Years ago, Calvin Thomas would escape the rigors of life by visiting Disney World — but not the way most people do.
Thomas, you see, was homeless and spending his nights at a shelter in downtown Orlando. So to pass the time during the day and beat the brutal summer heat, he would sometimes head to the Lynx bus station and catch the longest ride he could find … the route that runs to Disney.
Through the bus windows, Thomas would peer at theme parks he couldn’t possibly afford to visit. “Just to get away,” he said. “Just to escape.”
Thomas still takes a ride most days, but now it’s atop an ATV where he starts his workday before dawn, picking up trash around the City Beautiful. He does so as an employee of the city’s public works department. And when he finishes his shift, he no longer sleeps in a shelter but an apartment he pays for with something he always craved — a steady paycheck.
Thomas, 55, is one of the success stories stemming from a city partnership with a national nonprofit that specializes in training homeless and previously incarcerated residents for new jobs and fresh starts.
Orlando provides nonprofit with money for job placement, rides to work for homeless
First Step Staffing, an Atlanta-based nonprofit with an Orlando office, provides local employers with temporary workers for fill-in jobs. That’s the first step, anyway. When the program works as designed, the workers transition from temporary gigs to full-time ones. And since Orlando partnered with First Step four years ago, the city has hired 31 First Step clients to be part of its full-time workforce. They work in parking, water reclamation, solid waste and where Thomas does — in the city’s streets division, picking up trash that others cavalierly discard.
“He’s so appreciative of the job,” said Mayor Buddy Dyer. “He wanted to be the best trash picker-upper we had in the city of Orlando. And that’s exactly what you want to have in an employee.”
The two men worked alongside each other a couple of years ago when the city wanted to showcase the program’s success — a moment Thomas still finds remarkable: “I couldn’t believe I was elbow to elbow with the mayor.”
The scene was far removed from the days when Thomas didn’t have a place to live, much less to work.
Thomas grew up in Orlando as one of seven kids and attended Grand Avenue Elementary School and Memorial Middle School. But like so many of First Step’s clients, his life story wasn’t so storybook. Trouble in school led to trouble in life, to juvenile detention and then a string of run-ins with the law.
By the time he finally got out of the state’s justice system in his 40s, he wasn’t exactly any employer’s idea of a dream hire. So he roamed the streets of Orlando, finding work when he could as a day laborer. “It was just easier,” he said. “No one asked for a resume or even a job application.”
Thomas knew that there were full-time jobs out there. But he also knew they would require him making changes in his life. “You can lead us to water, but you can’t make us drink,” he said. “Well, finally, I was ready to drink. I had dreams. And I wanted to make them come true.”
So when a staffer at the shelter where he slept each night at the Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida told him about First Step, he decided to take a chance on himself.
First Step taught Thomas how to compile a resume and put on his best face during an interview. As much as anything, the nonprofit gave him an advocate — an organization willing to vouch for him and tell potential employers he was worth hiring.
Kellie Brownlow, the chief mission officer for First Step, said the company promises to deliver employees who are on time and ready to work in places like manufacturing plants, warehouses and phlebotomy labs. “We tell them: Not only can we get you as many people as you need tomorrow, we are going to take them to and from work.”
The nonprofit was founded for altruistic reasons, but Brownlow said employers wouldn’t use their services unless they delivered reliable employees, saying: “Most employers do not hire us for our mission.”
And Thomas is definitely reliable, according to his supervisor, Steve Bailiff, who said Thomas was promoted to crew leader after the team saw his work ethic. “I know everything Calvin’s gone through,” Bailiff said. “But Calvin’s a good worker. He does a great job. He’s earned the position.”
Thomas said he didn’t do it alone. It helped immensely to have someone who had his back. But he also said he had to decide to help himself. “You gotta be truthful with yourself about the root cause of your problems, whether its mental health, drugs or something else,” he said. “If you don’t deal with that first, you’re not gonna drink the water.”
Brownlow said that’s why her agency exists — to help those ready to make a change and who often aren’t being helped by anyone else. “We’re called First Step,” she said. “But for many of our clients, we’re often the last stop.”