OUR STORY

I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a place where survival, strength, and independence started early for me. By the age of seven, my sister and I were riding the city bus alone to school. No adult. No guidance. Just two little girls navigating a world that required us to grow up fast.

Those early years taught me what it means to lack reliable transportation. When you depend on buses or strangers, you learn quickly that your life is at the mercy of someone else's schedule. You feel stress before you even understand the word. And the feeling of being unsupported becomes normal.

As I grew older, I realized this wasn’t just my story. It is the story of millions of families. In the United States, more than one quarter of single mothers live below the poverty line, and transportation is one of the top three barriers keeping families from stable employment. In many cities, jobs are thirty to sixty minutes away from affordable housing, and public transit routes often do not connect parents to childcare, work, healthcare, or grocery stores.

Research shows that transportation insecurity creates higher stress levels, increased depression and anxiety, missed work and lost income, poorer physical health, higher rates of job loss, interrupted education, and long term instability for children. When parents cannot get to work, they lose jobs. When they lose jobs, they lose housing. When they lose housing, families fall into cycles of crisis. Reliable transportation is not a luxury. It is a lifeline.

Years later, when I moved to Atlanta, I became part of a community program that helped struggling families gain access to vehicles. At that time, I was a single mother trying to rebuild my own life. I worked hard, but without a car, everything felt impossible. Then one day, I received a 1996 Toyota Sienna, and that van changed the trajectory of my entire life.

That van gave me back my freedom.
It gave me the ability to work.
It gave me stability for my children.
It gave me dignity.
It gave me hope.

I was so grateful that I began using that van to help others. I gave rides to strangers who were trying to get to work, to moms leaving shelters, to people who simply needed a chance to get from one part of their life to another. I saw myself in every one of them. I saw my childhood on those buses. I saw the silent prayers behind their eyes, the tiredness, the fight, the hope.

That experience planted a seed in my heart.

I knew one day I wanted to build something that would help families the same way I had been helped. Something that lifted people up with compassion, dignity, and real support. Something that did not judge. Something that did not make people feel small for asking. Something that met people where they were.

Tonja’s Place is named in honor of my mother, Tonja, a woman whose strength, integrity, and compassion shaped me. She taught me how to survive, how to love, and how to push through pain with grace. Through this nonprofit, I am carrying forward her spirit by supporting families who remind me of where I came from.

Today, Tonja’s Place provides refurbished vehicles, short term auto insurance support, and financial assistance with licensing and certification programs such as CNA, CDL, Insurance, Notary, and other career pathways. We also offer a compassionate support system for families facing transportation challenges.

Our mission is simple.

Give families the transportation, stability, and opportunity they need to rebuild their lives, one car, one moment, and one family at a time.

Because I lived this.
I survived this.
And now I am helping others rise from it too.