Elizabeth is a Homeless Court graduate who has been working at the Navigation Center for nearly three years. It’s very difficult to imagine one could live the life she has from a very young age and have the success she is experiencing now. Since Elizabeth was a very young child, both her mother and father struggled with drugs, alcohol, and homelessness. She, along with some of her young cousins, lived off and on with her grandmother who dealt drugs and lived in a trap house (crack house).

As a young child of nine, she was already using drugs and thought that lifestyle was normal. By fifteen she was a drug addict. At eighteen she was given time in prison. When she was released, she was court-ordered to the House of Grace, a drug rehab located in San Jose. Elizabeth graduated from the House of Grace and returned to Merced where she attended Behavioral Health and graduated from GEO.

She was told by a friend about a position available at the Navigation Center that she would not only enjoy, but do well in. She applied and was given the position at the Navigation Center where she still is employed. She is currently a college student getting a transfer degree in sociology so she can work in Child Protective Services. Elizabeth did so well in her recovery, programming, and now collegiate studies that her court fines, which totaled in the thousands, were dismissed, and she is the first to have her prison record expunged. Well done, Elizabeth!