From Welfare To Work Single Mom Loosens Welfare’s Grip College Graduate Struggles To Rub Out History Of Poverty

When cash runs out at month’s end, Suzanne Coyne sells her blood for food.

When the checkbook’s in the black, she gives again, donating $10 to the food bank she takes from.

“Kindness recycles,” she said. “I really look forward to being on the other end.”

Born into poverty 28 years ago, Coyne is polishing a business plan that could break her free of welfare. She hopes to earn a comfortable $1,500 a month as a masseuse.

Armed with a college diploma and job skills, she’s the rare welfare mom with a good shot at rising to the ranks of the middle class. Just 5 percent of Washington welfare recipients are educated past high school.

But every time independence has neared, turns of chance and choice knocked Coyne back.

Her dad was a stranger during her childhood. Her mother, three times divorced, drove a broken-down Volkswagen van. Coyne remembers sitting in the back many times, waiting for roadside help to arrive.

She was 20, having just put herself through junior college in Centralia, Wash., when she got pregnant the first time. The relationship with her first child’s father dissolved, and Coyne ruled out abortion.

Coyne’s mom, who gave birth at 16, wouldn’t help. She told her daughter to solve her own problems.

Instead, Coyne turned to welfare. She envisioned a short stay to get vocational training. It’s stretched to seven years.

“I never intended welfare to be a lifestyle,” she said. “It’s always been a means to an end.”

Physical therapy for a back injury after a car wreck introduced her to massage. The wages seemed good, the hours flexible, and she liked its nurturing mission.

She and her infant daughter, Amanda, moved to Spokane in 1991 to take advantage of cheap rent and a massage school. While job hunting, she got pregnant a second time.

Coyne considered adoption, fearing the perception that she was breeding to increase her welfare grant.

“The decision was the head versus the heart. I laid in the hospital bed thinking, do I give him away because I love him, or keep him because I love him. It was the most painful time of my life.”

She kept the baby, but again the relationship fizzled. Coyne traces the pattern of relationship problems to her father - absent until she was 18 and no longer a financial burden.

The fathers of Coyne’s kids pay $124 a month in combined child support. Both have contact with the kids; one visits weekly.

She wrestled with depression after Dave, the youngest, was born. Isolated and ostracized from family, she asked herself, “How do I get out of this mess?” She saw a stereotype in the mirror: a sad, overweight, single welfare mom.

Hearing welfare moms compared to leeches and wolves on TV made it worse. No one saw her skip meals or a social life for her kids.

“I was never praised for being a good mother,” she said. “They see nothing else. You are subhuman if you’re on welfare.”

As Dave started walking, Coyne got back on her feet. She found a mentor in Roberta Ness, a masseuse who climbed off welfare.

“I’m taking her in under my wing and making sure she gets going,” said Ness, owner of Total Therapeutic Massage Clinic. “I’ve been there, done that. It’s not easy.”

Searching for day care, Coyne found few that accepted kids on low-paying state vouchers. Others had indefinite waiting lists.

After looking for six months, Coyne found Cornerstone Children’s Center in northwest Spokane. Dave started Monday. Amanda, 7, attends an after-school program at Willard Elementary.

Other problems remain. The state health department and state welfare department have shuffled papers for three months over a $65 massage license. Coyne still doesn’t have the license.

She also needs money for business insurance and a portable massage table that costs at least $400.

A third of the $750 in state aid she receives each month goes to pay the rent. Coyne saved three months to buy a name tag, hospital scrubs and T-shirt emblazoned with her business name, “Helping Hands.”

She recently wrote a letter to be mailed to Spokane’s elite retirement centers - potential customers for geriatric massage - but couldn’t afford the $10 postage.

Sue Robinson, director of Caritas Center, a church-run social service agency in northwest Spokane, watched Coyne crawl toward work for two years. With a little family help, Robinson said Coyne’s reliance on welfare could have been short-lived.

“When you have to worry about every diaper, every tank of gas, it makes it harder to plan for a bigger goal,” Robinson said. “Survival took all her energy.”

Coyne took another step last week, enrolling in a three-month program to help welfare recipients start businesses. The program, run by Spokane Neighborhood Action Programs, offers training and start-up loans of up to $5,000.

Coyne still could be denied permission to set out on her own by her social worker. During an annual case review in January, the state could recommend a more conservative route, such as working in someone else’s clinic.

Either way, Coyne feels she’s at a crossroads. She worked briefly as a nanny for a wealthy South Hill family and saw the parade of gardeners and domestic help.

“It was like they were hiring someone to live their life,” Coyne said.

After a pause, she added, “I’d like to afford that.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MEMO: These 2 sidebars appeared with the story:

1. PROFILES Today: Suzanne Coyne, a 28-year-old single mom raising two children, ages 2 and 7. On welfare since: Unplanned pregnancy in 1990. Monthly grant: $546 cash; $200 in food stamps. Goal: Start a geriatric massage business.

Upcoming Monday: Seventeen-year-old Julie Noble is an eighth-grade dropout with a history of drug and alcohol abuse. A half-dozen workers from social service agencies are pushing the single mom toward self-sufficiency. Tuesday: Can the Thaemert family survive without a welfare check? Meet John Thaemert, a disabled worker, and his wife, Julie, a mother of five who’s never held a job.

2. IN THIS SERIES Will WorkFirst improve the lives of the state’s poorest citizens? The Spokesman-Review is trying to find out. The newspaper will follow three families through welfare reform and report periodically on their progress. Profiles of these families, representing a cross section of Spokane County’s welfare population, appear this week.