In the News ... "Midland mom remembers what it’s like to be homeless"

MRT Photo

Ragini Venkatasubban, Reporter
Midland Reporter-Telegram

MIDLAND, TEXAS - Nursing school is always a challenge. It’s even more difficult when you’re a homeless single mother.

For more than six months, Lucy Gutierrez lived out of her car while attending nursing school.

The Lamesa native was the first in her family to graduate from high school and had secured a job working at a prison. Her shifts were long, sometimes 16 hours without a break. She barely had enough money to pay for groceries and even less time to spend with her daughter, Jobi Bernal.

She knew she couldn’t keep living like this, so she decided to become a licensed vocational nurse (LVN) to pursue her love of caring for the elderly. She enrolled in nursing school at South Plains College in Levelland, more than an hour’s drive from her home in Lamesa.

That’s when the trouble began ...

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