On a warm late March morning under a tent at Lexington’s Davis Park Workforce Center, Amie Cipollone is selecting clothes.
“Just pick out an outfit?”
“You can get three or four items.”
“Okay, yeah, cool.”
“What size are you looking for?”
“Extra-large, 1x maybe.”
“They're gonna be right back here.”
More than 200 people, many trying to reenter the work force with criminal records, substance use disorders or both, are here for help. Cipollone lives in a recovery home. She says she has confidence issues and is excited to have a reporter follow her through the day. She also likes the clothes.
“That's really cool that they you get to pick out three or four items, you know, not just the outfit. You can actually get, like a little jacket over top or something to look nice.”
And it's not just job interview clothes, it's stuff you can wear every day.”
“Exactly, exactly I will be wearing it every day.”
Later, she’ll get her hair cut and styled in a room inside the center.
That’s where Jerry Sweeting of Thoroughbred Barbershop is buzzing away on a man who identifies himself as Joe Booze.
“Why you here today?”
“Get a haircut.”
“You gonna look for a job also?”
“I'm all disability, so …”
Booze says he’ll stick around for a grilled lunch. Like the haircuts and clothes and community support services, it’s free, thanks to a program organized by Leadership Lexington. “Look Good, Feel Good” is the class project of Troy Black and Sydney DeLong. Delong says they had lots of help from classmates and donors like Sweeting.
“Haircut vendors, you know, they could be at their shops, doing hair and getting paid lots of money today, but they've all chosen to be here and donate their time. It just shows that people … care about people and they want to see people succeed, and that's what we're just trying to do today.”
Cippilone walks into a room jam-packed with representatives of 27 businesses and nonprofits.
“There is so many things here. Amazing.”
It’s not your typical interview setting, but these brief conversations offer jobseekers a chance to hone interview skills, learn what’s out there and, perhaps, whether they’ll like it. Cipollone meets Diane Davis of Graham Packaging.
“7 p.m. to 7 a.m. and it's a 2-2-3, schedule. Have you ever worked a schedule like that before?”
“I'm also, I don't know if you do that, interested in maybe a 12, 12-hour, you know, like through the weekend or something.”
“12-hour shift. So one week you work 36 hours. The other week you work 48.”
Cipollone speaks with several potential employers before heading outside for lunch with others from her recovery home. She says she’s enrolled in Bluegrass Community and Technical College while seeking her GED and a job – and she’s not alone.
“We're the people with really strong feelings and … good-hearted people that just, you know, tried to cover their feelings with drugs in the wrong way, and we're learning how to do it a different way. And, you know, giving us a chance to prove ourselves, it's like, amazing … because we're just like anybody else, if we just have that chance. Who knows, you know, where we could go?”
For Amie Cipollone, a few weeks later, it’s a job at a Lexington supercenter, graduation from an in-house substance abuse recovery program and … more chances to prove herself.
