Home · Programs · Chicago · Safe Families for Children · News · The Rangel Family When Donna Rangel handed her two children over to Safe Families volunteers Mike and Katy Wright, she was more committed to partying than to being a good mother. For months, she had been tucking her daughters, Alexandria, then four, and Taylor, age two, into bed and then leaving the apartment to drink and do drugs with friends.

“I was depressed, and things had gotten to the point that I almost didn’t care about anything,” Donna says. “But I did want to get better, so I agreed to have my kids placed with the Wrights. I started meeting with a counselor to work through issues related to the abuse I’d experienced as a kid. I didn’t realize until then how stressed out and angry I had become.”

Donna began visiting her children at the Wrights’ suburban home and eventually spending weekends with the family, which included Mike and Katy’s four children, then 10 to 15 years old. She describes herself in those early days with the Wrights as angry, rebellious and unwilling. Today she recognizes God’s hand in providing her with a friend like Katy at that critical point in her life. “Katy wouldn’t give up on me and wouldn’t let me give up on myself,” she recalls. “She challenged me to think differently about life and my kids and God. Katy was exactly what I needed in order to change.”

During the four months that Alexandria and Taylor were living with the Wrights, Donna continued to take her therapy seriously and began attending New Life Community Church in Chicago. She received Christ as her Savior, and was baptized at New Life by the Wrights. Donna is now involved in a Home Group Bible Study, meeting regularly with a mentor, and ministering to the youth in her church. She’s become a devoted mother, too, spending hours helping her children with their schoolwork and training them to be respectful and obedient.

“Safe Families made it possible for me to get the help I needed without losing my kids to the state, and I’ll always be thankful for that,” Donna says. “I think about how bad off I was before I met the Wrights, and I know God has really blessed me.”