Now I’m somebody!

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Now that he’s turned his life around, Tyrone says, “I want to give back all that I can to Open Door Mission.”

As the baby brother in a family of 9 children, Tyrone always knew his mom loved him. He just didn’t get enough of her, as she struggled to raise her kids alone. “My mom did the best she could,” he says. And her best was good enough to keep her son on track through high school. But when Tyrone was 23, his oldest brother, a gang member, came out of prison. “I wanted to be like him, but I didn’t know all the facts about what [the gang] stood for,” he says. Fancy suits, money to burn...“stuff like that” drew Tyrone in.

Soon he was a gang member, too. And that meant dealing—and using—drugs. It was risky business, and one day he happened to be present at a gang execution. Tyrone was sentenced to eight years as an accomplice. He ended up serving four.

On a one-way trip...out of this world

After Tyrone’s release, he got married and had his first child. He seemed to be headed in the right direction—until his marriage began to crumble. “That made me turn back to drugs,” he says. He was smoking crack cocaine, not paying his bills, lying, stealing and brooding about his divorce.

He remarried a few years later and soon had a baby daughter—the light of his life. Tyrone wanted to get clean, and came to Open Door Mission for a while. However, he wasn’t ready and ended up leaving. Tyrone lost his job and became homeless. “I slept in my van before I came to the Mission,” he says. “It was like being tormented.” Finally, Tyrone became suicidal. “The only thing that flashed through my mind was my daughter,” he says. In that split second, Tyrone discovered that his love for his little girl was greater than his hatred for himself. That’s why he came back to Open Door Mission, determined to stick with it this time.

“You’re home!”

When Tyrone walked through our doors, he was humbled by the warm welcome he received. “One of the ways they’ve helped me the most is to let me know, ‘you’re home!’” he says. “They go above and beyond the call of duty to make you feel welcome.” Tyrone adds, “The program is just awesome...providing help to get anything you need. They take care of you, feed you, clothe you. They give you a warm bed to sleep in and provide showers. You are even given hope. There are people here that love you and stick by you, every step of the way.”

As people stuck with him, Tyrone stuck with the program. He graduated, entered the Journey to Work program, and reconnected with his daughter, now a teenager. Tyrone talks to her every day, and she’s even been down to volunteer!

“My goal is to get back on my feet,” he says now. “To get a job and save some money. I want to continue my relationship with my daughter...I just want to be a man of God and a good father to my child.” There’s a lump in Tyrone’s throat as he says, “I just want to thank God for showing me the way back to Open Door Mission. I used to say I was nobody. Now I’m somebody!”