Family not homeless anymore

Ilona Standridge works an eight-hour day. When she gets home, she juggles the schedules of her three children, monitors the neighborhood kids wandering in and out of her apartment and tries to find time for herself.

Sounds like an ordinary life. Not for Ilona.

A little over a year ago, she lived with her boyfriend and three children in the back of a Blazer along the Carson River.

"It's just a whole turnaround from where we were a year ago," Ilona said. "Love has had a lot to do with it, and faith and devotion and working together."

It's been a hard road.

Ilona dropped out of school at 16 to marry her high-school sweetheart.

"If I could go back and do it again, I would stay in school," she said. She later earned her high school equivalency diploma.

Within four years, they had three kids and then split up. He's never paid child support, she says.

She met Curtis Vadnais on July 4, 1995, two weeks after he was released from prison. They were introduced by a mutual friend and have been together since.

"He was very respectful in the beginning and he still is," she said. "He didn't get out and screw up like most of them do."

At the time, she was living with her three children in a motel room. Within months, they moved into an apartment.

"He's not any of the kids' father, but he's their dad," Ilona said. "He's a good dad. If they need anything, he's there."

In March 1999, they went to San Jose, violating Curtis' parole. They returned to find themselves without a place to live.

So they moved by the river, where many of Carson City's homeless choose to stay.

"Rural homelessness always seems to congregate around water," said Monte Fast, executive director of FISH. "Water seems to be the magnet that draws them."

"We lived out there on the river and slept in our vehicles," Ilona said. "We did what we had to do to survive."

Ilona and Curtis slept in their pickup truck while the three children slept in the back of a Blazer. The kids went to the Boys & Girls Club after school and the family showered and ate every day through the services offered by Friends in Service Helping.

The children went to school and Ilona was especially careful to keep in touch with her social worker to show that their basic needs were being met.

She had her three children taken away by the state in 1995, when an unpaid traffic ticket resulted in an arrest warrant and she was taken to jail for a weekend.

The children were taken for six months to give Ilona a chance to get back on her feet. She took parenting classes, went to counseling, got a job and had her kids back within five months.

"I did everything to get them back. I wanted them back," she said. "I love my kids with all my heart and I would do anything for them."

While living on the river, Curtis said, they felt relatively safe.

"We left our stuff out there all day long and nobody ever bothered it," Curtis said. "Well, the squirrels got to it a couple of times."

Ilona said they tried to think of it as a long camping trip - while saving every penny. She turned her paycheck over to Curtis, who is the more frugal of the two.

"I only buy what we need," he said. "I was so tired of that river."

Five months later, the family moved into a single-wide trailer near Curtis' father and eight months after that into the apartment where they now live.

"I thank God right now for everything we have," Ilona said. "If it wasn't for our hard work and determination, we wouldn't have what we have."

When she says hard work, she means it literally.

Ilona was the only woman on five different construction sites, working with 65 to 75 men.

"I did what I needed to do to get my job done and make my boss happy," she said. "They didn't give me a lot of BS being the only female. I was highly respected by all of them."

Curtis works as a masonry, laying brick. He said there are always jobs for people willing to work.

"There's always something," he said. "Shovel s--- against the tide if you have to."

Fast said most homeless people will return to the shelter about six or eight weeks after having left.

Curtis and Ilona have been off of the river for more than a year now.

"That sounds like a success story," Fast said.

But the hard times are not over yet.

Ilona was laid off her job two weeks ago and is now working sporadically for a temp agency.

That makes it hard to pay the bills and even more difficult to pay her dental expenses.

She had 11 teeth that needed to be pulled so she could be fitted for dentures. She got the first tooth pulled through a program at FISH, but when she had a job she was disqualified from the program.

Now, she pays $110 for each tooth pulled.

"The only time I get a tooth pulled is when I have cash in hand," she said.

For all the expenses of pulling teeth and getting fitted for dentures, Ilona figures she will pay $4,115.

She said she would like to be able to get the work done and pay in installments but has not been able to find a dentist who will work on a payment plan.

"If I could do that, Merry Christmas to me," she said. "That would be the best Christmas present of my life."

But if not, life will go on - a lesson they've learned more than once.

"We really don't look too far into the future. We go day by day," Ilona said. "We want our kids to have a good education. We want what's best for them."

And Curtis thinks they can do it.

"You ain't holding us back," he said.