“If I got it to give, then I need to give it.”
Watch Stephanie’s story from KMBC 9 News
“I watched our very busy laundromat dwindle. There were a couple of days a week where there would be nobody in there.” That’s Stephanie Bazert describing the effect COVID-19 had on her workplace. “Being there for three years, I have never seen that.”
Stephanie works at Eastside Laundry in Kansas City, Missouri. “I know a lot of my families. These are families that come in every week. You could hear the worry in people's voices. People were worried about money, were they going to have enough to eat?”
While Stephanie has worked throughout the pandemic, she did lose hours at first. On top of that she took on more personal and financial responsibilities. “My sister lost her place and she came to stay with me. I have a small two bedroom apartment over on the East Side, and my sister and her five kids came to stay with me.”
“It was a strain on my household. I was the only one working.” When there was a delay in her sister receiving food stamps, Stephanie pitched in to help. “I got behind, you know, because I used the money to eat. I paid what I could and I just slipped behind.”
Stephanie heard from a woman at her apartment complex that Reconciliation Services could help with rental and utilities assistance. She sent an email to inquire and was on the phone with a case manager soon after. “She was very, very polite. She made it very easy to come and do the process. She didn’t make me feel any type of way, which made a big difference. It's hard for me to ask for help.”
Within a week, Stephanie got the financial help she needed for rent and utilities. “It caught me up and boosted me ahead. So now that I can stay ahead I can breathe. I can sleep at night and not have to worry. I think I'm fortunate, because I still hear the horror stories of people that are behind, not really knowing what to do.”
After her first appointment at Reconciliation Services, Stephanie took a stack of fliers about the services offered, including rent and utilities assistance, and posted them on the community billboard at the laundromat. “People can walk up, read what they need to read, take what they need, and then you know, move on. Like I said, it's hard for me to ask for help. So for other people, if I can make that easy for them, I think that's a great thing.”
She also passed on the information to a friend of hers who got her lights cut off. The flier had information on it for a few agencies around town that were providing assistance. “I told her, just start at the top, work your way through, stick with it. If you hear something you don't like, that's that one person, keep moving. Keep moving, keep moving. Don't let anything stop you. You got to keep pushing forward. I like to tell people, we are our best advocates for ourselves.”
A while later, Stephanie’s sister and her family moved into a program in Lawrence that will help them get back on their feet long term. “COVID definitely brought me and my sister closer. It reminded us of what family is about.”
Stephanie is Black and Native American. Her tribal heritage includes Sac & Fox, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, & Iowa. “I come from a rich culture that believes in helping everybody. You don't turn your back.”
“My grandma was born and raised on the Kickapoo reservation in Kansas. She was not a stranger to struggle. But she also taught me to be respectful, to listen, to ask for help. Be genuine and never take more than you need.”
The lessons Stephanie learned from her mother are still deeply ingrained as well. “Be kind. Love yourself. When you love yourself, it's natural to love others and other things. Do things in a good way. Do things with a good heart. And to be patient.”
Stephanie has also suffered great tragedy, and learned things through the most difficult of circumstances. “I lost a newborn baby seven years ago. My life has never been the same. I struggled for the first couple of years. Depression, I was drinking. I even experimented with drugs, which I had never done before in my life, because I was just in a very, very dark place in my life. But I promised myself then that if I got through that, that I had to make every day that I wake up count for something.”
With the help of therapy, family, friends, and time, Stephanie did make it through. “I got to take my son home to the reservation and bury him in our way, with my culture. My saying for my son is ‘He left me better than he found me.’ So I can make today better and I choose to do better things.”
Stephanie chooses to give selflessly of her time and whatever she has. “I think it does great for the soul. Even if it's just giving somebody $1 out of my purse. I've given my lunch to people who have walked into my store. If I got it to give, then I need to give it.”
“I buy cases of water and leave them in my refrigerator at work. It's hot out, and sometimes people didn’t budget for something to drink. I'll just go grab a couple bottles of water and walk through my store and just hand them out. I get so many mixed reactions from people, it lets me know that as a society, we have stopped taking care of people.”
Stephanie believes she has something to learn from the people she helps. “I live on the East Side, I see the homelessness problem. I see people walking up and down the streets. There’s one homeless guy in particular. We're talking about a man that doesn’t have anything, but he stops in and says, ‘Hey, Miss Stephanie, how are you doing?’ For a man who has the same clothes on his back, don’t know where his next meal is... for someone to stop and ask me how I'm doing, that shows a compassion that I hope that I learn.”
Stephanie sees her life as an opportunity to learn and to give of herself for others. “Every time I lost somebody, it changed me. But I'm that one key factor, I decide how it changes me. I've never let anything define me. I'm not the child who lost the mother at 20. I'm not the child who lost her father at 24. I'm not the person whose first cousin committed suicide a couple years after that. I have two half sisters, one that was murdered in 2007. I have learned that death is imminent. We all will get there. But we have to put the emphasis on how we lived.”
“I know I want to be remembered as somebody who was a good person. She stuck up for what was right. I don't have to make a big ripple. But I want people to know that I was here.”
To help more women like Stephanie take care of themselves and their community, consider making a donation to Reconciliation Services today. $100 covers the cost of two hours of intensive case management, about the time it takes to fill out the paperwork for rent and utilities assistance. Will you help make that possible with a gift today? Give now at RS3101.org/donate. Thank you.