THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 22, 1994 TAG: 9407200117
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOAN C. STANUS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines
Ten years ago, Vicki Garris was afraid to leave her two-bedroom apartment.
Supported by welfare, the shy, single mother of three spent a great deal of her time compulsively scrubbing floors and wishing for a better life.
She couldn't drive a car, and a paralyzing fear engulfed her whenever she had to talk to strangers. Even climbing more than a few steps up a ladder made her head spin.
Today, Garris no longer hides in a subsidized apartment, afraid of people, heights and cars. Now the owner of a three-bedroom house in Portsmouth's Highland Biltmore neighborhood that's surrounded by a spacious lawn and several fruit trees, Garris spends her days working at a job she loves.
She's off welfare, drives a Chevy to work, and thinks little of chatting with a stranger about her life and job.
``It's amazing how much you can change in 10 years,'' says the 37-year-old white-haired woman. ``My husband thinks I'm really bossy now.''
As the ``fix-it lady'' for Goodwill Industries of Tidewater, Garris has good reason to feel confident about her skills and abilities. Over the last decade, she has run a one-woman repair shop at the thrift enterprise, dedicated to ``figuring out what's wrong'' with everything from faulty wiring to leaky air conditioners. Colleagues call her ``The Tim Allen of Womanhood.'' If there's painting to be done or a drain to unclog at one of Goodwill's six area stores, she's the one who gets the call.
Garris is dedicated to her job as maintenance supervisor, and she's well-suited for it. When a donated refrigerator, sofa or lamp needs minor repairs, she tackles the job with determination. Sometimes she may ponder for days an appropriate solution or spend hours fashioning new parts from the odds and ends found in her workshop.
``Sometimes I want to fix something so bad I dream about it at night,'' Garris says.
No job is too much for Garris to handle. A jill-of-all-trades, she plunges ahead without fear, whether it means climbing a roof to repair bent flashing, lying beneath a truck to fix faulty brakes or using a forklift to move a stack of wooden pallets around the Goodwill warehouse.
Today she sits perched on a stool in her ``fix-it cubbyhole'' at Goodwill's new Tidewater Drive warehouse in Norfolk. ``If it's broken, I've just got to fix it. I've got a rare knack,'' Garris says.
It's a knack Garris can trace back to her childhood. She remembers investigating the cause of a burned-out light bulb at age 5. At 7, she was the only one in her family who could change all the attachments on the Hoover vacuum cleaner. By 10, she had already rewired the family's garage.
But her precociousness went relatively unnoticed in a bulging household of seven children and a single parent. Even after becoming an adult, Garris couldn't see her mechanical abilities as a pathway leading to job opportunities.
``To me, it just seemed normal that I could fix anything,'' Garris, 37, says. ``It was just something I could do. As for getting a job. . . I figured they wouldn't hire women for jobs like that.''
Garris was 14 when she got pregnant, dropped out of school and went on welfare. For almost 13 years, she lived cloistered in her home, raising her children and keeping her house immaculate, rarely venturing out except to go to the grocery store twice a month. Then, a social worker put Garris in a welfare work program. Evaluation tests directed Garris into a vocation where she could use her hands.
Not long afterward, Garris landed a three-month temporary job in Goodwill's pallet shop. Goodwill refurbishes pallets (wooden platforms used to transport and store merchandise and equipment) and manufacture new ones.
``At first, it was really scary,'' Garris says. ``I had to catch the bus to work every day, and it was dark coming home. I wasn't sure of myself . . . but the more I realized I was doing good, it gave me more confidence.''
The temporary job turned into a permanent one, and within a year, Garris had been promoted to assistant supervisor of the shop and served as maintenance assistant.
One day she simply got fed up having to always ask others to stop their work and operate the forklift so she could move ceiling-high stacks of pallets around the warehouse. When someone suggested she just get on the forklift and do it herself, she did. Her fear of driving began to vanish, and within weeks, Garris, then 30, got her first driver's license.
Her confidence soared. Before long, all her phobias began to disappear.
Garris credits Goodwill and ``a steady job'' with turning her life around.
After years of saving, Garris and her husband, Thomas, a Portsmouth city employee, recently purchased their first home. Two of her five children still live with them.
``If I think back on how it used to be, scraping to get by, I figure I'm doing a lot now. I have a good life.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photos by L. TODD SPENCER
Vicki Garris stands in front of her three-bedroom home in
Portsmouth's Highland Biltmore neighborhood.
Garris repairs a lamp that will be sold by Goodwill Industries.
``I enjoy a challenge,'' says Garris. ``And I do enjoy my job.''
by CNB