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I became interested in Carla Marshall's story because of her genuine kindness to me and others after being on an all-night shift at the Howard Johnson's I have been staying at in Cedar Rapids. This 30-year-old woman is working full-time, on the night shift at the motel, putting in 40 plus hours. She also works 15 hours at the nearby MacDonalds.While trying to make ends meet, she is also attending a Kaplan University out here where she has classes 4 days per week totaling 12 hours. You do the math as I did and realize she has about 3 hours per night to sleep.
She also has an apartment where she has to break up her rental payments into two different paychecks. Rents out here are cheap and they add a $20 late fee to her rent to accommodate her. What a gracious lot they are.
On top of it, this woman who works this many hours and is trying to get her AA degree, is also without health insurance. She has $1800 in car payments yet to make. She has a credit card that has a $500 limit so she keeps paying as much of it off as she can so they will increase her credit limit.
This is the story of one single woman, trying to make it on her own and doing truly the best she can.
If she were my daughter, I would be so impressed with her. And you know what, she is all our daughters. We should be so proud of her efforts to make a good life but then we should also wonder why is it she works this hard, has so little time to sleep and enjoy herself and God forbid, she were to get sick, she is in trouble.
On this limited income there is no money to pay for her own health insurance.
These are the people I meet all the time while on the road. They truly give me the incentive to work for what we all need and have a right to--fair credit laws, good education, good health care, decent housing, a safety net for when things go terribly wrong, or wrong enough that this type of schedule that Carla keeps knocks her out of commission for a while.
Let us all find our Carlas and work on their behalf.
