Community partnerships are essential to a nonprofit organization like Pathlight HOME.

They are an indispensable means to helping our formerly homeless residents with life’s essentials, such as food, clothing, bedding, kind words, and even a spiritual uplift. One such partnership is with The Salvation Army Orlando Area Command and the man whose heart and residency at our Maxwell Terrace Apartments started it all – Corps Sergeant-Major Brian S.

New York born and raised, Brian worked for Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs in Coney Island and Long Island for 10 years.  Always close to his supportive family, he was devastated as “people started passing away” when he was in his twenties. He reacted to his grief and loneliness with drugs and alcohol. That led to 30 years of active addiction, 17 of which were spent on the streets.

While homeless in New York, Brian won $37K in the state’s lottery. Feeling flush with money and determined to change his life, he left for Florida. “I thought I’d get away from drugs and go to Orlando.” 

Two months later, though, he was broke and living under I-4 at Orange Blossom Trail. He’d blown the windfall on drugs, motels, and inviting unsavory people to share his motel rooms.

Brian’s lifestyle became a cycle of living on the streets, at The Salvation Army and Coalition for the Homeless. Luckily, “I didn’t get killed” on the streets, he says. Things got worse when, “On a drug spree, I ended up robbing a gas station. I didn’t have a gun. It was a non-violent crime.”

When he got out of jail, Brian hit rock bottom and prayed for help. His prayers were answered when he was referred to The Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Center (ARC), a six month recovery program. “It saved my life,” he says proudly. “I’ve been sober ever since!” That was 16 years ago.

When Brian finished the ARC program, the very same gas station owner he had robbed gave him a job and found him a room. Brian worked there until his boss sold the business and he lived in the rooming house for four years.

“I needed something better,” he recalls, so in 2008 Brian moved to permanent housing at Pathlight HOME’s Maxwell Terrace Apartments. “It’s a good way of appreciating your own place…my own bed, a roll-top desk, a better way of life.”

Having internalized a “save to serve” outlook at the ARC, his formerly-homeless neighbors provided him an opportunity “to see the needs in our community.”

“There were other people who needed help,” he says “One person came to me…he had a job interview and had no shoes. I actually gave him my shoes.”

Brian began preparing sandwiches and buying clothes for his neighbors in need. Still in close touch with the ARC and Salvation Army staff, he enlisted their help to provide food, clothing, volunteers to assist, and bibles. He established Saturday in the Maxwell Terrace garden area as the day and place to “give things out,” telling neighbors, “I’ll see you Saturday.”

“That was the start of my ministry,” he explains, “To meet human needs without discrimination.” Just as important to Brian was the sense of community his quest brought about. “[The residents] were learning to be a community…learning how to help each other,” he remembers. “You could see people benefiting from it…how we talk and know each other. [It was] bringing the community together.” 

His ministry was meant to continue! When Brian’s gas station job ended, he started working for the ARC and, “Everything fell into place.” In fact, Brian’s good works only got better. In 2011, The Salvation Army dedicated a bus with supplies and volunteers to his Saturday morning ministry at Maxwell Terrace, enabling the charitable route to include Pathlight HOME’s Maxwell Garden Apartments and a nearby trailer park. That indispensable resource continues today, assisting about 130 very appreciative people each Saturday.

Though he’s there on Saturdays, Brian moved from Maxwell Terrace in 2013. “It was time to move on. I benefited from what I got there by helping others,” he says. “That was my need…It’s to help others, so they [can learn to] help others. Some people have to be shown. I had to be shown!”

Brian’s ability to offer, “A little nudge to lift them up and show that people care,” has resulted in another proud role in the community: Assistant Chaplain at the Orange County Jail. His past life on the streets, years on drugs, longtime recovery and spiritual core are the perfect qualifications. “I was out there 17 years with an addiction. Who cared for me? I’ve had experience with that,” he states.

And as one who definitely walks the walk, Brian says, “I wish there were more people who would help [others]. People come at the holidays; but they need to help at all times, to show others that someone cares. It gives us a purpose in life to give back to others.”

Florida born and raised, Charleen lived in several towns, moving with her mother’s job of picking and packing sugar cane and mangoes.

With her mom’s marriage, they settled in Mt. Dora, where Charleen graduated high school. She also started hanging around with the wrong crowd, became addicted to drugs, and got in trouble with the law.

The judge thought she’d do better in another locale, with a different crowd of people, and she moved to Apopka to live with her uncle. All was good until she resumed her drug habit. For the very first time, however, Charleen “started thinking about how the drugs were affecting others.”

Perhaps, she thought, because her upbringing was beginning to have an effect. “My grandfather was a pastor and my mother was a ‘prayer warrior,’” she explains. “I had a personal relationship with God, but I strayed.”

Two promises helped her get serious about living a clean and sober life. Her mother, who was raising one of Charleen’s two daughters, got very sick. Just before she died, “I made a promise to her that I’d change my life,” Charleen says. She succeeded for a year, but went back to her addictions after her dad and only sister passed away within a month of each other.

When her older daughter got pregnant, Charleen made the second pledge, one that has since been tested yet guides her sobriety to this day. “I wanted a granddaughter named Serenity,” she remembers. “I made a promise to her that if she’d name the baby Serenity, I would stop drinking and drugging. Serenity will be six years old in January and I’ve been clean and sober for six years!”

Charleen’s housing situation wasn’t as positive. Living in fear with an abusive partner, in a place with no electricity, she landed beaten-up in the hospital with no safe place to call home. Through a fortunate merging of her knowledge of the Pathlight HOME Safe Haven Program at Maxwell Garden, a caring doctor, a police report, Maxwell Garden staff and an available unit, Charleen moved in and finally felt safe. She also worked hard on her sobriety.

Relationship issues resulted in Charleen leaving the program after a year. “It was a challenge, but I stayed clean, sober and prayed-up,” she says of the resulting disappointment. She stayed with a friend and then her ex-boyfriend’s family, yet was not comfortable doing so.

As one who always worked, primarily in food service and labor pool jobs, Charleen landed a job in a plant nursery and persuaded them to hire her daughter as well. When the housing situation came down to the two adults and Serenity living in a truck, they visited Maxwell Garden, to see if units were available. Thankfully, a unit was available for her daughter and Serenity; one for Carleen followed shortly.

With the foliage season over, Charleen was laid off. Her next year-long job as a hotel housekeeper was near home, but business got slow. Through a job fair, she landed a cook position quite far from Maxwell Garden.

After months of taking long rides on public transportation at odd hours, and at times spending precious money for a ride service, she asked for a transfer. The only available position was even further away in Kissimmee. She prayed for an opportunity nearer to her Maxwell Garden home and was finally hired at a nearby McDonald’s, but then, “They cut me to one day! How do you live?”

“I was a damsel in distress,” she laments, yet knew, “God hasn’t failed me yet!” That’s when there was a part-time opening at Sobik’s Subs (at Maxwell Garden) for someone experienced in food and customer service, with a solid work ethic, who would be there on time. Since she lives at the property, gets along with people and knew Sobik’s Manager, Barbara, Charleen prayed this one of Pathlight HOME’s Social Enterprise Programs could be her answer. She asked Barbara if she’d, “Try me for 90 days.”

It’s now going on three months and Charleen is thrilled to be preparing and serving delicious Sobik’s Subs food to customers, alongside of Barbara.

“I truly consider myself blessed. I’m happier and more content (than ever.) If I was to fail…it will be because of me – not the rain or because I missed the bus.”

…I came from nothing and Pathlight HOME gave me an opportunity to become the independent person I want to be. I look at it as being disciplined…With my transition, I had to discipline myself to stay on the straight and narrow. This is me and my Higher Power…not the drugs!”