Some people make an impression the moment you meet them. They carry themselves with a quiet confidence, possess a seemingly endless well of knowledge, and have an uncanny ability to solve problems that leave everyone else scratching their heads. More importantly, they use those gifts not for recognition, but to make life better for the people around them. Quenton “Q” Northcraft is one of those rare people.

If you don’t involve yourself with poor people, with people of color—if you live in that secluded subculture that doesn’t interact with these other cultures—then you just don’t understand.

Sunlight filled the room. It was bright and cheerful, much like Mary herself. Dressed in fashionable business attire, most would find it difficult to believe that Mary was once homeless and addicted to hard street drugs.

Every morning for 13 months, Lauren Kotz peered down from her prison bunk into her newborn baby’s crib. Twenty-two days into her detention, she gave birth to her daughter.

When someone says that their recovery story is centered around a rat, you might logically conclude they are about to tell you about how they got busted and ended up in jail, going into withdrawal, and entering a recovery program to start a new way of life because of a “rat.” However, that is not Chad Wayt's rat story.