Tiny

Marilyn, a.k.a. “Tiny,” brings a critical element to the PCHO Board of Directors: lived experience.

As a long-time resident of the YWCA Apartments of Rochester and with her own story of circumstances that led to homelessness, Tiny also fulfills the role of being a role model for people who are on their own path to stable housing.

Tiny excels at this because of the decades she spent coping with what she calls the insanity of addiction, including cycles of incarceration and homelessness. 

Life with a violent stepfather who beat her and her mother (but not her siblings, his children) and drove away her father led to Tiny running away into the streets of the Bronx. She was only 13. Alcohol and drugs numbed the pain of leaving her family. By 14 she was introduced to the judicial system when police arrested herself and her friends who were nearby when another group of kids attempted to rob a man.

“We did nothing wrong, we were just waiting for the train, but when the cops couldn’t catch the kids who did it, they arrested us instead. Now I was an angry teen,” Tiny said. She received three years of probation, but that anger intensified her drug use. 

By 1998 Tiny was in serious addiction. After an arrest she successfully completed a Christian rehab program. A relapse in 2002 led her back to the judicial system.

“That time I spent 11 months awaiting trial on Riker’s Island on a charge for sale of a controlled substance. But I wasn’t a dealer and didn’t work for dealers. A guy approached me saying he would pay me to go buy drugs for him. I did that for him because I knew where to find dealers and as soon as I walked away, police officers rushed me. I was a casualty of addiction with no resources and no one advocating for me, a brown-skinned addict,” Tiny said. 

The entrapment and inability to pay the $1,000 bail caused Tiny to lose her belongings, her apartment, and her freedom. She spent 18 months of a 2.5-to-5 years sentence at Albion Correctional Facility.

Addiction, violent situations, and brushes with the judicial system continued, and Tiny served two more stints in state prison. It was during her last sentence for a parole violation that she got clean and stayed clean. It’s also when she realized she would die if she went back to the streets and her life downstate.

“The reverend at Chapel asked, ‘What do you want to do with your life?’ And I was also listening to a TD Jakes DVD on the Book of Ruth. In it, Ruth chooses to stay with her mother-in-law in a strange land after her husband dies. She’s staying because she knows returning to her old life won’t work. That’s what I wanted to do — stay and try something new,”  Tiny said.

She arrived in Rochester in 2014, expecting a bed with the Judicial Processing Center here, without realizing they didn’t offer housing. The Department of Social Services sent her to the Hope House shelter at the Salvation Army. Within a few months, Tiny had an interview to apply at the new YWCA Apartments set to open that spring.

“I was in deep but got out. I asked for a direction and God had a plan for me. I began truly living my life for the first time. Now I can save others with my story,” Tiny said. 

Today Tiny spends her days mentoring others on their sobriety journey and serving as the YWCA’s in-house volunteer for the Foodlink Curbside Market. She also speaks across the community to educate potential PCHO supporters and to help provide medical students with cultural sensitivity in treating individuals who are or have been in prison. 

Being invited to interview for the PCHO Board in 2024 was, she said, a jaw-dropping moment.

Tiny brings her deep knowledge of addiction and life on the streets to Board meetings and roundtable discussions about how to better meet the needs of PCHO clients. She also represents PCHO at community events, lending her voice and story wherever and whenever necessary.

“They are family now, and they have done so much for my heart making me feel welcome,” Tiny said of her fellow board members.  She added, “I’m so proud of myself, I feel so appreciated, and I’m doing this work to help someone like me.”