Community Corner

Shelter Network Celebrates Success

Peninsula organization providing housing and homeless support in San Mateo County honors volunteers at annual benefit breakfast.

The Thursday morning rain couldn’t dampen the spirit inside the ballroom where , the Burlingame-based organization that provides housing and homeless support to roughly 4,000 San Mateo County individuals each year, held its annual benefit breakfast.

“The turnout from the community is just amazing,” said Executive Director Karae Lisle. “You could just feel the positive energy in the room.”

Regardless of the early 7:30 a.m. start, the breakfast drew a 1,100-person crowd. The event honored volunteers, raised awareness of homelessness issues and featured keynote speaker Leigh Anne Tuohy, best known as the adoptive mother of the formerly homeless teen and current Baltimore Raven’s player Michael Oher. She inspired Michael Lewis’s book The Blind Side and was later portrayed in the movie version by Sandra Bullock.

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“She’s sort of the big draw,” said Shelter Network Communications Manager Maria Duzon.

However, before Tuohy spoke, attendants heard from Shelter Network graduate Cheryll Catuar. Catuar worked for the National Guard before giving up her job once she became pregnant, only to watch her 13-year marriage disintegrate and leave her with nothing.

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She said she reached her breaking point on New Years Eve 2010, when, after selling all of her possessions and spending her savings, she faked an illness and visited the emergency room so she and her daughter had a place to rest.

“That night I realized I needed to seek help.  I was referred to an organization called Shelter Network,” she said. “From that moment on, our lives would change forever.”

Catuar, who received a standing ovation from the crowd, used the resources available at Shelter Network and became an EMT. She is currently studying to become a paramedic and recently moved into her own apartment.

“I want to help people when they are at their worst, just as I was when Shelter Network helped me,” Catuar said. “Now I have the education and confidence to help these people.”

Shortly thereafter, Tuohy took to the stage, remarking that Shelter Network is “moving the needle.” She recounted her story of seeing a lone boy walking down the Memphis, Tenn. streets who her child recognized from school.

“We did one thing…one simple act of kindness, and we turned the car around,” she said. “As a mother, every warning bell in my head went off.”

Although he wouldn’t allow her to take him home, she inquired after him at school the next day. She soon learned he was homeless.

“All we did was turn the car around and offered this young man hope and love and opportunity, which is what Shelter Network does every single day,” Tuohy said. “This is a young man society had deemed 100 percent valueless [...and] if you don’t think there’s Michael Oher’s right here, you are dead wrong. There are Michael Oher’s in every city in the United States of America, and all they need is a chance, and that’s what Shelter Network provides.”

Shelter Network operates six facilities in San Mateo County located in San Mateo, Redwood City, Menlo Park and Daly City. Of the transitional housing participants, 93 percent return to permanent housing.

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