The employees behind the scenes of 2nd Chance Thrift Store have an impossible task.
Boxes the size of refrigerators are stacked 15 feet high, brimming with clothing and shoes. Smaller containers are crammed with random housewares, from books to bath towels. The entire length of the massive warehouse looks like its been slammed by a cardboard avalanche -- an avalanche that unleashes a fresh deluge every time an inch of space is cleared away.
But the workers here aren't overwhelmed. As I discovered when I stopped at 2nd Chance on my trip down 63rd Street, many of them have lived through far more challenging circumstances.
When I wandered behind the giant, metal shelves that hide the back area from the retail floor, Clara Moore had a shopping cart full of clothes to hang. She didn't have time to take a break, but she did have time to share her story.
Moore grew up in Kansas City and she can't quite pinpoint when her life detoured into alcoholism. She can't explain why her occasional drinking became a life-swallowing addiction. She had a few jobs but it was hard to keep them. She had a daughter and knew she wasn't setting a good example.
"My life just got out of control," she says. "My mind was not clear. Sometimes I couldn't remember what I did. Sometimes I was afraid to ask."
She got into arguments that escalated into fights. She wracked up tickets for disorderly conduct and drinking in public. She moved in with a friend and then tried a "healing house" in Kansas City, Kansas. But that wasn't enough to inspire her recovery. In 2004, she landed at City Union Mission, a homeless shelter in downtown Kansas City, Missouri.
Two months after she got there, though, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Then her mother died suddenly. She had to interrupt her classes in the Mission's New Life Recovery Program to undergo chemotherapy and radiation. She wasn't sure she could keep it together.
But an anonymous donor paid for her medical care at Saint Luke's Hospital. The staff at the Mission prayed with her. She recovered, not just her health, but a new family network. When she returned to her class, her colleagues threw her a surprise party.
"It brought me to tears," she says.
After she graduated from the New Life program -- complete with shiny, black cap and gown -- she got a job at one of the three 2nd Chance Thrift Stores, which are run by the Mission and benefit its general fund. Even after two years in the cardboard maze and the never-ending mountain of clothes to sort, she still loves the warehouse. Now that she has steady employment, she's got a one-bedroom apartment, a car and a clear conscience. She's sober and solvent and has time to go bowling and visit one of her favorite spots: The Kansas City Zoo.
"It's better," she says of her life. "One-hundred-percent better."
There's just one problem.
The employees at 2nd Chance have to shop the retail floor like any other customers, but they get a preview of the goods. Moore has a reputation for buying some of the best items as soon as they hit the racks. So a couple of her co-workers, Vivien and Jason, bet her a steak dinner that she couldn't go two weeks without buying something.
She thought she could do it. She was just a few days from the deadline. Then she saw a jacket she simply couldn't pass up. So Vivien and Jason had dinner on her.
"It wasn't cheap, either," she says with a laugh.
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