SAN ANTONIO — When Roshell Johnson was asked what drives her every day, she walked into her bedroom and came back to her living room with her 9-month old son Masiah.
“This is what drives me right here,” she said with a big smile on her face.
She calls him her miracle baby because he was born healthy.
“He’s getting big, he’s getting real big,” Johnson said.
Johnson was going through her big closet at her apartment in Dallas, which is a long way from the motels on San Antonio’s Southside.
“So me doing drugs, me jumping in and out of cars with strangers. Me living that life of the streets,” Johnson said.
She says she enjoyed the thrill of being in control and making easy money, but things started to change when the “God Lady” would come around. It’s a nickname she gave Michea Marquez, whose life mission it is to help women get off of the streets.
“I’m the resource that they need, or that they want in their lives,” Marquez said. “That bridges the gap between the streets and their life, between death and life.”
Marquez is a part of Victory Outreach’s Twilight Treasures Ministry and has earned the trust of the women on the streets with purses filled with necessities.
“Even if they are high and they are in a hurry to get their fix the purses always slows them down that they would listen,” Marquez said. “That’s how I started getting to know the girls on the street.”
She calls them Genevieve’s purses, named after one of the first recipients of the bags, who wanted help but was tragically killed.
Marquez tell’s Genevieve Ramirez’s story to help others, and she has helped two people this year. Johnson was one of them. Marquez and her husband drove Johnson up to Dallas to get the help she needed. Johnson’s eyes became glossy as she talked about almost losing Masiah to CPS.
“I didn’t know anybody here and all I kept thinking of [was] Michea the God Lady,” Johnson said. “She said this would be best for me.”
Johnson had drugs in her system, but Masiah was born healthy.
“I just said, 'Please, miss, no, give me a chance. I know I’ve done wrong, but don’t stay on me, don’t get on me for something that I can change. I can do this. That is why I’m here,'” Johnson said, crying.
The CPS employee opted not to take Masiah away from Johnson. She wiped the tears from her cheeks as she explained being given a second chance.
Johnson is now sober, has here own apartment in Dallas and gets to spend the holidays with her miracle baby and 8-year-old son Tyren, whom she hasn’t been with in seven years.
“Without my God Lady, the Twilight Treasures, I wouldn’t be where I’m at today,” Johnson said. “When you change, your life change, and believe whatever happens no matter what you can go further, 'cause I’m going further.”