Unseen faith: Disabled Bradenton man finds home with help from Season of Sharing
Stacey Peterson stretched out on his lounge chair at the foot of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, watching the water gleam in the moonlight.
As he caught himself starting to doze in the clammy heat, the 58-year-old decided to pack up his things. Better to get settled in the safety of his locked car, he figured, before he fell asleep.
Stacey was no longer the spry young man he used to be.
It was hard for him to believe, but many decades before the pacemaker and strokes – before his life on the streets and stints in jail, before the shattering loss that sent him careening toward drugs – he’d been the favored son of a middle-class military family, with the whole world ahead of him.
Brought up by a strict but loving Bible-minding mother devoted to the Baptist church, he had rebelled.
“I didn’t take it seriously,” he said. “I could whup my own behind for not listening to my mama. She tried to forewarn me.”
It breaks his heart, knowing how much sorrow he’d caused her all those years. If he had followed her advice, he wouldn’t be sleeping in the front passenger seat of his 2015 Chrysler 300, disabled and homeless.
At his breaking point with nowhere else to turn, leading up to that night last summer he’d been devoting himself to prayer – trusting God through the type of “unseen faith” that his mom preached long ago.
Now as tried to get comfortable with his foam blanket, quilt and pillow – leaving the car running for the air conditioning – he heard his cell phone ring. He didn’t recognize the caller. Nor did she know him.
Though it was a wrong number, that call would change Stacey’s life.
An escape
Stacey was born in Bradenton and raised by a huge, doting family.
The first – and for several years, only – grandchild, Stacey was frequently passed around by his nine aunts and uncles on his mother’s side.
He never wanted for anything – his mom and dad were high-ranking members of the military and his maternal grandparents were banking executives. But he was determined to chart his own course. Despite family pressure, he’d decided, military life was not for him.
“I was stubborn and spoiled,” he’d recall. “I was one of those kids, I just wanted to feel my way through, if I found something I liked or that really inspired me, that would be my goal.”
But before he could, he and his high school sweetheart learned she was pregnant with twins. Difficult times followed, as his girlfriend, who was white, was shunned by her relatives, who opposed her relationship with Stacey because he was a young Black man.
With the help of Stacey’s family, the two finished high school and started raising their twins. Two more children followed.
Into his 20s, Stacey worked good jobs, including with Tropicana.
But tragedy struck him at an early age when his girlfriend died of cancer.
“That was my whole world,” he said. “I went into this depression.”
Reeling with anger and grief, Stacey was left to raise four children on his own.
One night at a social gathering, he saw a woman cutting up lines of cocaine. It was her escape, she said, a zone where she felt free of pain.
“When she explained that sensation,” he recalled, “I wanted to experience that.”
From there, Stacey plunged into cocaine addiction through his 30s – a long period marked by stints in jail.
Each time, his mother would take in his children while trying to nudge him back onto a straight path.
While she could be strict about “devil and sin,” his mother was supportive, too.
“When I went to jail and stuff, my mom was more upset and depressed than anything,” he said. “She was never judgmental of me, neither was my father.”
Fifteen years ago he got sober and stayed sober. But by then, he knew, a lot of damage was done.
In 2015, he had his first heart attack, followed by two more, plus two strokes – forcing him onto disability. At his sickest times, his parents took turns caring for him.
By 2020, on his feet and living with his mom, he stayed in Florida when she moved to Texas. He couldn’t join her, still on probation for punching a security guard who’d grabbed his hair in a case of mistaken identity.
Stacey’s life was stable again. He was managing to hold an apartment on his own. But then the building was sold, and Stacey had to go.
At first he thought he’d be okay. He had $10,000 in his savings account. Surely, he thought, he’d find something nice and quick.
Breaking point
But before he knew it, Stacey was caught in the middle of a regional housing crisis – one particularly grueling for disabled and senior residents living on fixed incomes.
In his search, many apartments required not only $5,000 or more in deposits and first-and-last months’ rents, but also minimum income requirements that he couldn't meet.
Stacey kept looking, soon forced to live out of hotels. Within six months, his savings was gone.
By the middle of 2022, he was sleeping in his car. His mother and uncle sent help, but even with that and his disability income, it didn’t come close to covering area rents.
“I couldn’t find anywhere that was decent. I kept praying,” he said. “I don’t need a brand new deal or anything fancy. I just need a roof over my head.”
On his regular visits with his children, he refused to bother them with his troubles. They had their lives to lead and expenses of their own.
“When I went through my poverty, I kept it to myself,” he said. “I didn’t complain to anybody about what I was going through.”
But his mom knew. Every night in his car before he went to sleep, they’d pray together through the phone.
Stacey was getting desperate. Between doctor’s visits and several hospital stays for his heart problems, he routinely went by Bradenton’s Turning Points.
Sometimes he was at the nonprofit a couple times of week to inquire on leads with his “guardian angels” – case manager Liz Obando and care navigator Jessica Godfrey.
“I checked in more than you could ever know,” he said.
Both women were struck by Stacey’s upbeat personality. Godfrey was amazed by his unflagging stamina – even though she could see that his legs were in bad shape and that he was in obvious pain.
The housing crisis was taking a toll on many families with whom they worked. But for someone disabled by health problems, they knew, life on the street was particularly dire.
“Mr. Peterson never lost hope,” Obando said.
Behind his pleasant demeanor and graciousness, though, Stacey was crumbling. The cold months in his car were bitter. Then last summer, the heat wave made it hard to breathe.
One night in his car, he broke.
Emptying himself into prayer, he asked God to move in his life. He felt himself release anger and grudges still gripping his heart.
“I prayed to him and told him I was stepping out on unseen faith and that I was a hundred percent dependent on him and no one else,” he recalled.
In late July, he got some good news: Turning Points secured a disability housing voucher. They also could tap Season of Sharing on his behalf for rental assistance to get him set up.
But Stacey still needed to find a place to live where he could use the voucher.
Support your neighbors in need: Donate to Season of Sharing
A mother’s love
The next evening, a Saturday, as Stacey was readying for sleep in his car, his phone rang.
Though it was a wrong number, the woman mentioned a duplex she was renting in Whitfield in southern Manatee County.
After Stacey shared his situation with her, the woman said she would accept the housing voucher. Within a week – as Turning Points got the wheels moving on the voucher as well as $2,000 in assistance from Season of Sharing – Stacey was able to move in.
“I couldn’t have imagined that God would have turned my life around like this,” he said.
Heading into the holidays, on his feet for the first time in a long time, he was saving again. But it wasn’t enough to go visit his mom. Maybe next year, he told her, now that he was off probation.
Then, a week before Christmas, Stacey was heading to his car, leaving for a doctor’s visit, when he realized he forgot his phone. After going inside to get it, he turned back toward the front door, stopping still in his tracks. There at the threshold, stood his mother.
“I about had a heart attack,” he said.
Stacey broke into tears, and his mother – looking around at his new surroundings – did, too.
“She just started crying and hugged my neck and told me she was proud of me and that she loved me and was so happy that her prayers had been answered,” he said.
During the next week, the two went Christmas shopping, bought a tree and presents and decorated the house. Then on Christmas day, Stacey was in for another surprise – when a bunch of tables and chairs appeared in his big backyard.
“All of a sudden, oh my God, they start rolling in,” he recalled. Between thirty and forty people showed up – aunts, uncles, cousins, his kids and grandkids.
In the backyard, his mother held court at the outdoor kitchen she had rented.
Dire need: Season of Sharing faces huge fundraising challenge amid historic need in Sarasota, Manatee
She and his aunt made snow crabs, king crabs, blue crabs, fried fritters, crab cakes, and shrimp on the grill.
“We had everything,” he said.
In the weeks since his mom went back home, Stacey has had time to reflect.
He feels blessed by everyone who helped get him into a comfortable place.
Along with stable housing, he relishes his sobriety, his ability now to think clearly, to rebuild.
“I’m preparing myself so that my kids and my grandkids can follow my new footsteps, and not my old ones,” he said. “I love this life way better than the life I had before.”
Most of all, he’s grateful for “unseen faith” – the handiwork of which he says he now sees – and for the two things that helped him through his long, hard journey.
“The love of God and the love of a mama,” he said, “Ain’t nothing better than that.”
How to help
Season of Sharing was created 22 years ago as a partnership between the Herald-Tribune and the Community Foundation of Sarasota County to get emergency funds to individuals and families on the brink of homelessness in Sarasota, Manatee, Charlotte and DeSoto counties. There are no administrative fees and no red tape – every dollar donated goes to families in need to help with rental assistance, utility bills, child care and other expenses.
You can donate to Season of Sharing by going to cfsarasota.org or calling 941-556-2399. You can also mail a check to Season of Sharing, Community Foundation of Sarasota County, 2635 Fruitville Road, Sarasota, FL 34237.
This story comes from a partnership between the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and the Community Foundation of Sarasota County. Saundra Amrhein covers the Season of Sharing campaign, along with issues surrounding housing, utilities, child care and transportation in the area. She can be reached at samrhein@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Disabled Bradenton man finds home with help from Season of Sharing
