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Client Stories

The following stories are real-life examples of the Action Center's work.

Angelina Gabaldon
Success is defined as the favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors. It is to try and try again. For Jeffco Action Center, success is seen in their client’s strength and determination to improve their lives. Clients like Angelina Gabaldon.  

Angelina’s life began as an uphill battle. During her adolescent years she had already been through foster care, emancipated herself from her parents and became a mother herself. Faced with the pressures of being a middle-school student and single parent, she dropped out in order to work full-time.

“I was a baby having a baby,” Angelina said. “I have been forced to make hard decisions without feelings of regret.”

With hopes of changing the life of her young daughter, Angelina moved her small family out to Colorado to live with her mother. However things were still not going Angelina’s way. Her mother was still living the life that Angelina had tried to escape from as a child and soon they found themselves homeless.

Compounding her problems, Angelina’s boyfriend, now fiancé, broke his leg and was no longer able to work. Dealing with the financial and emotional stress of several surgeries and diabetic medication, Angelina’s full-time job as a Certified Nursing Assistance soon too slipped away. Her small family had now reached a critical point and was in need of serious help.

Angelina and her family turned to Jeffco Action Center. The young family needed help paying rent, medical bills, buying diabetic supplies, food and clothing.

Jeffco Action Center’s mission is to provide an immediate response to basic human needs and promotes pathways to self-sufficiency for its clients. All clients meet with a Client Services Counselor who evaluates their needs and arranges for the immediate services they can provide. Clients can make use of the Action Center's food bank, receive rent or utility assistance, medical assistance, peruse the clothing bank, receive bus tokens and get work readiness support.

“Jeffco Action Center is a one of a kind in Jefferson County,” said Angelina, “They provided us with hope and dignity. We utilized the Action Center at the darkest time in our life without shame. Every suggestion they made we took it.” 

It is success stories like Angelina’s that prove Jeffco Action Center to be a thriving and successful non-profit. It is not the number of people helped but rather the people themselves that choose to take that step and get the help they need to survive on their own.

Jeffco Action Center’s counselors also help clients connect with other community resources through referrals, including Red Rocks Community College. In just five years at RRCC, Angelina’s hard work and dedication paid off. She was able to earn her GED, Phlebotomy Certification and in May, 2009 Angelina graduated with an Associates of Applied Science.  She was the first in her family to earn a GED and is a first generation college graduated. Angelina plans to continue her education and is now working on her Bachelor of Science in Nursing. 

Following the lead of Jeffco Action Center, Angelina is now giving back to her own community by working in the Gateway Program at RRCC. It is a program for those who have been involved in the criminal justice system and experienced the same difficult hardships as Angelina.  They are men and women looking to start their career and end the cycle of poverty.

She credits the Action Center for helping her to be the strong woman she is today.

 “My future now has unlimited opportunities. Once we had finally caught our breath from the knockout of our burdens we refused to let the resources go without success.”

Angelina thanks the Action Center for strengthen her family and teaching her the self sufficiency needed to lead her family down the right path. 

“I have experienced a lot of life’s curve balls,” Angelina says. “And when they are pitched I can always remember the hope and dedication from Jeffco Action Center.”

 

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Ed Michel
For nine years, Ed Michel was a pit boss at a Black Hawk casino. He got paid well, took his family on vacations and owned a house in Indian Hills.

A layoff last year was not in the 43-year-old's plans. Neither were two subsequent layoffs from jobs as a ranch hand and a Target overnight stocker. And certainly, he never planned to be sitting in a crowded room waiting for emergency food to feed his wife and kids.

"I was making $52,000 a year, and now I'm sitting here looking for bread," Michel said.

Michel's and son Tim Michel's families represent just two of the thousands of families that account for the 30 percent spike nationwide in the number of people accessing food from nonprofit agencies in the past six months due to the struggling economy.

Michel and 20-year-old son Tim, who lives with his girlfriend and their baby, visited the Action Center Monday after a morning of job hunting. It was Tim Michel's first visit after having been let go from jobs twice last year.

After losing his job at the casino, the elder Michel sold his home, tried a move to Oregon that proved fruitless and moved his family to an apartment in Lakewood.

"I just hang in there; it's got to turn," he said. "If I didn't have the kids with me I could go live in the woods myself."

 

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Melissa Devier
Sitting in the busy waiting area of the Jeffco Action Center, Melissa Devier is eager to talk about her new son and daughter: one-and-a-half-month-old twins.

"It's fun," she said. "I wouldn't trade it for anything."

But her new babies, in addition to her 3-year-old, have brought some financial strain on Melissa's household.

"It's hard to come by extra spending money when I'm trying to keep the electricity on," she said.

That's why Devier comes to the Jeffco Action Center when she needs help.

"It's just when I really need it; when I'm down and out and scraping by," she said.