On this episode of Our American Stories, model, motivational speaker, and author, Christine Handy tells us how she became a breast cancer and medical malpractice survivor whose life was saved by two powerful forces: friends and faith. Scott Gilbert shares the impact he has had as the president of the Roaring Fork Valley Chapter of Habitat For Humanity by teaching life skills to people in prison.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
Time Codes:
00:00 - Modeling Grace: Christine Handy's Story of Survival
25:00 - I Retired At 50, And Was Bored....So I Served People
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories.
Up next to a story from Christine Handy about survival,
forgiveness and strength, Here's our own Monty Montgomery with the story.
Christine Handy was born in Chicago and raised in Saint Louis, Missouri.
(00:30):
I'm certainly a Midwestern girl. I am a mother of
two sons. I'm a motivational speaker, I'm a writer. I
am a lot of things, including a model. So I
started modeling when I was at the tender age of eleven.
I loved it. I actually loved being a model. It
(00:52):
was easy for me. I began to hone in on
learning those skills, to brighten up and be in front
of that camera, and it became something that I depended
on and throughout her career, Christine would lend modeling gigs
at PEPSI, J Crew, Petco, and Target, to name a few.
(01:12):
But success, as great as it is, as its downsides, too,
especially when success comes at such a young age. I
missed a lot of things that were really important for
my development. And I try not to blame anybody else
(01:33):
because my parents weren't really interested in me becoming a model.
They had three other daughters, and it wasn't their goal
for me to become a model. But to be honest
with you, when you have I was obviously very attractive,
and when you have people commenting on who you are,
which was solely based on what I look like, you
(01:53):
yearn for more of that attention. And when you're that age,
when you're that young, you don't realize is that other
people are getting nurtured in other ways. Like when I
would come home with my report card and it would
be straight a's, I would be excited to show that
to my parents, But I wasn't getting a lot of
attention for that. I was getting a lot of attention
(02:15):
because I was getting bigger and bigger modeling campaigns, you know,
like I had just gotten. I remember as a freshman
in high school, I just gotten this big campaign with PEPSI,
and I remember bringing my report card home going look
at me, look at me. I've got straight a's. And
it just I wasn't getting the foundation right. I wasn't
My life wasn't built on my mind, my brain or
(02:41):
inside you know. I wasn't learning self introspection. I wasn't
learning self worth. And most people at thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen.
You know society can correct them. Society's applause was not
correcting me. Society's applause was pushing me forward to this
narrative of depending on that outside beauty. So the external
(03:06):
facade became my measure of myself, or so to speak.
But I didn't realize it at the time. I started
to also develop an eating disorder a few years after
I started to model. And part of the reason I
believe that I started the eating disorder was because I
had some sort of control in my life. When I
(03:28):
felt out of control, right, I'd show up on set
as a model and the client might say, Oh, your
hair is not the right length, or your blonde hair
is too dark, or your waist is too big, or
whatever they were criticizing me. For I knew that I
can control what was going in and out of my body,
and so that became kind of a lifeline for me,
(03:51):
a very destructive one. And the longer I modeled, the
quicker of the eating disorder blossom and ultimately erupted. And
so I came home from my sophomore year in college
and I literally said to my parents. I sat him
down and I said, this thing this eating disorder that
all of us are ignoring. This thing exists and it's
(04:12):
controlling me, and I can't stop myself. And so my
mom looked at me and said, I'll take you to
the hospital. And I was there for thirty days and
it was great. I mean I really I took it
changed my life in a way because I didn't have
an eating disorder after that, So it worked. But when
I was leaving the hospital, one of the nurses said
(04:32):
to me, here's a pack of gum and I said, well,
what's this for? And she said, well, just in case
you mess up, just in case, you know, you throw
something up, chew a piece of gum. And I thought
to myself, she doesn't believe in me. So she's a
nurse and she's seen this before, so she doesn't believe
(04:55):
in me. Why would I? And so after that it
took a few years for me to really eliminate the
any disorder because I went back to it a little bit,
thinking in my mind, well, everybody goes back to it,
she told me. But it was that doubt, that doubt
that I clung to. It wasn't it wasn't the strong
(05:18):
belief in myself that I had conquered this right. It
was that doubt that she had put inside of me.
That's what I clung to. By the age, you know,
like late twenties, modeling had become a constant, became the
biggest constant in my life. I felt strangely safe in
(05:40):
front of the camera, and I felt confident, and I
felt loved. But I was getting older and I was
starting to feel this yearning for something meaning purpose. I
had no idea, but there was a slight emptiness inside
of me. But I squandered those thoughts, and I reminded
myself over and over again that the next ups in
(06:00):
my life or what I was living, I was supposed
to get married, I was supposed to have kids. And
at this point my self esteem was so dependent on
society and the rules of the place of women. I
was locked in like that was my measure. I was
living a performance based life. I found out quickly that
(06:22):
that beauty, that external despendency, was quicksand and when you
lose that, you better have some pretty strong foundation, and
for me, I just didn't. And you've been listening to
Christine Handy talk about her struggle with of all things beauty,
(06:42):
it can be a blessing, it can be a curse,
like so many things in our lives. When we come
back more with Christine Handy and her life story here
and now our American Story Folks, if you love the
(07:30):
great American stories we tell and love America like we do,
we're asking you to become a part of the Our
American Stories family. If you agree that America is a
good and great country, please make a donation. A monthly
gift of seventeen dollars and seventy six cents is fast
becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to our American
Stories dot com now and go to the donate button
(07:51):
and help us keep the great American stories coming. That's
our American Stories dot Com. And we returned to our
(08:12):
American Stories and to Christine Handy's story. When we last
left off, Christine was at the top of her professional life,
that being modeling. He had gotten gigs at Pepsi, Jay, Crewe,
Petco and many more, but her life felt empty and
things were about to get harder. Here again, it's Christine.
(08:39):
So I guess at this time, you know, being a
wife and mother and staying in that box that I
was living and kind of got confusing for me because
I still didn't feel like I was enough, and what
was missing, I believe, was who I was. I had
no idea who I was. I often asked myself that
(09:00):
I would say to myself, what do you like to do?
And I did a lot of things. I modeled. I
took care of my house, my kids, and I was
a wife and I loved to my kids. I loved
my job. But you know, looking back, I was I
felt very lost. My soul was trying to figure out,
you know, what was life about? And I really didn't know.
(09:23):
And so I would ask myself, like, what do you
like to do? The things that popped into my brain
were tennis, yoga, going to lunch with my friends and
things like that. And I would stop myself and go,
well do you really like tennis? And I couldn't answer it.
And so instead of taking the time. Now I'm in
my late twenties, you'd think that I was mature enough
(09:45):
at that point to sit myself down and saying, you know,
really go through those questions. Instead of taking the time
and the introspection work that I needed, I started to
socialize more. Small talk became kind normal for me, you know,
cocktail parties and shopping and materialism and trying to film
(10:06):
myself up with things. Instead of controlling my portions and
size and controlling my eating, I started to control my
happiness by going to buy a new bag. And so
I was just switching idols. And also at that time,
I would turn on the TV and I'd look at
the network and Bravo, and I'd idolize those famous people
(10:29):
and those wealthy characters in society that were displayed all
over the networks. And you know, my place keepers were
falling apart, meaning I was getting older, right, So I
was aging, and crisises started to happen in my life.
Stress anxiety began to become a stronghold in my life.
(10:51):
I was numbing that, and soon a huge crisis would
begin to unfold in Christine's life. So in two and eleven,
I tore my right ligament my right wrist, which is
not that big of a deal, but it required surgery,
and I picked the doctor who I believed would perform
(11:14):
the best surgery. Not that I was worried that there
would be any permanent problems because of it. My biggest
concern at the time was that I was going to
be out of yoga for six weeks, and so when
the cast came off six weeks later, I did physical
therapy in his office for a day and then it
was the weekend and the next morning I woke up.
(11:34):
It was Saturday morning, and my arm had ballooned. So
my right arm looked like my thigh bone. Literally, it
was a deep read. It was swollen, and the pain
was grotesque, and so I gave it about twenty four
hours before I called the doctor on a Sunday, which
was scary for me. I didn't have enough self worth
(11:55):
to think that he would even take the call. And
if he took the call, when he took the all
he acted put out. He acted put out, and so
the shame that I had felt in my life was
reinforced immediately. And when you are in intense pain, it's
hard to see what's around you. It's hard to listen
(12:15):
to your inner warnings because basically you're saying all your
brain is telling you is get out of pain, Get
out of pain, get out of pain, and you have
a marginalized perspective. For me, I was looking around, going, Okay,
I have to take care of my kids. I can't
be in this pain. On that original conversation, on that Sunday,
(12:36):
he told me I over iced my arm, and so
he said, take off the ice and leave it be,
and so I did. And I know that sounds crazy
that that was his prescription, and looking back now, it
does sound crazy to me, But like I said, when
you're in that kind of pain and you've been taught
(12:57):
that authority has the final set, they listen. He got
the medical degree, not me. He's the one that went
to Stanford Medical School, not me, and so I trust
in him, which is why Christine continued to see this
doctor even though the pain refused to go away. Then,
on one of her many visits to his office, he
told her what he thought was causing it. He didn't
(13:22):
take an X ray, he didn't take a blood test.
He looked at me and he said, you have this
thing called RSD. It's a disorder where your brain is
telling your limb, which in my case was my arm,
that there's pain and swelling, but it's really just in
your head. And I thought, wow, I've never heard of this.
(13:42):
I can't believe this thing called RSD can be causing
this much pain. And so subsequently he sent me down
the hallway to a different office to a different doctor
who was a pain management doctor who concurred with his diagnosis.
Christine then endured two nerve black surgeries, pain meds, and
(14:03):
was sent to physical therapy. Yet nothing changed for months.
The pain was still there. That was because her doctor
had misdiagnosed her, and it was a random comment that
finally led to Christine seeking other options. One day, I
was on a walk and one of the employees of
the town said to me hello, and you know, I
(14:24):
said hello, and he stopped me and he said, is
that a new cast? And I looked down at my
arm and I thought, wow, if the town's worker noticed
that I'm on my eighth or ninth cast, I need
to see a second opinion. And it was that day
that I picked up the phone and called a friend
(14:45):
and I said, I know you have an orthopedic doctor
that is your friend. Do you think you could call
and get me in. This doctor would agree to see
her and Christine would finally get the answers she needed
to know. The doctor came into the examination office and
he said, I know your doctor. He's very well liked
and he has a great reputation. Let's take a look
(15:08):
at your arm. Let me take an X ray. So
he took an X ray, and I came back into
the room, and he came in like ten minutes later,
and he was pasty white, and he asked my husband
to come outside with him for a moment. And now
I started to really worry. And they both came back
and said, every bone in your wrist is broken. All
(15:30):
those bones have broken and fallen into a pile at
the base of your wrist. There is no cartilage left,
which means you have an infection that has been undiagnosed.
I'm going to put you in surgery today. I'm canceling
the rest of my day, and I'm going to dig
out as much infection as possible. I have no idea
(15:52):
what I'm going to find. I have no idea what
the outcome will be, but I know for a fact
that we have to get in there today. Christine was
then sent to a specialist in New York and was
told she would never have functioned in her right wrist. Again,
her arm was fused, and on one of her many
(16:13):
trips back to New York, received even more bad news.
My farm was fused in twenty eleven and so I
was just trying to figure out, now, with bone graps
in my arm and cadaver, a cadaver bone that replaced
my broken bones, how I was going to live for
(16:35):
the rest of my life and be a mom and
be what you know, do laundry and drive and cook
and all those things that I did, How I was
going to do those. And so here's where the story
gets a little bit more tricky. I was in a
hotel room in New York City and I went into
the shower to shower, and I immediately felt a lump
(16:57):
in my breast. And five days later, I was diagnosed
with an aggressive form of breast cancer. And you've been
listening to Christine Handy tell her harrowing story and my goodness,
just having gotten through so much in her life, from
an eating disorder to just an emptiness in her life,
(17:20):
a recurring feeling that she didn't know who she was.
As she said it, I didn't feel like I was enough.
And my goodness, in this country, it's so easy to
feel that way man or a woman. So much is
coming at us, and then a misdiagnosis and then an
actual correct diagnosis cancer. When we come back, we'll find
out what happens next in the life of Christine Handy.
(17:43):
Here an our American story, and we returned to our
(18:09):
American stories and Christine Handy's story. When we last left off,
Christine had endured months of pain due to a misdiagnosis
resulting in her losing all function in her right wrist,
and she had just been diagnosed with an aggressive form
of breast cancer. Here's Christine talking about the moment he
found out about her diagnosis. Actually, I was home alone
(18:35):
and I was waiting for my husband to get back
from wherever he was. I didn't know where he was.
I'd been looking for him in our house. And because
I couldn't change, I couldn't get dressed because I had
this massive cast on. I needed help to help me
get out of my robe into clothes. And I felt
my phone vibrating in the pocket of my robe, and
I looked at the phone and it was an unknown number,
(18:56):
and I knew immediately that it was a doctor, and
so I picked up the phone, and sure enough, it
wasn't a nurse to tell me everything was fine. It
was the doctor who I had seen, who did the
breast biopsy, and he said to me in a very small,
meek voice, you have breast cancer. And the only thing
I remember about that conversation or that day, to be
(19:18):
honest with you, I said to that man, am I
going to die? And he did not answer me. I
really quit because if you think about it, for the
past year, that that year, I had depended heavily on
my friends and family to drive me, to take care
of me, to take care of my family. They use
their resources, they use their time, and they left their
(19:41):
own families to help me. And now I was facing
twenty eight rounds of chemotherapy and who knew how many surgeries,
and I still had a cast on the grafts. I
still my arm had just been grafted. And so I
kind of looked at my life and said, I'm a liability.
I'm not contributing. And the only thing that I was
(20:02):
worth in society was what I look like, and now
that's going to be gone. Now I'm scarred up on
my arm. Now who knows what's going to happen to
my chest. I'm going to lose my hair to chemotherapy.
Nobody will love me, and I have no value in society.
And so I literally decided, not only am I going
to quit, but I'm going to take some control in
(20:24):
the quitting because I didn't know if I was going
to survive. And so I thought, well, I'll just quit
before I start. Because my self esteem was so crushed,
because I didn't believe in myself, and because I was
so heavily dependent on the external. And so I said
to my in my own head, I'm just going to
take myself out of this equation. I'm going to plan
(20:45):
my suicide. And so each day my friends and some
of my family would come over and they would, you know,
try to help me emotionally, and I would start to
say to them, you know what, I quit. I feel
like I feel like I'm just stealing joy from you,
(21:10):
from my children. My children should be getting the attention,
not they're sickly mom, I'm going to take my life.
And they would say to me, you're stealing this opportunity
for us to serve you. We're not going to forsake you.
God never forsakes us. We're not going to forsake you.
We will stand by your side. And I thought, yeah, right,
(21:31):
Once I lose my looks, once I lose what I
thought was my value, you guys, are going to hit
the road right Over the next course of the next
two or three weeks, I was waiting for my son
to get home from boarding school, so I was at
least I could see him before I took my own life.
And so my son got in trouble at school and
(21:52):
couldn't come home for three weeks. And by the time
he got home from boarding school, my friends had con
vinced me that not only was my life worth fighting for,
my life was worth saving and my value had nothing
to do with what I looked like. And that was
so new. That was such a different concept than the
(22:12):
forty one years that I had lived. But I believed
them and I trusted them because they continued to show
up for me. Sometimes we can't always rely on our
own voice. Of course, for me, I couldn't rely on
my voice at all. I was so insecure, and I
would say to myself, you're not worthy. Right, They were
telling me I was worthy, and they were backing it
up by faith based scriptures. And it was each and
(22:36):
every day when they showed up. It wasn't like they
came once a week and taught me this. I wouldn't
have believed them or it wouldn't have been enough for me,
but it was day in and day out, and there
were multiple women that showed up, and so I had
all of those voices for three weeks hammering into me.
This story has meaning. There is purpose in all of this.
(22:57):
We don't know exactly what it is, but there is
purpose in it. You just have to have to give
us the privilege of walking through this with you. And
I thought they were crazy. There's no way this isn't
a privilege for them. I'm this burden that they have
to take care of, or that they feel responsible to
take care of. So right, I was twisting it my head.
(23:18):
They were saying to me, you're a privilege for us
to help, and I was saying, not only am I
not a privilege, but I'm a burden. Right. That was
my own self talk, which was tripping me up again.
But after a while I started to believe them because
that thought and that action was reinforced by their behavior.
(23:40):
You know, when I was going through chemotherapy. One day
I came back from chemotherapy and I literally my parents
literally had to hold me up. So my father's on
one side of me, my mother's on the other side
of me, and they're walking me into my house because
I'm so sick and so weak. And I walk into
my house and I see these post it notes. I
see them in my front hall, and we go into
(24:00):
the kitchen and I see him in the kitchen, and
I walk over. I said to my parents, I'm like,
bring me over to one of those posted notes. And
they were all scriptures. One of my friends had come
into my house when I was at chemotherapy and posted
two hundred and fifty scriptures around my house. And so
wherever I looked, I could look at a scripture. Wherever
my kids looked, they could look at a scripture. They
(24:21):
were on picture frames, they were on mantles, they were
on you know, my kid's bathrooms, they were in the
laundry room. And so I was learning from these courageous women.
Now none of them had at cancer. I didn't have
any friends or any contemporaries that had cancer, and so
this was all new to all of us. But what
they were showing me was that they weren't going to
(24:44):
quit on me. And so I credit those voices, those women,
those strong, faithful women. But I also credit God. You know,
there were some there were some intervention right, my son
got in trouble three weekends in a row. God, God
was stopping him from coming home. If he had come
home the first weekend, I wouldn't be here talking to you,
(25:06):
And what a shame that would have been. And so
by the very fact that my son was delayed for
three weeks, that ultimately gave me a shot. Now once
I was rooted more in Okay, if these people are
going to show up for me, then I better show
up for myself. And when I started to show up
for myself, I started to pour into more faith based things.
(25:30):
I started to listen to podcasts from preachers. I turned
off Bravo TV, I turned off E Entertainment TV, I
turned off the news, and the only things that I
would listen to were life giving things. There was a
shift that was going on, and after fifteen months of
shutting out the world that I knew, I was able
(25:53):
to make a grand shift in my perspective. And what
I did after completed my chemotherapy was it. I said
to my friends, Okay, you gave me life, so to speak.
You taught me that it is a privilege to serve,
and that's what I do now. So for the past
six seven years. Every day that I wake up, it's
(26:15):
an opportunity to serve. Whether it's telling my story or
whether it's modeling in New York Fashion Runway at fifty
one years old, flat shusted and helping to be a
voice for those people, or if it's just encouraging my
friends and showing up for people total strangers. They taught
me how to live a life of service, and that's
(26:36):
what I do. And a special thanks to Monty on
the storytelling, and a special thanks to Christine and Handy
for sharing her story. My goodness, those words at the end,
I turned off all the things that didn't matter, the
Bravo channel and all the TV, and I poured only
(26:56):
life giving things into my mind, into my heart, into
my soul, and that created a grand shift in perspective.
And special thanks to all of her friends, those people
who poured so much love into her life. The story
of Christine Handy here on our American Story, and we
(27:39):
continue here with our American stories, and today we bring
you the story of Scott Gilbert, the head of a
Habitat for Humanity chapter and the strange journey he took
to get there. When taught school at a private school
in Connecticut pretty quickly was elevated to be the head
of the middle school. I was coaching several sports and
(27:59):
I loved it, but decided to cover my base. I
go back and get an MBA at night and went
to the University to Connecticut Stanford Branch, which should I say, quickly,
it sounds like Stanford. That's a pretty good MBA. University
of Connecticut not bad, but it's not Stanford. But anyhow,
depending on who I'm playing with, I might skip part
(28:20):
of that and just say Stanford. So as I was
completing my fourth year and getting my MBA, i'd gotten
a raise from fifteen thousand up to eighteen five. I said, Wow,
this is really kind of challenging. And I was very
conscious of one of the guys I taught with. He
had three boys, he worked, his wife worked, he had
(28:41):
a second job. He's probably in his mid thirties. He
was miserable. He hated the school, he started to hate
the kids. He hated their parents because they didn't pay
well enough and he couldn't get it together, and he
really resented life. And I remember saying, I need to
move on. I don't want to be one of those guys.
I don't want to be caught on a bind and
(29:02):
looking for someone to blame for my situation. So I
took my master's degree, got a job with a wonderful
advertising agency, and ended up working with that agency for
twenty five years. And then at some point I was
transferred to New York and we had a vacation home
in Colorado. My wife said, Hey, I'll live in Colorado'll
(29:24):
come home when you want. I'm stopping on the way
to New York. I'm getting off the bus. You can
keep going. So for a couple of years, I was
one of the co leaders of our New York office.
We had hundreds of staff members, and I was aged fifty.
My kids were both graduating from college, and I was like,
you know, this advertising run has been awesome. I love
what I did. But here I was fifty, going back
and forth to New York to ask in Colorado, thinking
(29:46):
this traveling back and forth at week's going to kill me.
And so I decided to retire at fifty because I'd
made enough money to put my kids through college, and
that to me was a major accomplishment and what I'm
supposed to do and kind at fifty wasn't short to do.
I probably stared out the window for a better part
of a year. The only appointments I had were taking
(30:07):
the garbage out on Thursdays and getting my haircut once
a month. But then I saw an add in the
paper for a program called a pre collegiate program, which
is a mentoring program for students whould be the first
generation of their family to go to college. So I
called up a superintendent of schools I knew, and another
head of school and had them write letters. And I
realized pretty soon there after that I didn't need a
(30:28):
very strong recommendation, they just needed warm bodies. But spent
several years mentoring Latino kids here in the valley and
got very connected to their lives. And in the meantime
I was looking for more to do, and I had
heard about Habitat Humanity and explored that a little bit.
And at the same time, my daughter graduated college came
(30:50):
to work to be a teacher in Denver, and we
checked out some garden apartments and that weren't very nice,
and I said, you know, we just spent a lot
of money my daughter through college. She wants to be
a teacher, and I want to set her up for success.
Someone unlike how I was set up such that we
could find a small home that I could own and
she could part own, and she couldn't rent out rooms
(31:13):
to some fellow teachers and friends, and as long as
she wanted to teach, she could stay in that house,
and if she wanted to leave teaching, we could negotiate
that one. I was really enjoying habitat, but I was
thinking about in my life where I couldn't stay as
a classroom teacher, which I wanted to at the time,
but thought it wasn't viable. My daughter couldn't make it
(31:34):
work as a teacher herself without some help. But what
could I do to help? In an environment where I live,
which is a resort market, very high price real estate,
and homes seven fifty thousand dollars doesn't get you much.
I mean, it's really crazy. How are teachers E were
gonna make it? I can't personally buy homes to all
these teachers, There's no way. But I could possibly shift
(32:00):
habitats focused from people caught in a cycle of poverty
who really probably aren't ready for home ownership, and shift
our focus to try to help people who are gainfully
employed but sort of locked in underemployment such that they
can live here, but they never be able to afford
to own a home. And one of the most critical
areas is the difficulty teachers are having, and how can
(32:22):
the teachers have afford to live here? And without teachers
in all of the community. And now suddenly my life's
threads sort of connected, and now I could take Habitat,
which we've built into a thriving nonprofit and shift its
focus to an area which we've found to be more
appropriate use of everybody's time and money in our community.
We got the school district to donate land that was
(32:45):
being underutilized, had no particular purpose besides being like a buffer,
and got the county also looking for help with workforce
to support it. So the school district gave six acres
of land, the county gave three million dollars to help
with the infrastructure, which is putting in the utilities in
the roads, and the next thing you know, we had
a viable project. The need is staggering. We had forty
(33:12):
two different families applied to the nine spots, so basically
was you know, less than twenty five percent chance of
winning the lottery. I've got an ex felon working here.
He's a wonderful guy. He's been employee of the Year.
We had another X fellon who was employee of the year.
(33:34):
Someone who's been incarcerated really appreciates freedom more than someone
who's always had the freedom. One guy had been a
drug dealer out in Ohio. I don't even know what
violation the second guy had it. There's no reason to
ask him. It doesn't really matter to me what he
didn't do. And so I treat him with the ultimate
respect because he treats us that way, and I don't
(33:57):
want him to ever think he's been prejudged, because there's
no reason to. So we've got a couple of felons
who work for us. But more importantly, we actually have
an amazing program. We have a state prison about an
hour from our job site, and the prison crew went
out and helped on various projects in the community. They
would help the Department Transportation shovel snow and one of
(34:19):
the guys working there, guy named Chad Robinson, he really
believed that giving them more meaningful work to do while
they were out on work crews would have a more
lasting impact. I mean anybody can pick up later on
the highway, but get them working on our crew building
homes for habitat would give them more skills and a
greater sense of value and give them a better chance
(34:43):
when they got out. So and the guys come two,
three or four days a week, a crew of five
to eight guys come in a van with one of
the guards. He's not armed. These are guys in a
level one minimum security prison who've been through the system.
We're heading towards release. But they really nice thing at
the job site. As we've had times when we've had
a good nucleus of guys and we end up doing
(35:05):
training with them and train them to get what's called
a best card, and it's a card that enables them
to actually be a contractor. They have to pass the test.
The last time we had eight guys take our class
and they went for the test. They all passed the test.
The town official couldn't believe they all passed. Couldn't believe
eight prisoners would study that hard, work that hard to
(35:28):
pass the test. He waved the feet. So it's nice,
is you know, we're getting these guys to come and help.
We feed them like kings to give them some respect,
and we're preparing them when they get out. They actually
have a skill. And what's weird is the skill you
and I would think and building a home, as you know,
how to use tools and how to learn how to
frame a home. But the skill is really learning what
(35:50):
it's like to have a job, learning what it's like
to take direction and not think someone's disrespecting you. So
you know, you guys end up in prison because they
haven't found a better way to make a living, and
we're giving them a chance to break free from their vices.
And a similar story that's really studying. We get a
(36:11):
lot of nice donations for our restore and some stuff
that doesn't make the grade that our customers are going
to buy, so we put that into a big truck,
and every few weeks this group comes up from the
southern Colorado and takes it back and sells it in
a thrift store there. We had no idea who they were.
At Christmas time, this guy came in with a gift basket.
(36:31):
I said, can you explain what you guys actually do
because I'm not sure I know, I know you take
our leftovers. He said, yeah, we have this group called
New Horizons Ministry, and we take the things that you
give us, we sell it and we use that money
to take care of babies while their moms are incarcerated
up to two or three years, and then when their
moms get out, they get their babies back. And every
(36:53):
Wednesday we take babies to visit their moms. Well, they
moved that prison, so now it's a two hour trip
each way, but we want the moms to see their babies.
And I was flabbergast. I had no idea that something
we were doing, really just getting rid of things, we
didn't throw them away, was having such an interesting benefit
on a pretty much underserved community and ignored And it's
(37:17):
just really heartwarming to know that the efforts we make
have such a far reaching impact. And you've been listening
to Scott Gilbert, the president of the Roaring Fork Valley
Chapter of Habitat for Humanity, and great job as always
to Alex for his work out in the field. And
(37:39):
the story was brought to our attention by Carrie Mortgridge
and her Mortgadge Family Foundation that supported Scott's work and
with philanthropy of course being another form of association that
Tokville touted and was mesmerized by when he came here
in the nineteenth century, and it's still going strong. Stories
you'dn't hear anywhere, Stories about American generosity and just grit
(38:03):
and love. Here on our American Stories.
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories.
Up next to a story from Christine Handy about survival,
forgiveness and strength, Here's our own Monty Montgomery with the story.
Christine Handy was born in Chicago and raised in Saint Louis, Missouri.
(00:30):
I'm certainly a Midwestern girl. I am a mother of
two sons. I'm a motivational speaker, I'm a writer. I
am a lot of things, including a model. So I
started modeling when I was at the tender age of eleven.
I loved it. I actually loved being a model. It
(00:52):
was easy for me. I began to hone in on
learning those skills, to brighten up and be in front
of that camera, and it became something that I depended
on and throughout her career, Christine would lend modeling gigs
at PEPSI, J Crew, Petco, and Target, to name a few.
(01:12):
But success, as great as it is, as its downsides, too,
especially when success comes at such a young age. I
missed a lot of things that were really important for
my development. And I try not to blame anybody else
(01:33):
because my parents weren't really interested in me becoming a model.
They had three other daughters, and it wasn't their goal
for me to become a model. But to be honest
with you, when you have I was obviously very attractive,
and when you have people commenting on who you are,
which was solely based on what I look like, you
(01:53):
yearn for more of that attention. And when you're that age,
when you're that young, you don't realize is that other
people are getting nurtured in other ways. Like when I
would come home with my report card and it would
be straight a's, I would be excited to show that
to my parents, But I wasn't getting a lot of
attention for that. I was getting a lot of attention
(02:15):
because I was getting bigger and bigger modeling campaigns, you know,
like I had just gotten. I remember as a freshman
in high school, I just gotten this big campaign with PEPSI,
and I remember bringing my report card home going look
at me, look at me. I've got straight a's. And
it just I wasn't getting the foundation right. I wasn't
My life wasn't built on my mind, my brain or
(02:41):
inside you know. I wasn't learning self introspection. I wasn't
learning self worth. And most people at thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen.
You know society can correct them. Society's applause was not
correcting me. Society's applause was pushing me forward to this
narrative of depending on that outside beauty. So the external
(03:06):
facade became my measure of myself, or so to speak.
But I didn't realize it at the time. I started
to also develop an eating disorder a few years after
I started to model. And part of the reason I
believe that I started the eating disorder was because I
had some sort of control in my life. When I
(03:28):
felt out of control, right, I'd show up on set
as a model and the client might say, Oh, your
hair is not the right length, or your blonde hair
is too dark, or your waist is too big, or
whatever they were criticizing me. For I knew that I
can control what was going in and out of my body,
and so that became kind of a lifeline for me,
(03:51):
a very destructive one. And the longer I modeled, the
quicker of the eating disorder blossom and ultimately erupted. And
so I came home from my sophomore year in college
and I literally said to my parents. I sat him
down and I said, this thing this eating disorder that
all of us are ignoring. This thing exists and it's
(04:12):
controlling me, and I can't stop myself. And so my
mom looked at me and said, I'll take you to
the hospital. And I was there for thirty days and
it was great. I mean I really I took it
changed my life in a way because I didn't have
an eating disorder after that, So it worked. But when
I was leaving the hospital, one of the nurses said
(04:32):
to me, here's a pack of gum and I said, well,
what's this for? And she said, well, just in case
you mess up, just in case, you know, you throw
something up, chew a piece of gum. And I thought
to myself, she doesn't believe in me. So she's a
nurse and she's seen this before, so she doesn't believe
(04:55):
in me. Why would I? And so after that it
took a few years for me to really eliminate the
any disorder because I went back to it a little bit,
thinking in my mind, well, everybody goes back to it,
she told me. But it was that doubt, that doubt
that I clung to. It wasn't it wasn't the strong
(05:18):
belief in myself that I had conquered this right. It
was that doubt that she had put inside of me.
That's what I clung to. By the age, you know,
like late twenties, modeling had become a constant, became the
biggest constant in my life. I felt strangely safe in
(05:40):
front of the camera, and I felt confident, and I
felt loved. But I was getting older and I was
starting to feel this yearning for something meaning purpose. I
had no idea, but there was a slight emptiness inside
of me. But I squandered those thoughts, and I reminded
myself over and over again that the next ups in
(06:00):
my life or what I was living, I was supposed
to get married, I was supposed to have kids. And
at this point my self esteem was so dependent on
society and the rules of the place of women. I
was locked in like that was my measure. I was
living a performance based life. I found out quickly that
(06:22):
that beauty, that external despendency, was quicksand and when you
lose that, you better have some pretty strong foundation, and
for me, I just didn't. And you've been listening to
Christine Handy talk about her struggle with of all things beauty,
(06:42):
it can be a blessing, it can be a curse,
like so many things in our lives. When we come
back more with Christine Handy and her life story here
and now our American Story Folks, if you love the
(07:30):
great American stories we tell and love America like we do,
we're asking you to become a part of the Our
American Stories family. If you agree that America is a
good and great country, please make a donation. A monthly
gift of seventeen dollars and seventy six cents is fast
becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to our American
Stories dot com now and go to the donate button
(07:51):
and help us keep the great American stories coming. That's
our American Stories dot Com. And we returned to our
(08:12):
American Stories and to Christine Handy's story. When we last
left off, Christine was at the top of her professional life,
that being modeling. He had gotten gigs at Pepsi, Jay, Crewe,
Petco and many more, but her life felt empty and
things were about to get harder. Here again, it's Christine.
(08:39):
So I guess at this time, you know, being a
wife and mother and staying in that box that I
was living and kind of got confusing for me because
I still didn't feel like I was enough, and what
was missing, I believe, was who I was. I had
no idea who I was. I often asked myself that
(09:00):
I would say to myself, what do you like to do?
And I did a lot of things. I modeled. I
took care of my house, my kids, and I was
a wife and I loved to my kids. I loved
my job. But you know, looking back, I was I
felt very lost. My soul was trying to figure out,
you know, what was life about? And I really didn't know.
(09:23):
And so I would ask myself, like, what do you
like to do? The things that popped into my brain
were tennis, yoga, going to lunch with my friends and
things like that. And I would stop myself and go,
well do you really like tennis? And I couldn't answer it.
And so instead of taking the time. Now I'm in
my late twenties, you'd think that I was mature enough
(09:45):
at that point to sit myself down and saying, you know,
really go through those questions. Instead of taking the time
and the introspection work that I needed, I started to
socialize more. Small talk became kind normal for me, you know,
cocktail parties and shopping and materialism and trying to film
(10:06):
myself up with things. Instead of controlling my portions and
size and controlling my eating, I started to control my
happiness by going to buy a new bag. And so
I was just switching idols. And also at that time,
I would turn on the TV and I'd look at
the network and Bravo, and I'd idolize those famous people
(10:29):
and those wealthy characters in society that were displayed all
over the networks. And you know, my place keepers were
falling apart, meaning I was getting older, right, So I
was aging, and crisises started to happen in my life.
Stress anxiety began to become a stronghold in my life.
(10:51):
I was numbing that, and soon a huge crisis would
begin to unfold in Christine's life. So in two and eleven,
I tore my right ligament my right wrist, which is
not that big of a deal, but it required surgery,
and I picked the doctor who I believed would perform
(11:14):
the best surgery. Not that I was worried that there
would be any permanent problems because of it. My biggest
concern at the time was that I was going to
be out of yoga for six weeks, and so when
the cast came off six weeks later, I did physical
therapy in his office for a day and then it
was the weekend and the next morning I woke up.
(11:34):
It was Saturday morning, and my arm had ballooned. So
my right arm looked like my thigh bone. Literally, it
was a deep read. It was swollen, and the pain
was grotesque, and so I gave it about twenty four
hours before I called the doctor on a Sunday, which
was scary for me. I didn't have enough self worth
(11:55):
to think that he would even take the call. And
if he took the call, when he took the all
he acted put out. He acted put out, and so
the shame that I had felt in my life was
reinforced immediately. And when you are in intense pain, it's
hard to see what's around you. It's hard to listen
(12:15):
to your inner warnings because basically you're saying all your
brain is telling you is get out of pain, Get
out of pain, get out of pain, and you have
a marginalized perspective. For me, I was looking around, going, Okay,
I have to take care of my kids. I can't
be in this pain. On that original conversation, on that Sunday,
(12:36):
he told me I over iced my arm, and so
he said, take off the ice and leave it be,
and so I did. And I know that sounds crazy
that that was his prescription, and looking back now, it
does sound crazy to me, But like I said, when
you're in that kind of pain and you've been taught
(12:57):
that authority has the final set, they listen. He got
the medical degree, not me. He's the one that went
to Stanford Medical School, not me, and so I trust
in him, which is why Christine continued to see this
doctor even though the pain refused to go away. Then,
on one of her many visits to his office, he
told her what he thought was causing it. He didn't
(13:22):
take an X ray, he didn't take a blood test.
He looked at me and he said, you have this
thing called RSD. It's a disorder where your brain is
telling your limb, which in my case was my arm,
that there's pain and swelling, but it's really just in
your head. And I thought, wow, I've never heard of this.
(13:42):
I can't believe this thing called RSD can be causing
this much pain. And so subsequently he sent me down
the hallway to a different office to a different doctor
who was a pain management doctor who concurred with his diagnosis.
Christine then endured two nerve black surgeries, pain meds, and
(14:03):
was sent to physical therapy. Yet nothing changed for months.
The pain was still there. That was because her doctor
had misdiagnosed her, and it was a random comment that
finally led to Christine seeking other options. One day, I
was on a walk and one of the employees of
the town said to me hello, and you know, I
(14:24):
said hello, and he stopped me and he said, is
that a new cast? And I looked down at my
arm and I thought, wow, if the town's worker noticed
that I'm on my eighth or ninth cast, I need
to see a second opinion. And it was that day
that I picked up the phone and called a friend
(14:45):
and I said, I know you have an orthopedic doctor
that is your friend. Do you think you could call
and get me in. This doctor would agree to see
her and Christine would finally get the answers she needed
to know. The doctor came into the examination office and
he said, I know your doctor. He's very well liked
and he has a great reputation. Let's take a look
(15:08):
at your arm. Let me take an X ray. So
he took an X ray, and I came back into
the room, and he came in like ten minutes later,
and he was pasty white, and he asked my husband
to come outside with him for a moment. And now
I started to really worry. And they both came back
and said, every bone in your wrist is broken. All
(15:30):
those bones have broken and fallen into a pile at
the base of your wrist. There is no cartilage left,
which means you have an infection that has been undiagnosed.
I'm going to put you in surgery today. I'm canceling
the rest of my day, and I'm going to dig
out as much infection as possible. I have no idea
(15:52):
what I'm going to find. I have no idea what
the outcome will be, but I know for a fact
that we have to get in there today. Christine was
then sent to a specialist in New York and was
told she would never have functioned in her right wrist. Again,
her arm was fused, and on one of her many
(16:13):
trips back to New York, received even more bad news.
My farm was fused in twenty eleven and so I
was just trying to figure out, now, with bone graps
in my arm and cadaver, a cadaver bone that replaced
my broken bones, how I was going to live for
(16:35):
the rest of my life and be a mom and
be what you know, do laundry and drive and cook
and all those things that I did, How I was
going to do those. And so here's where the story
gets a little bit more tricky. I was in a
hotel room in New York City and I went into
the shower to shower, and I immediately felt a lump
(16:57):
in my breast. And five days later, I was diagnosed
with an aggressive form of breast cancer. And you've been
listening to Christine Handy tell her harrowing story and my goodness,
just having gotten through so much in her life, from
an eating disorder to just an emptiness in her life,
(17:20):
a recurring feeling that she didn't know who she was.
As she said it, I didn't feel like I was enough.
And my goodness, in this country, it's so easy to
feel that way man or a woman. So much is
coming at us, and then a misdiagnosis and then an
actual correct diagnosis cancer. When we come back, we'll find
out what happens next in the life of Christine Handy.
(17:43):
Here an our American story, and we returned to our
(18:09):
American stories and Christine Handy's story. When we last left off,
Christine had endured months of pain due to a misdiagnosis
resulting in her losing all function in her right wrist,
and she had just been diagnosed with an aggressive form
of breast cancer. Here's Christine talking about the moment he
found out about her diagnosis. Actually, I was home alone
(18:35):
and I was waiting for my husband to get back
from wherever he was. I didn't know where he was.
I'd been looking for him in our house. And because
I couldn't change, I couldn't get dressed because I had
this massive cast on. I needed help to help me
get out of my robe into clothes. And I felt
my phone vibrating in the pocket of my robe, and
I looked at the phone and it was an unknown number,
(18:56):
and I knew immediately that it was a doctor, and
so I picked up the phone, and sure enough, it
wasn't a nurse to tell me everything was fine. It
was the doctor who I had seen, who did the
breast biopsy, and he said to me in a very small,
meek voice, you have breast cancer. And the only thing
I remember about that conversation or that day, to be
(19:18):
honest with you, I said to that man, am I
going to die? And he did not answer me. I
really quit because if you think about it, for the
past year, that that year, I had depended heavily on
my friends and family to drive me, to take care
of me, to take care of my family. They use
their resources, they use their time, and they left their
(19:41):
own families to help me. And now I was facing
twenty eight rounds of chemotherapy and who knew how many surgeries,
and I still had a cast on the grafts. I
still my arm had just been grafted. And so I
kind of looked at my life and said, I'm a liability.
I'm not contributing. And the only thing that I was
(20:02):
worth in society was what I look like, and now
that's going to be gone. Now I'm scarred up on
my arm. Now who knows what's going to happen to
my chest. I'm going to lose my hair to chemotherapy.
Nobody will love me, and I have no value in society.
And so I literally decided, not only am I going
to quit, but I'm going to take some control in
(20:24):
the quitting because I didn't know if I was going
to survive. And so I thought, well, I'll just quit
before I start. Because my self esteem was so crushed,
because I didn't believe in myself, and because I was
so heavily dependent on the external. And so I said
to my in my own head, I'm just going to
take myself out of this equation. I'm going to plan
(20:45):
my suicide. And so each day my friends and some
of my family would come over and they would, you know,
try to help me emotionally, and I would start to
say to them, you know what, I quit. I feel
like I feel like I'm just stealing joy from you,
(21:10):
from my children. My children should be getting the attention,
not they're sickly mom, I'm going to take my life.
And they would say to me, you're stealing this opportunity
for us to serve you. We're not going to forsake you.
God never forsakes us. We're not going to forsake you.
We will stand by your side. And I thought, yeah, right,
(21:31):
Once I lose my looks, once I lose what I
thought was my value, you guys, are going to hit
the road right Over the next course of the next
two or three weeks, I was waiting for my son
to get home from boarding school, so I was at
least I could see him before I took my own life.
And so my son got in trouble at school and
(21:52):
couldn't come home for three weeks. And by the time
he got home from boarding school, my friends had con
vinced me that not only was my life worth fighting for,
my life was worth saving and my value had nothing
to do with what I looked like. And that was
so new. That was such a different concept than the
(22:12):
forty one years that I had lived. But I believed
them and I trusted them because they continued to show
up for me. Sometimes we can't always rely on our
own voice. Of course, for me, I couldn't rely on
my voice at all. I was so insecure, and I
would say to myself, you're not worthy. Right, They were
telling me I was worthy, and they were backing it
up by faith based scriptures. And it was each and
(22:36):
every day when they showed up. It wasn't like they
came once a week and taught me this. I wouldn't
have believed them or it wouldn't have been enough for me,
but it was day in and day out, and there
were multiple women that showed up, and so I had
all of those voices for three weeks hammering into me.
This story has meaning. There is purpose in all of this.
(22:57):
We don't know exactly what it is, but there is
purpose in it. You just have to have to give
us the privilege of walking through this with you. And
I thought they were crazy. There's no way this isn't
a privilege for them. I'm this burden that they have
to take care of, or that they feel responsible to
take care of. So right, I was twisting it my head.
(23:18):
They were saying to me, you're a privilege for us
to help, and I was saying, not only am I
not a privilege, but I'm a burden. Right. That was
my own self talk, which was tripping me up again.
But after a while I started to believe them because
that thought and that action was reinforced by their behavior.
(23:40):
You know, when I was going through chemotherapy. One day
I came back from chemotherapy and I literally my parents
literally had to hold me up. So my father's on
one side of me, my mother's on the other side
of me, and they're walking me into my house because
I'm so sick and so weak. And I walk into
my house and I see these post it notes. I
see them in my front hall, and we go into
(24:00):
the kitchen and I see him in the kitchen, and
I walk over. I said to my parents, I'm like,
bring me over to one of those posted notes. And
they were all scriptures. One of my friends had come
into my house when I was at chemotherapy and posted
two hundred and fifty scriptures around my house. And so
wherever I looked, I could look at a scripture. Wherever
my kids looked, they could look at a scripture. They
(24:21):
were on picture frames, they were on mantles, they were
on you know, my kid's bathrooms, they were in the
laundry room. And so I was learning from these courageous women.
Now none of them had at cancer. I didn't have
any friends or any contemporaries that had cancer, and so
this was all new to all of us. But what
they were showing me was that they weren't going to
(24:44):
quit on me. And so I credit those voices, those women,
those strong, faithful women. But I also credit God. You know,
there were some there were some intervention right, my son
got in trouble three weekends in a row. God, God
was stopping him from coming home. If he had come
home the first weekend, I wouldn't be here talking to you,
(25:06):
And what a shame that would have been. And so
by the very fact that my son was delayed for
three weeks, that ultimately gave me a shot. Now once
I was rooted more in Okay, if these people are
going to show up for me, then I better show
up for myself. And when I started to show up
for myself, I started to pour into more faith based things.
(25:30):
I started to listen to podcasts from preachers. I turned
off Bravo TV, I turned off E Entertainment TV, I
turned off the news, and the only things that I
would listen to were life giving things. There was a
shift that was going on, and after fifteen months of
shutting out the world that I knew, I was able
(25:53):
to make a grand shift in my perspective. And what
I did after completed my chemotherapy was it. I said
to my friends, Okay, you gave me life, so to speak.
You taught me that it is a privilege to serve,
and that's what I do now. So for the past
six seven years. Every day that I wake up, it's
(26:15):
an opportunity to serve. Whether it's telling my story or
whether it's modeling in New York Fashion Runway at fifty
one years old, flat shusted and helping to be a
voice for those people, or if it's just encouraging my
friends and showing up for people total strangers. They taught
me how to live a life of service, and that's
(26:36):
what I do. And a special thanks to Monty on
the storytelling, and a special thanks to Christine and Handy
for sharing her story. My goodness, those words at the end,
I turned off all the things that didn't matter, the
Bravo channel and all the TV, and I poured only
(26:56):
life giving things into my mind, into my heart, into
my soul, and that created a grand shift in perspective.
And special thanks to all of her friends, those people
who poured so much love into her life. The story
of Christine Handy here on our American Story, and we
(27:39):
continue here with our American stories, and today we bring
you the story of Scott Gilbert, the head of a
Habitat for Humanity chapter and the strange journey he took
to get there. When taught school at a private school
in Connecticut pretty quickly was elevated to be the head
of the middle school. I was coaching several sports and
(27:59):
I loved it, but decided to cover my base. I
go back and get an MBA at night and went
to the University to Connecticut Stanford Branch, which should I say, quickly,
it sounds like Stanford. That's a pretty good MBA. University
of Connecticut not bad, but it's not Stanford. But anyhow,
depending on who I'm playing with, I might skip part
(28:20):
of that and just say Stanford. So as I was
completing my fourth year and getting my MBA, i'd gotten
a raise from fifteen thousand up to eighteen five. I said, Wow,
this is really kind of challenging. And I was very
conscious of one of the guys I taught with. He
had three boys, he worked, his wife worked, he had
(28:41):
a second job. He's probably in his mid thirties. He
was miserable. He hated the school, he started to hate
the kids. He hated their parents because they didn't pay
well enough and he couldn't get it together, and he
really resented life. And I remember saying, I need to
move on. I don't want to be one of those guys.
I don't want to be caught on a bind and
(29:02):
looking for someone to blame for my situation. So I
took my master's degree, got a job with a wonderful
advertising agency, and ended up working with that agency for
twenty five years. And then at some point I was
transferred to New York and we had a vacation home
in Colorado. My wife said, Hey, I'll live in Colorado'll
(29:24):
come home when you want. I'm stopping on the way
to New York. I'm getting off the bus. You can
keep going. So for a couple of years, I was
one of the co leaders of our New York office.
We had hundreds of staff members, and I was aged fifty.
My kids were both graduating from college, and I was like,
you know, this advertising run has been awesome. I love
what I did. But here I was fifty, going back
and forth to New York to ask in Colorado, thinking
(29:46):
this traveling back and forth at week's going to kill me.
And so I decided to retire at fifty because I'd
made enough money to put my kids through college, and
that to me was a major accomplishment and what I'm
supposed to do and kind at fifty wasn't short to do.
I probably stared out the window for a better part
of a year. The only appointments I had were taking
(30:07):
the garbage out on Thursdays and getting my haircut once
a month. But then I saw an add in the
paper for a program called a pre collegiate program, which
is a mentoring program for students whould be the first
generation of their family to go to college. So I
called up a superintendent of schools I knew, and another
head of school and had them write letters. And I
realized pretty soon there after that I didn't need a
(30:28):
very strong recommendation, they just needed warm bodies. But spent
several years mentoring Latino kids here in the valley and
got very connected to their lives. And in the meantime
I was looking for more to do, and I had
heard about Habitat Humanity and explored that a little bit.
And at the same time, my daughter graduated college came
(30:50):
to work to be a teacher in Denver, and we
checked out some garden apartments and that weren't very nice,
and I said, you know, we just spent a lot
of money my daughter through college. She wants to be
a teacher, and I want to set her up for success.
Someone unlike how I was set up such that we
could find a small home that I could own and
she could part own, and she couldn't rent out rooms
(31:13):
to some fellow teachers and friends, and as long as
she wanted to teach, she could stay in that house,
and if she wanted to leave teaching, we could negotiate
that one. I was really enjoying habitat, but I was
thinking about in my life where I couldn't stay as
a classroom teacher, which I wanted to at the time,
but thought it wasn't viable. My daughter couldn't make it
(31:34):
work as a teacher herself without some help. But what
could I do to help? In an environment where I live,
which is a resort market, very high price real estate,
and homes seven fifty thousand dollars doesn't get you much.
I mean, it's really crazy. How are teachers E were
gonna make it? I can't personally buy homes to all
these teachers, There's no way. But I could possibly shift
(32:00):
habitats focused from people caught in a cycle of poverty
who really probably aren't ready for home ownership, and shift
our focus to try to help people who are gainfully
employed but sort of locked in underemployment such that they
can live here, but they never be able to afford
to own a home. And one of the most critical
areas is the difficulty teachers are having, and how can
(32:22):
the teachers have afford to live here? And without teachers
in all of the community. And now suddenly my life's
threads sort of connected, and now I could take Habitat,
which we've built into a thriving nonprofit and shift its
focus to an area which we've found to be more
appropriate use of everybody's time and money in our community.
We got the school district to donate land that was
(32:45):
being underutilized, had no particular purpose besides being like a buffer,
and got the county also looking for help with workforce
to support it. So the school district gave six acres
of land, the county gave three million dollars to help
with the infrastructure, which is putting in the utilities in
the roads, and the next thing you know, we had
a viable project. The need is staggering. We had forty
(33:12):
two different families applied to the nine spots, so basically
was you know, less than twenty five percent chance of
winning the lottery. I've got an ex felon working here.
He's a wonderful guy. He's been employee of the Year.
We had another X fellon who was employee of the year.
(33:34):
Someone who's been incarcerated really appreciates freedom more than someone
who's always had the freedom. One guy had been a
drug dealer out in Ohio. I don't even know what
violation the second guy had it. There's no reason to
ask him. It doesn't really matter to me what he
didn't do. And so I treat him with the ultimate
respect because he treats us that way, and I don't
(33:57):
want him to ever think he's been prejudged, because there's
no reason to. So we've got a couple of felons
who work for us. But more importantly, we actually have
an amazing program. We have a state prison about an
hour from our job site, and the prison crew went
out and helped on various projects in the community. They
would help the Department Transportation shovel snow and one of
(34:19):
the guys working there, guy named Chad Robinson, he really
believed that giving them more meaningful work to do while
they were out on work crews would have a more
lasting impact. I mean anybody can pick up later on
the highway, but get them working on our crew building
homes for habitat would give them more skills and a
greater sense of value and give them a better chance
(34:43):
when they got out. So and the guys come two,
three or four days a week, a crew of five
to eight guys come in a van with one of
the guards. He's not armed. These are guys in a
level one minimum security prison who've been through the system.
We're heading towards release. But they really nice thing at
the job site. As we've had times when we've had
a good nucleus of guys and we end up doing
(35:05):
training with them and train them to get what's called
a best card, and it's a card that enables them
to actually be a contractor. They have to pass the test.
The last time we had eight guys take our class
and they went for the test. They all passed the test.
The town official couldn't believe they all passed. Couldn't believe
eight prisoners would study that hard, work that hard to
(35:28):
pass the test. He waved the feet. So it's nice,
is you know, we're getting these guys to come and help.
We feed them like kings to give them some respect,
and we're preparing them when they get out. They actually
have a skill. And what's weird is the skill you
and I would think and building a home, as you know,
how to use tools and how to learn how to
frame a home. But the skill is really learning what
(35:50):
it's like to have a job, learning what it's like
to take direction and not think someone's disrespecting you. So
you know, you guys end up in prison because they
haven't found a better way to make a living, and
we're giving them a chance to break free from their vices.
And a similar story that's really studying. We get a
(36:11):
lot of nice donations for our restore and some stuff
that doesn't make the grade that our customers are going
to buy, so we put that into a big truck,
and every few weeks this group comes up from the
southern Colorado and takes it back and sells it in
a thrift store there. We had no idea who they were.
At Christmas time, this guy came in with a gift basket.
(36:31):
I said, can you explain what you guys actually do
because I'm not sure I know, I know you take
our leftovers. He said, yeah, we have this group called
New Horizons Ministry, and we take the things that you
give us, we sell it and we use that money
to take care of babies while their moms are incarcerated
up to two or three years, and then when their
moms get out, they get their babies back. And every
(36:53):
Wednesday we take babies to visit their moms. Well, they
moved that prison, so now it's a two hour trip
each way, but we want the moms to see their babies.
And I was flabbergast. I had no idea that something
we were doing, really just getting rid of things, we
didn't throw them away, was having such an interesting benefit
on a pretty much underserved community and ignored And it's
(37:17):
just really heartwarming to know that the efforts we make
have such a far reaching impact. And you've been listening
to Scott Gilbert, the president of the Roaring Fork Valley
Chapter of Habitat for Humanity, and great job as always
to Alex for his work out in the field. And
(37:39):
the story was brought to our attention by Carrie Mortgridge
and her Mortgadge Family Foundation that supported Scott's work and
with philanthropy of course being another form of association that
Tokville touted and was mesmerized by when he came here
in the nineteenth century, and it's still going strong. Stories
you'dn't hear anywhere, Stories about American generosity and just grit
(38:03):
and love. Here on our American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Amy Robach & T.J. Holmes present: Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial
Introducing… Aubrey O’Day Diddy’s former protege, television personality, platinum selling music artist, Danity Kane alum Aubrey O’Day joins veteran journalists Amy Robach and TJ Holmes to provide a unique perspective on the trial that has captivated the attention of the nation. Join them throughout the trial as they discuss, debate, and dissect every detail, every aspect of the proceedings. Aubrey will offer her opinions and expertise, as only she is qualified to do given her first-hand knowledge. From her days on Making the Band, as she emerged as the breakout star, the truth of the situation would be the opposite of the glitz and glamour. Listen throughout every minute of the trial, for this exclusive coverage. Amy Robach and TJ Holmes present Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial, an iHeartRadio podcast.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Come hang with Amy Poehler. Each week on her podcast, she'll welcome celebrities and fun people to her studio. They'll share stories about their careers, mutual friends, shared enthusiasms, and most importantly, what's been making them laugh. This podcast is not about trying to make you better or giving advice. Amy just wants to have a good time.