From Broken to Whole: Kim’s Journey to Healing the Youth We Serve
From Broken to Whole: Kim’s Journey to Healing the Youth We Serve
At 12 years old, Kim was a runaway, rebellious, and was using drugs. She found herself in a relationship with a gang member that she now deems a relationship with “two broken cookies that just made crumbs.” For years, her life spiraled deeper into addiction and chaos.
But on April 20th, 1986—her wedding day—everything changed. While snorting a line of cocaine, three months pregnant, Kim looked up and saw herself clearly for the first time. She heard a voice ask, “What are you doing here?” That moment of divine intervention transformed her life forever. She surrendered to God, got clean and sober, and never looked back.
Kim’s journey wasn’t easy. She watched her late husband battle addiction for 19 years, experience 12 years of sobriety, and ultimately pass away following shoulder surgery and a heart attack. She experienced the unimaginable heartbreak of losing her three-month-old son Joshua in a car accident caused by a drunk driver, yet found the strength to advocate for the woman who killed him, asking the judge to allow weekend sentencing so she could remain a mother to her children. In that tragedy, Kim discovered purpose: Joshua’s heart gave life to another child whose mother had been praying for a miracle.
Finding Her Calling
After 31 years of marriage and five years of pastoring, Kim found herself widowed and searching for God’s next plan. That’s when a friend reached out with an opportunity at the new ZOE Home for Youth program.
“I don’t want to work with girls,” Kim initially protested. But God had other plans.
Today, Kim serves as ZHY’s Substance Use Disorder (SUD) Counselor, using every painful chapter of her story to reach our trafficked girls. She understands their world intimately, the withdrawal, the shame, the cycle of addiction that keeps them bound to their traffickers.
Breaking the Chains
“95% of our girls come in as substance users,” Kim explains. “It was either a coping skill learned from family or given by traffickers to keep them submissive and coming back.”
Kim doesn’t just see the drugs, she sees the little girl underneath. She remembers the 12-year-old who captured her heart, tattooed everywhere, angry, and broken. When this child’s greatest wish was to visit her deceased mother’s grave, Kim helped make it happen. They sat together as the girl poured Coca Cola over the headstone (instead of alcohol) and left half a Hershey’s bar for her mom, a sacred moment that bonded them forever.
“They don’t like me at first,” Kim admits with a gentle smile. “They love me because I understand addiction, but they hate me when I expose it. I tell them, ‘You’re in relapse mode,’ and they get upset. But I don’t blame their anger. We’re taking away their best friend.”
Teaching Hope Through Heartbreak
Kim’s office walls are covered with her “catchphrases”—simple truths that stick with the girls long after they leave:
- “Two broken cookies just make crumbs”
- “Stinking thinking leads to drinking”
- “The beast you feed the most wins”
- “It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish”
These aren’t just words—they’re lifelines thrown to girls drowning in trauma and addiction.
One of Kim’s former clients from her time at the detention center recently found her. He had been facing an eight-year sentence but, through Kim’s advocacy, got into rehab instead. He’s now a drug and alcohol counselor at Homeboy Industries. “I never forgot you,” he told her. “I never forgot how you called us ‘good morning, sunshines’ even when we threw shoes at the door.”
A Living Testament
At 57, Kim embodies the hope she offers these girls. She jokes about her short-term memory, telling the girls, “See? Don’t use drugs. This is what happens!” But behind the laughter is a woman who has learned to let go when girls choose to return to the streets, who maintains strict self-care to stay equipped for the battlefield, and who remains content in God’s calling on her life.
“If you are overworked, self-care is a necessity,” she teaches her staff. “Why would they want what you have if you look exhausted and angry?”
Kim’s story isn’t just about personal redemption. Her story is about how God uses our deepest pain to heal others’ wounds. Every scar, every loss, every moment of despair in her life has become a tool in God’s hands to reach girls who desperately need to know they’re not alone.
Your Impact
Because of supporters like you, Kim can mourn with a 12-year-old at her mother’s grave. She can teach a girl that recovery is possible. She can look into the eyes of a child trapped in addiction and say with absolute certainty: “I’ve been where you are, and there is a way out.”
Your generosity doesn’t just provide beds and meals. It provides Kim’s salary, her training, her ability to be present in the lives of girls who have never known unconditional love. You are part of breaking the chains that bind these precious children to their traffickers.
As Kim says, “We serve a God of impossibles, and to have a miracle, there has to be an impossible.” Thank you for believing in the impossible with us, that broken girls can become whole, that addiction can be overcome, and that love does conquer all.
Kim continues to serve as ZHY’s SUD Counselor, transforming pain into purpose one girl at a time.