When Charlene Rowe was six years old, living in North Trenton, she knew her mom was struggling, trying to keep it together. She imagined a thin rope that her mom was somehow barely holding onto. “My mom was around,” Charlene recalled, then looked off, as if in the distance. “But she was caught up in drugs.” Then something happened. As

“I lost myself. I became homeless and was living on the streets,” Nicole shared.  Then she became pregnant. “I was at a point where I had to choose: What can I live without? And I knew I could not live without my daughter. So I had to live without drugs,” Nicole reflected. That’s when she reached out to Thomasine. Nicole

When Anthony Grassi was 16 years old, he said, “Nobody could tell me what to do. I thought I knew it all. I was using and dealing. And my mother said I was either going to flush the drugs down the toilet or get out. So I left and lived in a Jeep.” “From there, I was trapped in a

To safely accommodate an unprecedented surge in the number of individuals experiencing homelessness who are seeking shelter and emergency services, the Rescue Mission of Trenton is dedicating additional space and adding staff to serve up to 85 more people a day. “In just the past two years, there has been a 90 percent increase in the number of people asking

Just over a decade ago, Stephanie Delucia, who was heading up the marketing department for Vertical Screen, an international information technology firm, recalled how Tony and Amy D’Orazio, the entrepreneurial husband-and-wife team, came into her office, closed the door, and said, “We need to talk.” Stephanie gulped as she heard that ominous phrase. Then she saw that Tony and Amy’s

While volunteering at a local food pantry, Isabelle Lambotte and some of her friends were deeply moved by the daunting challenges they saw so many of their neighbors facing because they did not have enough money to prepare nutritious meals for their families. Meanwhile, they could not help but notice that so many restaurants, cafeterias and food stores had surplus

When Nicole and Chuck met, as children, they were drawn to each other, magnetically. He, with his sideways smile. She, always looking over her shoulder. They got each other. They had a connection that went beyond understanding.  As they grew older, whenever they entered each other‘s homes, they knew to expect the unexpected. There was no wishing for something different.