If her father had lived and had the chance to raise her, Laurie Smith believes her life may have taken a different path. However, as a toddler, fatherless and with a substance abusive mother her life became one of dysfunction, addiction and time spent in jail.

This past July, Laurie was one of twenty graduates within the New Life Program at the Gospel Center Rescue Mission. Having neither graduated from a middle school or a high school program, this achievement was an incredible accomplishment for Laurie. A self- proclaimed wild child, her last chance at education was being placed in a continuation school where her motivation to attend was selling marijuana to her classmates after stealing it from her mother’s house. With no mentors, parental guidance or direction, she dropped out of school and her life continued on a devastating out of control spiral.