Portrait of Jeny

Rosy and Sam still managed to get jobs. Rosy was working as a driver for Dollar Rent a Car, taking cars to get cleaned. Sam got a job there, too, detailing the cars. But when they weren't working, they were at the Sands, drinking and smoking crack.

"I knew that they had to be off the streets," Johnson says. "You can't really concentrate on your life or the direction it's going when you have to worry about your next meal or where you're going to sleep the next day."

Johnson speaks from experience. He was a drug dealer in Fort Worth, then a drug addict, then suicidal. He was locked in a motel room when someone came knocking on his door and told him that Jesus could set him free. Johnson went to rehab and then to ministry school, graduating in 2001 and moving to Denver, where he joined the brand-new Mean Street Ministry.

"The Martinezes were looking for some hope," he recalls. "A lot of the people out there have no hope and aren't even looking for it. What made me really want to get ahold of the Martinezes was that the family structure was already there. They were one of the families that I knew I had to reach out to."

Although Sam answered the door with a bottle in his hand and a mouthful of profanities for Johnson, he kept knocking. He asked if he could take the kids to church. Sam didn't want to let his kids go at first, but they were bored, and eventually he agreed to let them out.

"Normally, if the cycle isn't broken, what you're looking at is a generational curse, and that curse is passed on through the children," Johnson says. "We have to break the cycle with the parents, because if not, that kid is headed in the same direction. The Martinez kids really love their father, but they have been damaged so much by watching him."

While Johnson was helping the kids, he didn't give up on Sam, either. "I went scouring the streets looking for him," he remembers, "and I would run into him at the drug houses, and he would dodge me and avoid me. And then one day he called me on the phone and said he needed help."

Both Sam and Rosy had lost their jobs. The car was in pawn, and they'd fallen behind on the $61-a-night rent on their motel unit. The family was a step away from the street. Again.

In October 2006, Johnson referred the Martinez family to the Crossing, a former Holiday Inn on Smith Road now run by the Denver Rescue Mission. Denver and the State of Colorado had kicked in a total of $1.5 million to help acquire the facility as transitional housing for the homeless, with a special emphasis on families. To qualify for the Rescue Mission's Strategic Transition Assistance and Response (STAR) program, Sam and Rosy had to generate an income of about $700 a month and pay about $12 a day in rent to the Crossing — first nightly, then weekly, then $388 monthly, to acclimate them to responsibility. They also had to cover their phone, electric and cable bills — each discounted to $10 a month. Sam soon got two new jobs — 35 hours a week at a Popeye's and 21 hours a week at a beverage-distribution center. Rosy found work at the Ross where Sam had been, and the kids once again benefited from her employee discount. Although the Crossing offers a meal program, Rosy cooked for the kids in their one large room, making mac-and-cheese in the microwave and cooking meat on a hot plate.

The Crossing had another requirement: Sam and Rosy had to be married. They'd been together for the better and worse — much worse — parts of seventeen years when they finally tied the knot.

Life at the Crossing came with strict rules, including obeying curfews and submitting to random drug tests. Sam and Rosy also took classes in budgeting and other life skills, in hopes of qualifying for a long-term housing program with Denver's Road Home, the city's ten-year plan to end homelessness.

While the newlyweds stayed busy working, Jeny and Carmen would come home from school and talk with "Mr. Dave," the Crossing's youth and family coordinator, who held discussion groups for teens and a couple of mature twelve-year-olds. Jeny and Carmen were always the first ones at the meetings, David Medina remembers, and they often led the discussions. During one, the sisters talked about forgiveness and how it makes you a better person. Jeny and Carmen said they'd seen other kids get angry at their parents and angry at each other, and they knew the feeling — but instead of anger, they encouraged forgiveness.