Sherry Cole

I met Sherry four years ago--she’s the one on the right in that photo of three women in recovery. At that time her first child hadn’t yet been born, and she was still recovering from the conditions that left her living in the street. We spoke of it today. “I was still messed up when you took that first picture of me,” she said, “but now I’m doing the work I always dreamed of.” She named her first child Faith, and she now has a second child, Hope. She also has a stable job, was recently promoted to a position of greater responsibility, and is in love with a good man she feels she can trust. She works in employment services for unhoused and formerly-unhoused people, helping people in recovery find jobs--going with them to secure services, preparing them for job interviews, encouraging them when they struggle. “I’ve placed four people in good jobs this week,” she told me proudly. 

It was Sherry who put me in touch with the agency she works for--Central City Concern, the group that runs the training program for baristas and does other excellent work in this city. I had a second photoshoot with the baristas today and then went to the central office to make a few more photographs and to sign a contract giving them license to use the photographs free of charge. Sherry found me there, and I could feel her pride and delight in having achieved more, she said, than she ever dared to hope for.