WORKPLACE: OFF THE STREETS AND INTO RESPECTABILITY

I have a full-time job," said Debra Bounsell, 42, a receptionist at Time
Warner Cable. "I love saying that: a full-time job."

Two years ago, Ms. Bounsell was a crack addict doing time on Rikers Island
for drug possession. She had lost her apartment, her husband had left her
and city officials had taken her children. "The one thing I'd always
managed to keep up was my hair, and now that was going, too," she said. "I
was 98 pounds. I was the walking dead."

Ms. Bounsell went from there to where she is today with the help of First
Step, a program administered by the Coalition for the Homeless, an advocacy
group in New York. First Step teaches basic administrative skills and
job-interview techniques to homeless women, many of whom are recovering
from years of domestic violence and drug abuse.

Since the program's inception in 1991, over 400 women have graduated from
First Step. After one month of classroom training, women are placed in
three-month unpaid internships with corporate partners. If they do well,
they often earn paid positions; 65 percent now have permanent jobs.

With the economy cooling, many Americans are becoming more anxious about
their employment prospects. Nowhere is this fear so pronounced as among the
homeless population. For this reason, First Step tries to provide homeless
women with an asset that no job experience or educational background can
replace: confidence. "The women come to us demoralized, beaten down and
isolated," said Lisa Tomanelli, First Step's director. "We aim to build
their self-esteem. That's the No. 1 goal."

Ms. Bounsell found First Step through Casa Esperanza, a homeless women's
shelter. "I'd spent 20 years as a crack addict," she said. "I did as much
crack as I could get my hands on for as long as I could stay awake. I did
it everyday except Sunday."

At 15, she said, she sold marijuana cigarettes in Washington Square Park
with her future husband. By her early 20's, she was running crack and
indulging her own crack habit. When her husband refused to give her drugs
or money, she resorted to mugging elderly men on the street. "I once beat a
man with the butt of a gun just to get my hands on his wallet," she recalled.

At the peak of her addiction, she would sometimes exploit other addicts,
demanding sexual favors from them in exchange for drugs. She had numerous
arrests, including seven for domestic violence. Her worst moment came when
she stabbed her husband with a kitchen knife to protect herself from one of
his beatings, she said. Attempted murder charges were eventually dropped.
But, she said: "My kids saw me stab their daddy. You don't get over that."

In the fall of 1998, Ms. Bounsell received word that the police were after
her again. She hid on the streets and in friends' houses for several days,
but eventually two officers spotted her and arrested her on the drug
possession charges. At Rikers, she entered a drug-treatment program to
avoid placement in the general population. "Not only did jail save my life,
jail was a relief," Ms. Bounsell said. "I was safe and clean."

She lived in a dorm and had to be up for breakfast at 5 a.m., then do
chores all day. She also had nightly drug counseling sessions. When she was
released a year later, she was homeless and broke, her children had been
placed in the custody of her sister and her husband had cut off all contact.

Ms. Bounsell moved into Casa Esperanza in the Bronx and enrolled in La
Fuentes, a drug rehabilitation program. Her case manager, Julie Harrison,
guided her toward First Step. "In jail, I decided I didn't want to die,"
Ms. Bounsell said. "I also decided that I wanted my kids to remember me for
something other than what I'd already been. That is my motivation."

After one month of training at First Step, Ms. Bounsell began an internship
in the human resources department at Time Warner Cable. Ms. Bounsell stood
out from the beginning for her willingness to pitch in to help colleagues,
said Rekha Kurikoti, a human resources recruiter there. Once, Ms. Kurikoti
was struggling to set up a VCR for an audio-visual presentation and, on her
own initiative, Ms. Bounsell found a technician who fixed the problem.
"Debbie is a problem solver," she said.

After her internship ended, Ms. Kurikoti helped Ms. Bounsell find a
part-time paid job. "There were so many people in Debbie's life who did
wrong by her," Ms Kurikoti said. "Seeing how hard she worked as an intern,
I wanted to find a way to help her stay here. The people I've met through
First Step are the kind of people you want as your friend, not just as
co-workers."

Other women down on their luck say First Step gave them a new chance.
Tiffany Hill, 24, who was homeless and living in a shelter for battered
woman last summer, was hired as a full-time administrative assistant at
United Cerebral Palsy of New York after enrolling in the program. Now she
has her own apartment and is divorcing her husband. And Cheryl Moore, 25, a
single mother who was unable to support her family on the minimum wage she
earned as a store clerk, found a job as an administrative assistant in the
minority- and women-owned business program at J. P. Morgan Chase and now
can pay all her bills.

Ms. Bounsell did so well in First Step that she was invited to speak at her
class graduation, and then invited back to speak at the next class graduation.

At Time Warner Cable, where she now works full time, she has full health
benefits and will qualify for 401(k) enrollment in July. She sits in the
11th-floor lobby, directing calls, greeting visitors and "helping clients
with their cable payments," she said. She is set to move into her own
two-bedroom apartment this summer, with some financial assistance from New
York City. The courts have said that when she does move in, her children —
Mia, 21; Ashley 13; and Piara, 11 — can move in with her.

"I never thought I'd get here," she said. "I can take my parents out to
drink. I can take my kids out. People count on me. I don't even mind paying
taxes. They can have it."