EVERETT — In many ways, Sandra Dillings is beginning life anew at age 67.
She has her own apartment, two bedrooms with a washer and dryer. “And it’s mine,” she says proudly.
She has a car, a navy blue 2000 Dodge Intrepid that she describes in one word: “Beautiful!”
She has job as a cashier at a Rite Aid in central Everett. “I’m in a union,” she said. “People love me. I feel so good about myself. Wow! I’m on top of the world.”
Her progress has both heartened and amazed people who know her efforts to overcome a history that included sexual abuse, cocaine addiction, mental health issues and being out of the workforce for 15 years.
Shannon Gaule, an employment specialist who works out of the YWCA’s Everett office, describes her in terms anyone would welcome on a letter of recommendation. “A very positive attitude, very motivated, willing to do the work and with a sweet soul,” she said.
Dillings went to California in 2010 to help take care of her grandchildren for a son who was in the Navy. While there, a second son, 47-year-old Christopher Kenneth Ragland, was shot and killed on Feb. 27, 2013.
About two months later, Dillings returned to Snohomish County, living at the Everett Gospel Mission’s shelter for women and children. She previously had lived there for about two years, earning the praise of staff for her willingness to take on volunteer tasks, including cleaning rooms as people left the shelter.
Sylvia Anderson, the mission’s chief executive, remembers Dillings, then 65, took a faith and finance class. Dillings told her: “I think I want to get a job.”
Dillings was connected with the YWCA where, she said, “I met all my angels.” They told her about a temporary work program offered through AARP. YWCA staff also provided help with housing, counseling, and access to its free workplace wardrobe program that provides women up to three outfits for interviews or their job.
Gaule, of the YWCA, remembers meeting a women whose confidence was deflated and self-esteem damaged by not having paid employment for more than a decade and being a victim of sexual assaults.
Yet Dillings had an indomitable spirit, was full of energy and was willing to do the necessary work involved in getting a job. They built multiple resumes that detailed her previous paid and volunteer experience, from being a certified nurse’s aid to assembly work to working in a dining room and at a cafeteria.
Dillings qualified for a federal program coordinated by the YWCA that provides housing and a rental assistance for people who are homeless and disabled.
She was nominated, and eventually selected, to receive a reconditioned car from Everett’s M and N Absolute Auto Repair. “We were praying that she didn’t have to catch the bus to go to her job,” said Anderson, of the Everett Gospel Mission.
Dillings was offered a job as a cashier in an Everett Rite Aid, where she has been working for about two months. “God has answered my prayers,” she said.
All this in a lifespan that she said included being molested by a family member as a child, having her own child at age 16, “knowing nothing about motherhood,” — the first of four children — and being a victim of rape in 1998.
“I know my past was haunting me,” she said. “I feel like I held myself hostage all these years for things that happened to me and I had no where to go to figure it out.”
But “some day you want to come out of that hole,” she said. Telling her story, “was the hardest thing I had to do,” but it also helped her gain a foothold of confidence.
“Thank God for the YWCA,” she said. “I’m telling you, they answer prayers. They listen. They give you what you need to stand on your own if you’re ready to do it.”
Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486 or salyer@heraldnet.com
Watch Sandra Dillings tell her story at the annual YWCA luncheon in Everett in May: www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTMpZXINKo8
YWCA by the numbers
In 2014, the YWCA in Snohomish County provided:
742 individuals (children, youth, families and single adults) with emergency shelter, transitional housing , permanent housing with supportive services.
549 individuals (children, youth, families and single adults) – an average of 350 each month – with monthly rental assistance through the Shelter Plus Care Program.
532 individuals (children, youth, families and single adults) ongoing mental health counseling.
78 children and their caregivers with domestic violence services.
816 hours of family law legal services.
More than 1,000 women with clothing through its Women’s Working Wardrobe program.
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