Dorothy, 75, found herself homeless after selling everything she owned in her Chicago apartment and moving to Orlando.
Before leaving Chicago, Dorothy said she made arrangements to move in with a friend in Orlando. When Dorothy arrived at the airport she called her friend to let her know she made it to Orlando.
“When I got here she said, ‘I have bad news for you,’ and that’s when she told me I couldn’t live there because her son and his two daughters had moved in. I couldn’t believe it.”
Dorothy said for a week she slept on benches in the airport, stayed at a bus station and took shelter behind a racquetball club.
“I’ve never been homeless in my life,” she said. “It was just the worst nightmare you could imagine. Everything had been uprooted in Chicago. I didn’t have the resources to go back.”
Dorothy sought help from the Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida, which provided her shelter for three months. Soon her legs and feet began to weaken so she got a wheelchair.
It was difficult to live in a shelter, Dorothy said, but it allowed her to save enough money from her disability benefits to rent an apartment in Winter Park. The Mustard Seed assisted Dorothy with basic furnishings to make her house into a home.
“It makes me feel really, really good now,” Dorothy said. “Blessed.”