don't know why I
picked this time, but I don't even remember where we
were going, but I remember going, I've been praying and
asking God to show us what we're supposed to do.
And so my husband was like, I don't know if
you if you get someone to donate a house to you,
I guess we can make that happen. But otherwise I
don't know what you're thinking. And I was like, I

(48:45):
don't know either. I don't know how it's going to happen,
but I'm just going to keep figuring it out.

Speaker 2 (48:50):
So and somebody donated a house.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
And somebody donated a house, yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:56):
Which sets in play this dream that from a conversation
from the first fifteen year old that said, to you,
if I just had somewhere to go, yeah, and you
don't even have your own house, but you get a
house donated for the people who have nowhere to.

Speaker 1 (49:11):
Go, right. That's crazy, I know, I know.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
So tell me what a days back in those times?
What does go out? You've said a couple of times,
and we need to let the listeners know what we're
talking about. You said go out? What does go out mean?

Speaker 1 (49:29):
Yeah? So when we first started, we took our personal
car and went to an area that was I knew
really well, near where I grew up. So it's like,
I know this area, I'm just going to go look
for people who might need food or might need you.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
Literally just went out looking for me.

Speaker 1 (49:47):
Literally, we went in our car, my husband and I
just me and him. And then that kind of grew
from printing missing girl flyers. So there was lots of
girls missing from the city of Detroit, and so I
printed flyers and then we would go into gas stations,
tattoo parlors, all the places, go hey, have you seen
these girls? Any of them look familiar? And if anybody
thought they did, we would call in a tip that

(50:08):
kind of thing. And then I ran into We ended
up on this one street, Harper, and I was talking
to an off duty police officer who was working security
at this hotel. I was like, hey, I'm really like
I want to find women that we can really love
on and serve. And he was like, well, you hit
the jackpot. This is it right here. And I was

(50:28):
like this whole strip right here and he was like yeah.
And so then that's where we ended up. And we
would literally just ask people do you need food? Do
you need hygiene? Do you need food? Do you need hygiene?
And for like six months, people would flip us off.
I was called FBI. Someone thought I was an FBI agent.
At one point I was called the police, I mean

(50:49):
all the things for like six months until the one
person in the neighborhood who was kind of like the
ring leader of the neighborhood finally was like, I'll take
food from you. And when that happened, everybody started.

Speaker 2 (51:02):
It took six months to get so, yeah, did you
take a free sandwich?

Speaker 1 (51:05):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (51:06):
Yeah, because they trusted so little. Yep, are you walking
up to girls they're just on a corner?

Speaker 1 (51:11):
Yeah? Literally, and we're in a van, but yeah, we
literally walk up to girls that are on the corner.
And now we go to drug houses because we know
where those are, so we do both sake.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
I just I'm trying to figure out you did you
have your gut up in your I'm putting myself in
your shoes.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:29):
If I'm walking up to a corner with one or
two or three girls or whatever, and I may be
sensationalize this, So if what I'm painting is inaccurate, correct me.
But walk up to a street person, a girl, I
assume halfway scantily cloud but maybe just trying to corner

(51:51):
attention from a john on a corner, and I'm walking
out to say, Hey, I'm dub you want a sandwich?

Speaker 1 (52:01):
Yep?

Speaker 2 (52:02):
I mean were you a little nervous the first.

Speaker 1 (52:05):
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I was definitely nervous the first
time I asked, And then it did get easier each
time I'd ask, Hey, are you hungry? Is usually what
I say, Hey are you hungry? Because that's a simple question,
and usually you're hungry, So they're like, yeah, I'm like, oh,
I have a sandwich. They either say yes or they
say no. At the beginning, it was no, I don't

(52:25):
want nothing from you, and then just as time went on,
it changed people's people changed.

Speaker 2 (52:33):
When you say, hygiene, what does that mean?

Speaker 1 (52:36):
So it would be we have like a bag full
of different items and they're and they're all different. But
sometimes they have like a toothbrush, toothpaste, bar, soap, shampoo,
travel sized shampoo conditioner, just your basic needs. Sometimes they'll
have wipes in them, just kind of depends on who makes.

Speaker 2 (52:52):
Them, just so that they can clean up.

Speaker 1 (52:55):
Yeah, because there's no like typically no running water, there's
no where.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
Do these schools typically stay.

Speaker 1 (53:02):
In abandoned houses?

Speaker 2 (53:04):
Are they pimped?

Speaker 1 (53:06):
Some of them are pimped, and some of them are
working for food and a place to stay. So if
you stay at an abandoned house, sometimes the abandoned house
is owned by a drug dealer, owned or just squatted on,
squatted on, I guess is a better way to say it.
And so you have to pay for your space in

(53:26):
that room, so you might have to. Yeah, yep, that
is disgusting. It is absolutely disgusting.

Speaker 2 (53:37):
Why aren't we locking up these squatting homeowner people?

Speaker 1 (53:43):
I think because the city is just too overwhelmed and
too busy to even worry about something like this.

Speaker 2 (53:50):
Once again, the forgotten people. Right, So, how's a typical
transaction or yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:01):
So typically we pull up and usually now people wave
us down. Somebody referred to us as like the ice
cream truck when they see our big white van, where
like we pull up in the neighborhood and people just
come out. We beat the horn at drug houses, so
we'll pull up, beat the horn, people will come out
and then we give them food, We give them hygiene

(54:21):
from the window. If they need clothes that I'll get
out of the van, go to the back of the van.
They can pick up clothes. They can always pick out
things that they want, so you can pick two shirts
and two pairs of pants. We'll give you socks, gloves
in the winter, hat, that kind of things. So yeah,
most of it happens from the window, but a lot
of times if they need clothes, So I try to

(54:43):
do clothes for every woman that we meet at least
once a week. So we just kind of remember, like, hey,
I gave you clothes last week, so we're not going
to do it today, We'll do it next week.

Speaker 2 (54:52):
I gotta believe you're talking to them, You're using the
opportunity to have conversations with them about important stuff. Oh yeah,
we're talking long for the house or any that I'm
just talking to people on the street that you're just
trying to build a relationship with. Yeah, pretend like I'm
one of them. What are you going to say to me?

Speaker 1 (55:07):
Yeah? I always tell them like, do you know how
value and worthy you are?

Speaker 2 (55:11):
Like?

Speaker 1 (55:12):
Do you know that your value is much more than
this moment right here on the street and this house
and this environment? Do you know your value is more
than that?

Speaker 2 (55:21):
And a lot of times, but I don't believe you
because I've been devalued my entire life.

Speaker 1 (55:26):
But now I feel like, because we have such the relationship,
they actually believe it when it comes from me.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
But I don't. I've grown up abused, I've grown up beaten,
I've grown up second class. I'm out here selling myself.
Even in the most desperate times. When I do look
at myself in the mirror, I know what I see,
and what I see lacks value. And I appreciate you
showing up in the van and give me a sandwich
or some clothes, But you don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 1 (55:53):
So maybe one day you will see how you're valued
and worthy. And because we show up consistently and love
you know, no matter what, you can come up to
our van, and you can have a crack pipe in
your hand, you can come up with a needle in
your arm. We are going to still accept you just
how you are, and eventually that will sink in. And
a lot of women have said you are the only
unconditional lover or relationship we experience. Like we get to

(56:18):
come and there's no strings attached, you don't. You can
come up to our van and if you decide you're
you're pissed off at us today. You don't want to
take a lunch, that's fine, that's your choice. You don't
have to come talk to us. You don't have to
take anything from us, because you get a choice today here.
And eventually that will sit in.

Speaker 2 (56:42):
When when you're handing a sandwich or you're handing clothes
out a window, you know that within the next few
hours in that woman's life, she's going to be creating
a second sacked for twenty.

Speaker 1 (57:00):
Or thirty bucksp about twenty about twenty boucks twenty Yeah,
for sex?

Speaker 2 (57:10):
How do you? I don't know how you deal with that.

Speaker 1 (57:13):
It's hard. I mean there's a lot of days when
I come home and my heart is just broke and
I cry because they don't see their value and worth yet.
And so for me, I just I want to consistently
tell them that, Like I'm always telling them that, whether

(57:34):
they believe it or not, at least it's planning the
seed to know how loved and valued they are. And
the true fact is a lot of the women I
mean will not survive the streets. I mean, this year,
we've lost seven girls to various overdoses. A couple of

(57:57):
girls were hit by a car, some girls were shot shot,
drug deal gone bad? What about right all the time?

Speaker 2 (58:09):
What does that mean all the time?

Speaker 1 (58:10):
They don't? Then they all the time. So there's this
there's this idea in our culture right now that well,
if we legalize prostitution, it'll eliminate all of these harmful
things that happen to women. Women do not get to
pick and choose a lot what kind of sex act

(58:30):
they want to perform in the car. They don't get
in a car where usually most of the dates, that's
what they call them dates happen. They don't get to
go this is what I want to do, and that's it.
They're told what they have to do. They're forced to
do what they have to do whether they want to
do it or not. Women are always telling me how
they were raped and forced to do something they didn't

(58:51):
want to do, and I always ask them, do you
want to file a police report? I will go with you.
Do you have a plate? Do you have a car?
Deciding always know it's always no. And so when we
do see cars and dates taking place with women getting in,
we take plates down, we take car descriptions because of that,

(59:12):
if that woman ever comes back to me and go,
that guy in that car, that type of car did
this to me and I didn't want to, Well, now
I at least have a plate.

Speaker 2 (59:20):
Or if that girl never shows up again, or.

Speaker 1 (59:21):
The girl never shows up again, because that happens too.

Speaker 2 (59:24):
Absolutely, do they found bodies?

Speaker 1 (59:27):
Oh yeah?

Speaker 2 (59:29):
Did they investigate it?

Speaker 1 (59:31):
They do? Really yeah. I think they do the best
that they can do with the amount of resources and
time they have.

Speaker 2 (59:39):
And probably a real lack of information. Nobody's talking to
the police.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
No one's talking to the police, no one.

Speaker 2 (59:48):
All right, this thing does get redemptive. But I wanted
to have this part of the conversation for people to
fully grasp how desperate and sick and how really this
is the darkest of our culture. It really doesn't get

(01:00:11):
much darker. We're talking about rape, we're talking about abuse,
we're talking about drug abuse. We're talking about living in
a place without running water so that you can have
your dates or turn your tricks or whatever inside this place,
and all doing it for twenty bucks yep, and getting beaten.

Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
On right regularly, regularly.

Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
We'll be right back. So you decided one day to
go serve in really the darkest of the dark. And

(01:01:05):
how long are you doing this work? Serving these girls
by just trying to feed them, clothe them, give them
basic toil tries, but most importantly, trying to convince them
of their personal value and worth. How long do you
How long are you engaged in just that without a house?

Speaker 1 (01:01:29):
Yeah? About three years?

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
Okay. So word starts to get around about the ice
cream truck lady, who's crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:01:36):
Yeah, that's exactly what they say. If it comes that
white lady, that's crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
That white lady's crazy, that gives everybody white ladies here,
white ladies here with the ice cream truck. And so
someone I guess hears about you and says, yeah, I
want to give a house.

Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
Yeah, So I get a phone call on a Saturday
morning from a woman who didn't know me, but knew
a group of women who knew me from my church.
And she set her word first words out of our mouth.
This will be the strangest conversation you've ever I have
strangest phone call you've ever received. And I go, okay, what.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
Three years you've spoke?

Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
Yeah? Right, I know it amen to that. So I
was like okay. She goes, I was praying this morning
and God said that we're supposed to give this house
to you. I'm like, what house? And she said, well,
my husband inherited a house from his cousin in Detroit,
and we heard you were looking for a house in Detroit.
Do you think you would be interested? And I was

(01:02:30):
like I was ready to say yes right then. I
was like, yeah, I want the house. And she's like,
maybe you should come look at it first. So it's like, oh, yeah,
that's a good idea. I should take our board and
we should go look at it and see. So we
went and looked at it and it was great. It
was structurally a very very sound house. It just needed
some rehabbing inside. So we accepted it and then we

(01:02:52):
we did renovations to it. And yeah, you have to
be married. I happened to be married to a carpenter,
so that's very helpful. And yeah, so then we opened
it up and I was actually was like, maybe we
won't open it right away. I want to make sure
we have all of our ducks in a row. I
want to have all our paperwork set. And then as
soon as it was done being renovated, people were calling like, hey,

(01:03:14):
do you have availability for a bed space for a
woman who's been on the streets. And I was like, well,
I guess we're doing this right now because there was
just such a need.

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
Did you have your own house at this point.

Speaker 1 (01:03:26):
No, we were renting, so we had moved from the
place we were renting. Now we were in a different suburb,
but we were still renting.

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
It's so amazing to me that your organization is going
to own a house to take care of people and
you still don't even have your own. Yeah. I don't
know much about your kids and your husband, but they

(01:03:54):
have to be special people.

Speaker 1 (01:03:55):
They really are.

Speaker 2 (01:03:57):
They really are to allow you this.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
Yep, yes they are. My husband is a saint. Yeah,
my husband's a saint for just allowing the things to
happen to happen the way they did. Your children too, Yeah,
and for this they did give up their mom and
they've all gone on outreach with me. So they've all

(01:04:22):
experienced it, and I think that those opportunities of being
on the street really helped them understand why I do
what I do. It really gave them that experience.

Speaker 2 (01:04:36):
So when did we call this house Ellie's House?

Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
So in twenty seventeen is when it became Ellie's House
because Ellie means God's Light and then it's part of
our last name, so.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
Which is also interesting that it just happened. So now
you have this house and people are calling, but you
can't just swing the doors open to everybody. There has
to be rules, there has to be something, yeah, so
and then there has to be now a greater purpose.
We're not just giving out sandwiches and.

Speaker 1 (01:05:14):
Clothes, right, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
So take us through the evolution of it to that point.

Speaker 1 (01:05:21):
Yeah. So we actually went to a training here in
Tennessee for a place called Thistle Farms. So we went
and did their training because we want to model their program.
It was an amazing program and so they're so generous.
They give you all their paperwork. They don't make like
this share all their paperwork with you. So you just go, hey,
if this is what we're going to do, we just

(01:05:42):
got to make this work for us and adapt it
for our program. We followed exactly what they did to
adapt a program, and then we just Our first resident
that we took in was someone that we have been
talking to on the streets and she went to Florida
to do a program in Florida. And while she was

(01:06:05):
in Florida, she kept in touch with us, and she
was coming back and she said, could I come and
do your program? And so she did, and so she
was our first resident in our house and it was
really it was really cool to watch her grow.

Speaker 2 (01:06:20):
Tell me about that.

Speaker 1 (01:06:22):
So she came and she, oh, gosh, we love her.
And she worked our program really hard for about four
months and then things just got hard. And relapse is
part of the process, honestly. It is just what happens
multiple times until you're completely ready to be able to

(01:06:44):
stand up to the addiction and not do it anymore.
And so she did four or five months with us
and then relapsed. And so she's actually still on the
streets now, but we see her very all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:06:57):
What's the rules?

Speaker 1 (01:06:59):
So no, no drugs, no sex, no alcohol. You cannot
just come and go as you please. So there's you
have to be accountable to me and where you go.
You have to be in therapy. So we find you
a counselor, we find you mental health therapist. We want
to help you find a job and do all of
those things, but we want to make sure that you're

(01:07:21):
successfully progressing through a therapy program with somebody. So honestly,
for the first three, three to six months you're with us,
you are just doing your appointments. You're just doing your
treatment appointments. You're just doing therapy appointments, and that's it.
And getting used to living in a house.

Speaker 2 (01:07:37):
You take them straight off the streets.

Speaker 1 (01:07:39):
No, so you have to work a.

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):
Program, You have to be dealing with all kinds of stuns.

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
Yeah, so you're yeah, you'd have to be working with detox.
We don't do any of those things. So a lot
of times we work closely with Salvation Army and so
we'll take a woman from the street to go there.
They help with the detox process, they work a program
there and then they can come to us.

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
How long is that take? Thirty days, so.

Speaker 1 (01:08:01):
Their program is six months, but we have we have
taken women from different programs that have been thirty days.

Speaker 2 (01:08:07):
But they're at least clean at the yes.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
Yeah, because we're not we're not equipped to help somebody
become clean.

Speaker 2 (01:08:13):
No, I'll get it. Yeah, but then they move into
your home. Now, how long can they stay with you?

Speaker 1 (01:08:18):
Up to two years?

Speaker 2 (01:08:20):
Two years? Rent free, went free but no drug, no alcohol,
no sucks. What are they doing for that? Two years?

Speaker 1 (01:08:31):
Lots of things. So right now, our residents that we
have all have full time jobs. So the goal is
you get them jobs. They get them themselves. I mean,
they do the work to find them. We try to
figure out. We try to help them navigate what they're
passionate about. We want to know what you want to do,
like we we want you to find a job that's
going to help sustain you right and be successful, but

(01:08:53):
that you enjoy too. Sometimes we've had residents that can't
work a job, so they we help them get disability
SSI those types of things. The trauma has just been
too much and the addiction has just been too hard
on their body emotionally and physically.

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):
They literally just can't.

Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
They literally just can't. Yeah, and that's sad. It's yeah,
it's really sad. Were born No, No, absolutely not.

Speaker 2 (01:09:22):
So when one of these girls goes for an interview,
they don't have much of a resume. How does that work?

Speaker 1 (01:09:36):
Yeah, so we try to help them navigate what an
interview process would look like, and just to be honest
about what's gone on in their life. Right. And actually
a lot of places that we have our women have
worked at don't don't care if you have a misdemeanor
charge or even some felony charges. They are willing to
overlook because they want to help somebody, or they're just

(01:10:00):
in a position where they need help.

Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
And so do they know people from Eli's.

Speaker 1 (01:10:05):
House currently, the people that are working in their own
jobs do not know. So we really try to have
them find their jobs themselves. We will help you with
a resume, We will show you how to look for
a job. A lot of the women we work with
have had to learn how to use a computer and
how to find a job. They don't know any of
those skills. And then we help you navigate that so

(01:10:28):
you can get a job, but we want you to
get it on your own if possible. And so far,
our residents have been able to do that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):
And when they're in the house, I mean, what kind
of social interaction do they have?

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):
Yeah, so they'll have a roommate, there's two women in
each house. And then they're required to go to NA
or AA meetings every day, and sometimes they'll go to
more than one a day, so they have to be
at a meeting every day, which allows them to build community.
They also attend church, which builds community, and they go
to Bible studies.

Speaker 2 (01:11:03):
You said, AA, what is it like to sit in
on one of those Oh? Yeah, with everything, I understand
what A looks like in my world, which is friends
of mine who have mostly alcohol and they go and
they sit around a lot of them are business people

(01:11:24):
and whatever, and they talk about how hard they're But
an AA meeting with these girls has to be a
whole other level.

Speaker 1 (01:11:32):
Yeah. So I've only been able to go to and
I actually was an NA meeting. Most of the meetings
are closed, so unless you are a willing participant looking
for recovery, you can't attend a meeting. But I was
able to attend a meeting with our first resident. It
was NA meetings, and it is it's very humbling to

(01:11:54):
go and sit in a room and listen to people
share their stories, or even watch people not share their story,
but listen to other people's story in the midst of
their own trauma, on their own addiction. It's very humbling.

Speaker 2 (01:12:08):
Do you find it's is it almost always the addiction
that leads to it.

Speaker 3 (01:12:15):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:12:16):
I have found that some people end up on the
streets and then have their addiction to help them survive
being on the streets. So some people are struggling with
addiction prior to being out there, And then there's a
whole other group of people that, in order to survive
being out there, they're now struggling with the effectication.

Speaker 2 (01:12:38):
Yeah, exactly, which then leads to a whole other issues
with the addiction. Right, how many of the women that
you serve also have abuse in their background prior to
being on the streets, All of.

Speaker 1 (01:12:51):
Them, all of them, whether it's sexual or physical. I
have not found one woman that has said to me
I was not abuse used at some point in my life.
Every one of them, every one of them has had
some type of physical or sexual abuse. Now they all
struggle with addiction, and they all struggle with a mental
health disorder.

Speaker 2 (01:13:13):
I one of at least in my fundamental tenets of
raising children has always been my responsibility, which is regardless
of what I say, or what we do, or how
we illustrate what a good marriage looks like. My sons
will always treat their wives the way they see me

(01:13:34):
treat mine, and my daughters, maybe even more importantly, will
always expect to be treated the way they saw their
father treat their mother. If I'm respectful, honor her, protect her,
and love her, then that is what they're going to
expect exactly a husband. If they see me being abusive

(01:13:56):
just verbally, if they see me being physically abusive or
any of the other stuff, or they see me being
even you know, the silent treatment is a form of abuse. Yeah,
And if they see that, then that will be normalized

(01:14:16):
in their relationships one day. And so the biggest job
for my daughters is just to show them what to
expect out of a man one day and what not
to accept out of a man one day. And I've
really failed a lot, but I have tried to make

(01:14:38):
sure that my daughter's expected and accepted only the best
in another and their partner one day. And it is
so interesting to hear you say all of the girls
that you've served have dealt with abuse, because that same
tenet that I'm talking about is at that's exactly what

(01:15:02):
that is. And so when you see abuse and then
you've been abused as a young girl, being on the
street and being abused, while it sucks, I gotta believe
they almost accept it is just the way life is.

Speaker 1 (01:15:20):
They do. I mean, it's a great example of that
is when a girl tells me and I pull up
and I say, how is your day today? Which is
why I was raped earlier this morning, And I say,
do you want to go file a police report? And
oftentimes the response is no, like I deserved it or
I got like this is the life I lead out here.

(01:15:42):
So because of that this these things happen. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:15:49):
And meanwhile, you're trying to tell these folks that have
had a life of abuse that they're valued yep, that
they're loved, yeah, when they don't see themselves as lovable
or valuable exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:16:02):
But you get them in the house, yeah, I mean,
we try to get them in the house, We try
to get them someplace a program.

Speaker 2 (01:16:10):
But once in the house, yeah, do they start to
feel it and see it and believe it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:13):
I think so I think our girls right now feel
it and see it and believe it, which is really
cool to watch that happen.

Speaker 2 (01:16:20):
I wish people could see your face light up and
your big smile when you say that.

Speaker 1 (01:16:24):
It's so cool to just watch a woman realize how
valuable she is, Like, that's just super cool. And then honestly,
part of the journey for us is when they don't
see it, to just keep trying to get them to
see it, like that's just part of the story. And
to even watch a little bit of a breakthrough of

(01:16:44):
seeing it on the street and you know, for a
woman to say, you know, thank you, I see that
for a second is just it's just gold. It's just gold.

Speaker 2 (01:16:55):
So what does success look like for one of these girls?
For you?

Speaker 1 (01:16:58):
Yeah? So I get asked success story all the time,
and I don't want a story.

Speaker 2 (01:17:02):
I want to I will ask you that one. Yeah,
I want to know what success looks like. What makes
you go to sleep at night and say we did
a good job there.

Speaker 1 (01:17:13):
I honestly think it's the depth of conversation and the
depth of the relationship growing that is success to me,
because when I look at when we first went out
on the street, and how you know, people would flip
us off. And I had a lady kick my car once,
kick my van once, And like to that same woman

(01:17:35):
now who came up to our car and kicked it
as hard as she could with her foot, will now
say I love you when she leaves our car. Like,
that's a success story to me. Any interaction where a
woman is willing to share her vulnerable story with us
and share all of the vulnerable details of addiction and
what her day looks like, and what it looks like

(01:17:56):
to live in a drug house and what it looks
like to live in an abandoned house, Like that's a
privilege and that's a big win.

Speaker 2 (01:18:02):
Wow. Well, folks, That concludes Part one of my conversation
with deb Ellinger, and Part two is now available. I
promise you you do not want to miss it, but
if for some strange reason you do, make sure to
join the Army of Normal Folks at Normalfolks dot us

(01:18:25):
and sign up to become a member of the movement.
By signing up, you'll receive weekly email with short episode
summaries in case you happen to miss an episode or
if you prefer reading about our incredible guest. Together, guys,
we can change the country, and it starts with you.
I'll see you in Part two.