Click here if you are unable to view this gallery on a mobile device.
SAN JOSE — She named her youngest daughter Genesis.
“She’s my beginning,” Angelina Garcia said.
Before Genesis came along and changed her life for good, she endured plenty of trauma and heartbreak. Angelina’s childhood featured a father tormented by legal battles and a mother she felt was indifferent to her whereabouts.
Those days have been replaced with nightly readings of “The Hungry Caterpillar” and daily lessons on manners. There are also lots of flowers. Angelina likes to surprise Genesis, 7, with the occasional bouquet.
“Just so she knows that this is how you’re supposed to be treated,” Garcia said. “This is what love is. This is what respect is.”
Garcia, 43, who grew up feeling neglected, spoke from the safety of a LifeMoves shelter in downtown San Jose. Genesis sat next to her mother during the interview, enthusiastically bringing to life a lion’s mane in a coloring book.
This is, by LifeMoves policy, a temporary stop. The nonprofit agency provides interim housing and supportive services for people on their way to self-sufficiency. LifeMoves clients stay long enough to begin overcoming the trauma of homelessness while learning financial management skills and saving as much as possible before re-entering the Bay Area housing market.
LifeMoves reports that 89 percent of families and 73 percent of individuals who complete the program “achieve stable housing and self-sufficiency.”
It’s an ideal stopover for Genesis and her doting mother. Children fill up half of the shelter beds at LifeMoves, which is seeking $20,000 through the Mercury News’ annual Wish Book program to help children who have experienced homelessness.
“She’s in a safe environment,” Angelina said, running a playful hand over her daughter’s head. Mom likes to say that Genesis has the hair of a mermaid. “She has somewhere to sleep. She has somewhere to eat. That’s consistent. That’s regular.”
Like her daughter’s name, this shelter, too, represents a beginning. Angelina spent years following in her parents’ troubled footsteps and wound up addicted to amphetamines. She said she’s been clean for more than nine years.
Among her biggest dreams now, Angelina said, is waiting for Genesis “to become a big girl so I can ask her what her childhood was like.”
At that, Angelina paused as her eyes welled up.
“Those are memories I don’t have,” she said. “So I just want her to have the biggest, best memory book. … I want her to be her instead of struggling to survive.”
Until then, mom works ferociously to give her daughter a fighting chance. Angelina spends 50 to 60 hours a week, at $22 an hour, on the graveyard shift at the Summit Estates Recovery Center working as a medication technician. Angelina’s job consists mostly of sitting with detox patients during their darkest hours.
Fighting her emotions again, she adds that she soon will take on an additional 20-hour gig at a children’s clothing store. It’s part of her desperate quest to pay Bay Area rent.
On that count, the happy ending remains a work in progress. Angelina makes too much to qualify for low-income housing but not enough to cover the full cost of a suitable apartment. A LifeMoves case manager is working with her to find a manageable financial arrangement.
Even after a life of trauma, nothing brings Angelina’s emotions to the surface more than talking about rent.
“To live righteously is so hard. To pay your bills on time? That’s hard,” she said, holding back tears. “When you’re living (the life of an addict), there’s no bills, there’s no rent. But it’s not the life that I want. I want to be stable. I want to be committed. I want to have a family. And that doesn’t exist out there.”
In Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, the cost of living is more than 50 percent above the national average. So those working for the minimum wage often live on the brink of homelessness.
That explains why LifeMoves has welcomed 10,000 clients per year at 17 locations from San Jose to Daly City. The network relies on government funding for 55 percent of its 24.6 million annual revenue and on private donations for the rest. Their clients also include homeless seniors and members of the military; 1 in 5 are veterans.
Claire Loughlin, the director of marketing for LifeMoves, said the plight of Angelina and Genesis has a familiar ring.
“Most of them are very close to this kind of story,” she said. “A lot of clients are employed but don’t make enough to pay the rent. We have more clients now who have miscalculated: They’ve come to the Bay Area to work because there are a lot of jobs, but they can’t afford the housing.”
For Angelina, just getting this far represents a victory. She said her upbringing was dominated by fear and uncertainty. Angelina figured this was her lot in life. She got hooked on amphetamines, was a disastrously irresponsible mother with her first four children (they now live elsewhere) and seemed resigned to a wasted life.
“I had no validation growing up, so I didn’t feel worthy,” she said. “Why get clean and be productive and be all those things they say to be when this is just my destiny? I’m just destined to be a messed-up person and have nothing.”
But when she hit rock bottom, she began bouncing back up.
“My whole life I wanted to be better than my parents, and one day I just realized that I was worse,” Angelina said. “I found myself to be a liar, a manipulator and a dope fiend. But I wanted to show my kids that it’s never too late to fix things, that you can always be something better. I wanted to honor my grandparents, to live up to their moral standards and practice what they preached.”
She entered rehab voluntarily and was sober for a year-and-a-half when she became pregnant with Genesis. Never mind that Angelina was using birth control at the time — there was no stopping her life-altering daughter.
LifeMoves exists for vulnerable people just like this, Loughlin said. Statistics show that families served by LifeMoves regained their housing after an average of just 113 days. In general, clients learn to save 50 percent more of their income while in the program.
Clients who have a drug or alcohol problem need to stay engaged in treatment services. LifeMoves understands that addiction is a chronic condition for many people but, like other chronic conditions, it can be successfully managed with treatment.
Loughlin said LifeMoves works to make certain that each center is welcoming and safe for even the most vulnerable who walk in the door.
For Angelina and Genesis, it’s been an oasis on a difficult road to a permanent address. Mother looks at daughter and rubs her hand through that thick head of hair again.
“She doesn’t have to worry and ask, ‘Where are we going to stay?’ ” Angelina said. “She knows she’s going to go home.”
THE WISH BOOK SERIES
The Wish Book is an annual series of The Mercury News that invites readers to help their neighbors.
WISH
Donations will help LifeMoves fund its Children’s Education Program, which provides academic and behavioral health support to bridge achievement gaps and address the trauma of children who have experienced homelessness. Goal: $20,000
HOW TO GIVE
Donate at wishbook.mercurynews.com or mail in the coupon.
ONLINE EXTRA
Read other Wish Book stories, view photos and video at wishbook.mercurynews.com.
