EDITO”S NOTE: This is another in a series of articles on the Peninsula Home Fund. Please click on the button at right to print out a coupon to include with your donation.
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PORT ANGELES – Bubbly, enthusiastic about life – after three years of sobriety, that’s how Kristy Hoppe wakes up and greets each new day, thanks in part to help from the Peninsula Daily News’ Peninsula Home Fund.
“Without the help of the community, I would not be clean and sober and on road to wellness – I’m alive, and I just love it,” says Kristy.
After years of trying to overcome her addictions, she finally succeeded, and she proudly proclaims she’s been clean since May 13, 2005.
“After years of drug and alcohol abuse, I was living on the streets and homeless – my own family had disowned me, that’s how bad and untrustworthy I’d become,” she recalls.
She says she’s alive today, living a life as a 40-year-old responsible citizen who is eager to give back, because of five years of emotional, physical and mental support from the community – and for that she’s extremely grateful.
The Peninsula Home Fund gave her a small but very significant “hand up – not a handout.”
It paid for her $125 electricity deposit so she could move out of a halfway house and into her own apartment.
She says because of her past it took 14 months before the Clallam County Housing Authority gave her approval to live in one of its subsidized apartments at Mountain View Terrace.
“When they called and told me one was available I didn’t have the money for first and last month’s rent, plus the electric deposit, because I’d just paid rent to the Oxford House,” says Kristy.
“If you don’t have the money for electricity, you can’t move in, and they would have just given the apartment to the next person on the list.
“I’ve been in my own apartment six months now, and it’s just awesome having my own place to live – it’s in a secure building, centrally located with neighbors that are great and supportive.”
A registered nurse since April 1996, she is now enrolled in a five-year state program called Washington Help Professional Services that helps fund her schooling at Peninsula College.
There she is working on attaining a bachelor’s degree in applied management, a new program at the college.
Her goal is to return to health care management.
