From the Winter 2025 print newsletter (PDF):
Future Pikes Peak Habitat for Humanity homeowner (and Christmas card model!) Tonya will be moving into her new home this spring, and she can’t wait!
“Half of me wants to put in all of my [sweat equity] hours on my neighbors’ houses. I want to be surprised” when she sees her new home for the first time, she says. “I also want to be involved in my house, so it’s like, I can’t have it both ways.” She compromised by completing most of her hours early in the process, helping during the first stages of her home, then taking a break so “I can still have that wow!, that surprise,” she says.
At her ground blessing in July, Tonya moved many listeners to tears with her remarks about becoming the first homeowner in her family.
“It went perfect,” she recalls of that morning. “I was nervous. My daughter helped calm me down. She told me, ‘Don’t worry, Mommy! It’s going to be okay.’ It was just a wonderful experience. I look for my kids to give me the strength I need to keep going. Their love always gives me what I need to continue.”
That strength and love have carried Tonya through difficult times.
She grew up in Baltimore and spent her childhood living with “four or five generations in a three-bedroom row house.” She recalls, “We just kind of slept wherever we could sleep, and every room was a bedroom. Me and my sister slept on the couch.”
When she was seven, she tried to steal a potato so she, her sister, and a cousin could make French fries.
“We had to go to the store and steal our food to eat,” she recalls. “I got caught! I had on the tightest stone-washed jeans. I was crying….That was absolutely the last time I stole anything!”
She, her sister, and cousins were often hungry at home. “I remember my grandfather used to put a lock on the freezer,” she says. “I’m happy my children never had to experience that. They can eat when they want, what they want. They’re not hungry.”
Tonya had her oldest daughter when she was 15. Later, after having her son and leaving Maryland, she earned her GED and eventually started driving for a mobility service. “That was 13 years ago, and I’ve been driving ever since!” she says.
She credits her children with inspiring her to keep moving forward. “They have allowed me to be human, and they’ve allowed me to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes,” she reflects.
She is motived by the desire to give them a safe, secure life.
“I just want to keep a roof over my kids’ heads, keep them fed, keep clothes on their backs,” says Tonya. “That’s more than what I’ve had growing up.”
Throughout the application process for the Pikes Peak Habitat homeownership program, she recalls that her kids encouraged her to persist. So did Homeowner Services Manager Amber Hardy.
“I believe wholeheartedly if anybody else would have answered the phone, I probably wouldn’t have been here!” Tonya says. “She was patient each time, and she answered my questions….She definitely knew my name!”
Since being accepted into the program, Tonya has participated in homeownership classes, which cover home equity, maintenance, and similar topics—and which have connected her with future neighbors.
“I’ve cried in there. I’ve laughed in there. We’ve hugged it out in there,” she enthuses. “It feels like now we already know each other, we already like each other, we already get along, and we just happen to buy a house in the same neighborhood!”
And she has discovered a sense of belonging.
“I don’t feel like I have to put on like a facade to fit in, and those are things I’ve always had to do growing up,” she says. “I’ve always felt like I had to be somebody different to fit in, and I don’t feel like that. I feel like I can be my authentic self and be okay with Pikes Peak Habitat!”
