As a woman who discovered religion, Dawn Brooks considers her job at Molly Maid quite literally a “godsend.”
Brooks had been crawling out of a life of drug addiction and abusive relationships when she started work at Molly Maid a year ago. She had been clean for four years, but she was still unemployed and on welfare to support her son, now 12.
At work, Richard and Karen Schmelter made her and the other women feel like family.
“As mothers, they allow us to take time off to take care of our families. If our children are sick, they’re very understanding. And I’ve never had a job that was quite that lenient before,” she said.
The work is hard, but she enjoys it. What’s more, the challenge has helped build her self-esteem, because she finds herself succeeding at jobs she thought were too difficult to handle.
Now, Brooks is completely self-sufficient with her salary at Molly Maid. She also does part-time work as a drug counselor for the Caring Ministries Christian Fellowship, she said.
Brooks also has another reason to be proud of her job at Molly Maid. At the time she was hired, she weighed 195 pounds; in the past year she shed more than 50 pounds and now fits into a size 8 pair of jeans, she said.
“I am physically so much stronger, and psychologically. And that makes me feel pretty good about myself,” she said.
