Charity’s rewards

Now the trailer home in the Valley, with its leaky roof and rat’s nest of electrical wires, is little more than a bad memory. And a lesson.

It is where Debbie Osborne began to build a better life. With two kids and $440 a month in welfare, she depended on the kindness of strangers. The manager of her trailer helped her move into a better place, helped her build a porch to sit on in the evenings.

“Each December, he refused to take my rent check,” said Osborne, now 37. “No matter how much I argued with him he wouldn’t take it. He’d hang up on me.”

She remembers everyone who helped her. She was one of the thousands of Spokane residents who found her way to the Christmas Bureau, picking out toys for her children that she otherwise would not have been able to afford.

“There were a lot of times when I wouldn’t have been able to get anything without it,” she said. “On welfare, you learn how to make every dollar stretch – and it doesn’t stretch very far. Like I told my daughter, bills come first, playing comes second, even at Christmas.”

Now the daily churn of her life seems something of a dream. She lives in a house with her new husband. She is happy to worry about electrical bills and clearing snow from the driveway because it is a sign of responsibility, of ownership.

Through the welfare office, she found a job with St. Vincent de Paul’s Family Service Center on east Trent. In four quick years, she rose to become the center’s charity director, overseeing a staff of five employees, worrying whether she can collect enough turkeys for Christmas, whether the delivery trucks will be able to negotiate the newly fallen snow.

She once stood in lines for help. Now she finds a line of others snaking to her desk. She has, in her words, “the best crew you could ever want.”

“It feels good to be the one helping now,” she said.

She offers this advice: “Don’t let pride stop you. We’ve all been there. Don’t let pride starve you.”

Even as she stood in lines years ago, Osborne could see to the front, to the vision of something better.

“I’m a true believer,” she said. “My belief is what comes around, goes around. If you have a kind heart, and you are willing to help other people, your turn will come.”