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“I got pregnant with her and was using in my pregnancy,” Weber said. “I ended up having my daughter in my yard and my dad actually delivered my baby. That’s how Children Services got involved. It would have been if I didn’t get into rehab and get clean I could have my kids taken.”
Weber has been clean for 10 months and now has a job at Sojourner in the kitchen and also as peer support for other women there. She said it feels like a new way of life for her and she wants to give back to others.
“They have actually cried to me and told me that they want me to help them out,” she said. “Knowing that and hearing that from people for me is just amazing, it’s like I could really help somebody.”
Weber’s mom and dad, Yolanda and Dave Weber, and her uncle Scott Bowling have organized Memory Run, an annual poker run in Trenton, for 10 years. Weber said this year she wanted the proceeds to benefit a local organization.
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“We decided to start donating the money because it wasn’t really a memory, someone was just winning it,” Yolanda Weber said. “I wanted it to stand for something.”
She said they picked Sojourner because they helped her daughter.
This year’s event was held last weekend in memory of her nephew Justin Bowling, who died of a drug overdose in 2006 at the age of 19.
Christine Birhanzl, development director at Sojourner, said they are thrilled with the donation.
“This group is just amazing they raised $2,600 and they have designated it to come to our ‘Hill’ facility for women and children,” she said. “What we’d like to do is purchase toys and make a play area for the moms and the children to be together.”
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