A Second Chance at Life

For 14 years, Ora Tigner, 55, had an abusive, on-off relationship with a boyfriend. “He told me he loved me,” she explains. “Love is a very strong word.”

Ora has been looking for love since her mother died suddenly, leaving Ora and her two sisters to be raised in tough foster homes. She survived, earned two degrees at DMACC and worked to support herself for decades.

Then, in 2010 she told her unemployed boyfriend to move out of her house. For the next 16 hours, he beat her with a baseball bat, breaking both her arms, blackening her eyes, and inflicting severe head injuries that required dozens of staples and stitches. As the sun began to rise the next day, Ora thinks he saw the extent of what he’d done. He called 911 to help her, then hung himself in the garage.

She was beginning to recover when her next boyfriend threatened to hit her and steal her van.

“I thought it would happen again,” she recalls. Ironically, she used a baseball bat as her weapon, and broke all the windows out of his house. Ora was arrested and lost her public housing.

“I spent a year living in my van with my dog, Lucky,” she says. She spent her nights in a Walmart parking lot.

“You don’t really sleep,” Ora explains. “You might rest, but you don’t sleep because you have to always be on your guard. Everything you own is in the van and it could be stolen. I never really felt secure,” she remembers.

“As a homeless woman, you have to be careful where you park. Be aware of your surroundings and don’t be stupid,” she says. “I found a great park out in the country, but it only had one way in and out. I could get trapped. I didn’t park there to sleep.”

Ora heard about Joppa from other homeless people. She went to get blankets and met with volunteers and staff.

“I don’t know what I would have done without Joppa,” she says. “They’re a God-send. Homelessness is hard anyway, and without Joppa, I couldn’t have made it. Life can be so sucky. Sometimes you just need someone to listen and understand.”

Initially, Joppa supported Ora with warm clothes, food, and pet food for Lucky. Now that she is in permanent housing, Joppa volunteers stop in each Sunday with supplies, groceries and friendship as part of the Aftercare Program.

“I’m a happy girl,” Ora says, describing the simple pleasures of apartment life, such as taking a shower, cooking real food and wearing pajamas. “When you’re staying at someone else’s house, you just don’t wear pajamas.”

Ora now spends her time talking to people at shelters. She starts to cry as she recounts one particular story: “In the hospital, I went through the tunnel they talk about. I saw the burning light at the end. I got a second chance at life. Now, if there is any way I can talk to you and prevent you from being homeless, that’s what I need to do. I want to give back.”

Ora is thankful Joppa was there to love her and guide her back from despair. “I wouldn’t have gotten here without Joppa.”