When his 2-year-old daughter Majesty fell into the foster care system, a U.S. Navy veteran faced a significant barrier in his fight to assert custody: He didn’t have a permanent address.
At that point, Tim had gotten his life back on track after a struggle with substance use. He’d built up nearly two years of sustained recovery in a Missouri residential treatment program—but his group living arrangement in that program wasn’t designed for children nor did it meet family court requirements.
“I just remember thinking: ‘How can I rescue my daughter?’”
Luckily, a tiny blue home became available at Veterans Community Project (VCP), a nonprofit village that features several slightly larger family units to house couples or help residents regain parental rights of their children.
A program manager at Tim’s rehab group home who was familiar with VCP made the connection and, in a matter of days, Tim was able to move into his own home in the village. Soon after, he got full custody and moved to a family unit complete with a bunk bed fit for a toddler.
“Majesty loved the place,” he recalled. “She would run around dressed like princess Elsa. Everyone there doted on her.”
In the meantime, Tim focused on building them a future together. Over their year and a half living in the Village, he put in the work to become a licensed drug counselor. In his first day on the job, he found himself in a courtroom sitting in the box next to the judge, thinking, “I never thought I’d be on that other side, you know, considering who I used to be.”
In the early 2000s, he’d struggled with the military-to-civilian transition—and reminders of childhood trauma—after serving three and a half years in the Navy. What followed was a two-decade stretch of substance issues during which he became one of the more than 30,000 Veterans sleeping on streets.
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“I was lost,” he said. “I lived under bridges. Slept in abandoned cars. It’s hard to explain how exhausting it is to just survive.”
But then came his turning point: An awakening moment in which he rediscovered his faith and accepted that he needed help, saying, “The opposite of addiction is connection—and that’s what I found.” At the rehab center, he remembers feeling “like Scrooge in a Christmas Carol”, experiencing a love he’d never before felt—first, from others praying with him, and then, within himself.
It was the second pivotal moment in his life in which he credits an element of divine intervention. The first was his decision to enlist in the military: “So, get this: I had a dream in which God told me I should become a journalist in the Navy.” He explains it with a laugh, yet he’s also dead serious.
Although he wasn’t particularly spiritual or patriotic at the time, he interpreted the dream as a calling toward his future—and away from his troubled youth. So, he walked into a recruiting office, scored extraordinarily well on the ASVAB test, and joined the Navy in a journalistic public affairs role.
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Today as a drug counselor, Tim draws on those communication skills as well as aspects from the rougher chapters of his life. In his office, near the city hall in Kansas City, he meets with his clients with a tattoo above his eyebrows that reads “Killa City.” It’s a relic of a different time, but he also says that it gives him a bit of clout. “I’m very relatable,” he quipped.
He recently experienced a profound moment when appearing at a presentation for dozens of past clients: “I don’t think I realized how many lives I’d affected until I’d walked into that room to 40 or 50 people grinning and yelling ‘Tim!’”
Back home, there’s a 7-year-old daughter who’s now thriving in second grade, and simply calls him ‘dad’.
Majesty and her father love exploring together. Cooking together. Drawing together. Reading together. Being together.
“She’s bright, she’s loving, she’s got a wonderful imagination,” said Tim.
He says that’s all possible because, at 40 years old, he moved into a place of his own at Veterans Community Project—a fresh start with, notably, a current address. VCP, he said, surrounded him with love and provided him with a plan. And it worked.
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“I’m just so very thankful to have Majesty in my life,” he smiled.
Learn VCP’s six tiny home villages across the US by visiting their website at VCP.org.
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