News-Register | By Heather Sherrill, Editor-in-Chief
Once upon a time, Dorothy Hartfield had a beautiful apartment, a nice car, her own boutique, a loving husband, daughter and grandchildren. But one day everything slowly came to an abrupt end.
It started during Christmas 2016, but Dorothy’s husband wasn’t wrapping presents; he was packing all her belongings and throwing them all over her car. He told her he was in love with someone else and, instead of trying to fix their relationship, he ended theirs. But she wasn’t ready to let him go and asked him 15 times to go to counseling. “Even my pastor called him and said there was nothing I could have done or that I had done that counseling couldn’t fix.”
Like most women scorned, she thought about doing something to get back at him. “But I decided that he will get his. You reap what you sow,” she said.
After a while, he moved in with the other woman, leaving Dorothy to fend for herself and live on her disability check, which wasn’t enough for rent or utilities. The only thing she could do was to go to a shelter in Grand Prairie. It was taxing for her, because she was taking classes during the day and night at NLC. Her day ended at 9:30 p.m., and by that time, she arrived at the shelter too late to do the shelter’s required chores before sleeping. That’s when she decided that she would rather stay in her car than put herself through that anymore.
“I just don’t want to impose on people, because they have their own life,” she said. “I was with a lady in her home for a little while. It just wasn’t ideal for me. A lot of people open up their homes to you, but they don’t open up their hearts.” She lost friends for that very reason and also because people treat her and other homeless people like they are contagious.
Her advice to other people in her situation is to “get a support system behind you, find your resources. You need someone to be your voice. Mine is Amanda, the care manager at The Bridge. She puts me on a wait list for houses and fills out applications for places to live. Then she has me go to these places to see if it is feasible for me to live there,” she explained. Dorothy is also using all the benefits afforded to her through the college.
“I am in counseling because the death of my marriage is just that — a death. I always try to find something good and positive during the day. I have faith, I pray constantly. I try to treat people in the same situation I am in with respect and dignity.”
She went to Martha Franek-Montanez, a Senior Rehabilitation Specialist at NLC, and told her “The hardest thing about being homeless for me is not having a place to bathe. Not being able to actually take a shower.” Because she was enrolled as a student, Montanez called Greg Sommers, the athletic director at NLC, to see if he could do something. Sommers told Dorothy there was nothing to be ashamed of, that many people are one paycheck away from being homeless. He told her she could use the facility anytime she needed it.
The stress from living in her car was causing her to lose a lot of weight and some people thought her cancer had come back. She couldn’t afford to eat, but she would drink lots of water and juice to keep her body nourished. “I was so exhausted, because living in my car in a dark parking lot kept me awake. I had to be up and down all times at night. I didn’t know if someone was going to break into my car,” Dorothy said.
People in Dorothy’s situation need others in order to keep their perspective in life. “The things I have had to endure for these past years I wouldn’t want my enemy to go through this,” she said. “It is hard. There are times when I just cry uncontrollably. I cry myself to sleep a lot of nights. But people need to have some kind of help for this.”
And as if being homeless isn’t enough to worry about, there’s also her health. In 2011, she had a surgery to remove a mass in her head, but she said the symptoms will never go away. “I have good days and bad days. I don’t like being so stressed out that I can’t function. I have panic attacks. They told me before the surgery that I was going to have a lot of side effects. Short and long-term memories would fade away, I won’t remember people, places or music. I will read something and then I will forget it a minute later, and sometimes my eyesight will be blurred. Now I am really feeling the effects,” she said.
Dorothy’s life has even more trials and tribulations. She is still grieving her five family members who died back-to-back from February 2001 to October 2012. An older sister and brother, two brothers-in-law and another sister passed away. “I thought I was going to die from a broken heart and that is how I feel now with my marriage being over,” she said. “I hope one day I can get a job at NLC. If nothing else, but to help homeless people.”
Her dream is to start her own non-profit organization that will allow homeless people to come to a high-rise building in Dallas to live, train for a job and save money for a home. After everything that has happened to her life, she is still an upbeat, happy and hopeful woman.
“I have so many dreams and, even though I am 57-years-old, I still have a lot of energy. I definitely do not want my dreams to die.”
On any given day, you will see Dorothy in the Blazer Student Store behind the counter helping students and also in the music room, where she plays piano and violin, and sings up a storm. Despite her disadvantages, she’s got a great attitude and a generous heart. “I love North Lake College,” she said. “It saved my life.”
