She Needed Help, Now She’s Helping Others

After losing her house and struggling to find apartments that would rent to her, Carrie Olsen resorted to living in her car with her boyfriend and her dog. After her boyfriend was arrested, she would skip meals to avoid leaving her dog alone in the car, until she found a place to eat that would allow pets inside: The Salvation Army Centralia Corps.

The road to recovery is rarely easy, and while she was supporting her boyfriend in the midst of drug court, a storm cracked her windshield, leading to frequent stops by the police and worries of violations. Carrie asked Salvation Army Officers Captains Gin and Steven Pack if they could help. In return, Carrie felt compelled to start volunteering.

Watch to see how Carrie has transformed her life and is now helping others do the same.

Below is a transcript of the video edited for readability.

Carrie Olsen: Living in your car is dirty business. 

We would wake up, and drive to the nearest bathroom, usually go down to breakfast, and then, we would find a place to park until we could go to the next place that served a meal and then just kind of bounce from one place to the next.

At the end of the day, we would find a safe place to park, and we would just stay there until we woke up the next day and had to find a bathroom again.

I lived in Centralia for about seven years before I became homeless. When my house became condemned and they had to tear it down, I did not have good credit, so, nowhere would approve my applications. They had to tear my house down, so we just did what we could and started living in the car, and life just kind of went downhill from there.

Me and my boyfriend lived in there. It was, kind of scary at first. I didn’t know anything about the homeless community. I didn’t know where to go for meals or to shower or even, the safe places to park at night. Luckily, I had my dog, and I felt a little bit safer at night with her in the car because she would alert me if anything came around.

I started talking to a lady who helped me get in contact with nonprofits around here that serve meals and provide services. 

I did meth off and on for 10 years. Once I became homeless, I got really heavy into my usage. I had tried to quit in the past, and it just, I would make it to, like, day nine, and, “I can’t do this anymore,” and go back to using. 

I would randomly ask my boyfriend, are we ready to clean yet? He would say, no, not yet. And I’d be like, okay, well, I guess we’re just gonna still be crazy together.

It doesn’t really work if one of you is trying to get clean and the other one is still using. So, I just kind of felt like if he wasn’t ready to get clean yet, then I would wait until he was. One day, he got arrested, and they did find drugs on him. He was in jail a lot when we were living in my car.

My dog, she was my lifeline at that point. Not a lot of places let you bring your animals in, so I would actually leave my car running with the air conditioning on just so that she could stay cool. I would run in as quickly as I could. I would have to eat really fast. That took a toll because it used a lot of gas.

Some days, I would just go without eating because I didn’t want to leave her in the car by herself, and I couldn’t afford to run the AC that day. One day, one of the other homeless people were talking about how they were going to come over to The Salvation Army for a meal, and they let you bring your animals in.

I was like, well, that’s where I need to be because, you know, I didn’t want to be leaving my dog in the car every time I needed to go get a meal. So, I got most of my meals here. 

My boyfriend, he was offered drug court and he accepted. Because of that, he had no choice but to get clean. If they found I was using, it would violate his drug court as well. Having that accountability really helped. We got clean and we’ve stayed clean. He made it through drug court without any violations. 

There was a storm one night and, my boyfriend’s bike was on top of the car. The storm blew his bike onto our windshield and cracked it. So we started getting pulled over for that. We needed a new windshield. 

So, we came here to The Salvation Army to ask the officers, Captain Gin and Steven Pack, if there was any kind of help we could get to get it fixed.

Captain Gin Pack: The windshield was a barrier to her kind of, moving forward and [she] had asked if we were able to assist. 

Carrie Olsen: They were able to help us purchase a new windshield so we could safely drive around. It helped to better our lives. I wanted to do what I could to repay them.

Captain Gin Pack: Here at the corps, we often see volunteers that want to give back. Because of her lived experience and her unique ability to relate to people, she started volunteering at the Hygiene Center, and she was my favorite volunteer. 

Carrie Olsen: The Hygiene Center serves anybody who needs to take a shower or do their laundry. So we open every day at 9 o’clock. They get 15 minutes in the shower and then 5 minutes to get dressed. We spray and disinfect the showers in between every client. They can do a load of laundry every day. We have two washers and two dryers.

They sign up to do showers and laundry, and then they come in here and they load their clothes. We start the washer for them, and then they stay on the property to switch it over into the dryer when it’s washed and then the next client comes in and starts their load. 

When I was living in my car, it was really hard to find a place that had available showers. Being able to shower here every day, it was big, and it did a lot for my self-worth. By being able to volunteer, I felt like they trusted me with delivering their resources to the community. 

Captain Gin Pack: Carrie had been volunteering and was just fabulous. 

So during the pandemic, we needed to have a 24-hour shelter so that people who were unsheltered had somewhere to go during the state lockdowns.

We saw that Carrie was exceptional at her role in just the Hygiene Center, and I was like, I think she’ll be fabulous in the shelter. And so we approached her and said, hey, would you be interested in doing this? 

Carrie Olsen: And I was like, like a paid job? It felt really good that they trusted me enough to want me in a paid position. It made me feel really good about myself, like I was still taking the right steps to better my life. 

Captain Gin Pack: She attended church with us, so we brought her alongside of us to do the ministry part of things. She stepped into her role as core assistant. 

Carrie Olsen: At the corps now, I am busy all day long. On Sundays, I come in, check my email, and then I go do pickups for church. We have service. After service, we have fellowship lunch. Then I do the drop-offs for the people that I picked up that morning. 

Tuesday, we have kids, club or troops. We do activities, they earn emblems. The kids are wonderful and appreciative. It’s so rewarding and so much fun. It is the highlight of my week. 

We do community lunch three days a week, and I come out and I mingle with all the clients that are in here for lunch. I know a lot of them from when I was homeless and then, half of them are new too. So I just come out and introduce myself, ask them how they’re doing. 

It feels really good to be able to help the people that I once had a different relationship with because they can look at my situation and know that it’s possible for them to do the same thing when they’re ready. It just, it feels really good that they still accept me even though I’ve changed and they see that I still accept them. 

My living situation now, we own our own home. When we were finally able to purchase our house and move out into the country, it’s just, it was like a breath of fresh air.

I do have a lot of animals at home. We have four dogs, two bearded dragons. My boyfriend, he never tells me no. I could bring home a herd of camels. And he would be like, well, this is kind of inconvenient, but I’ll go build a fence. We have nine chickens out in our coop at home and then five little babies inside that we’re raising to also put out there. And we have two cats, oh, and a Russian tortoise. 

Living in our car, there was always something to get us in trouble, or, you know, something to do. We live out in the country, and it is very quiet, but it’s a nice quiet.

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