In December 2018, Cheré Bautista was forced to confront a fear that had haunted her since she was a teen.
Then 36, Bautista had spent months searching for work and had finally been offered a job in the call center of a Seattle-area hospital.
But at the last minute, the offer was rescinded due to something Bautista had kept secret for two decades: She had never graduated from high school.
“That was the lowest point in my life,” recalls Bautista, who lives in Bellevue with her husband and son.
Bautista has come a long way since then. She’s the accounting coordinator at Samena Swim & Recreation Club in Bellevue and is earning an associate degree in accounting at Bellevue College.
But none of that would have happened were it not for a personal crisis and a chance encounter with Hopelink, a nonprofit offering a range of social services primarily in north and east King County. Hopelink is one of is one of 13 social-service agencies benefiting from The Seattle Times’ annual Fund for Those in Need.
Hopelink helped Bautista prepare for her GED test, which awards the equivalent of a high school diploma, and which Bautista received in June 2019. Not long after, Hopelink invited Bautista to serve on its board, where she uses her lived experiences to help others overcome similar challenges.
Each year, The Seattle Times Fund for Those in Need raises money for charities that help children, families and older adults. Throughout the season, we tell the stories of people and organizations who make a difference in the lives of thousands, and the impact donors can have.
Bautista’s story exemplifies Hopelink’s mission of building on the skills that individuals already have so they’re better “equipped to exit poverty,” says Geoff Crump, Hopelink’s interim CEO.
Bautista’s challenges started early. Raised in Littleton, Colo., by a single dad, she often had to fend for herself. At 16, she dropped out of high school to work and support herself.
Like many who don’t finish high school — currently, around 5% of all high school students don’t, according to federal data — Bautista learned to get by without a diploma. She was a hard worker and quick learner. She was good with people and had a head for numbers. And most employers never actually asked for proof of a diploma or a GED certificate.
In 2001, after a family disagreement, Bautista left home. The 19-year-old drove her ancient Honda Prelude north until she hit Interstate 90 and kept going all the way to the Eastside.
“I had no plan,” Bautista admits. “I just wanted to get away.”
She got a job delivering auto parts the day after she arrived. She lived in her car for three weeks until she found housing.
But gradually, Bautista built a life. By 2005, she was employed as bank teller and eventually moved up into management. She’d met and married her husband, Mauro Bautista, and had their son, John.
With each passing year, however, Bautista felt her career options narrowing. After nearly a decade in banking, she was getting burned out. She dreamed of becoming an accountant, but knew that required a diploma.
Meanwhile, her incomplete education made her feel uncomfortable socially.
“When I’d go into a roomful of people … you can tell they have education and … it’s like, ‘I don’t even have my GED, what am I doing here?’ ” Bautista recalls.
When the hospital call center job fell through, Bautista knew she’d reached a breaking point. “In that moment, it was just, ‘I have to fix this. I have to.’ ”
After searching for local GED classes, Bautista stumbled across a preparatory program on the Hopelink website. She’d known the nonprofit ran a food bank, but was unaware Hopelink also offered free adult education programs.
Even today, Bautista recalls the relief she felt — “just the weight lifting off my shoulders: I’m finally going to get this done.”
Hopelink’s broad range of social services goes to the heart of the nonprofit’s guiding principle, dubbed “Theory of Change,” which holds that people in poverty often face two very different challenges, says Crump, the interim CEO.
Many are struggling to meet basic, immediate needs, such as getting enough to eat or paying for rent or transit, Crump says. But even after those basic needs are met, individuals may still need help honing their job skills and money management skills in order to permanently escape poverty.
Last year, Hopelink provided housing for 460 homeless individuals, and distributed more than 4.3 million pounds of food and nearly $9 million in rental and utility bill assistance. At the same time, Hopelink provided a variety of education and coaching services to more than 400 individuals.
Those services include programs to help prepare for the GED test or earn credits toward a high school diploma at partnering community colleges. Another program, English for Work, helps immigrants and refugees gain language proficiency and other skills for future employment.
Clients can also get assistance with résumés and job interview skills, and coaching on budgeting, improving credit scores and other elements of personal finance. A newly launched program on digital literacy covers basic computer skills such as email and spreadsheets.
Providing so many services can be challenging. COVID-19 and inflation made services more expensive, says Crump.
Enrollment in Hopelink’s education programs also fell during COVID, as it did for classes at other nonprofits, and is only now bouncing back, says Debbie Margolis, Hopelink’s GED and high school program instructor.
Even before the pandemic, Hopelink’s education programs came with their own unique challenges.
In the GED program, for example, some clients are daunted by the preparation needed to pass the test, which was revised in 2014 with more stringent requirements for reading, math and reasoning skills, says Margolis.
“It’s a tough test,” she says. “Most people I know with high school and college degrees would be surprised at how challenging it is.”
Clients may also be dealing with painful memories of school or be uneasy having anyone else know they never graduated.
Many students “come to us in a very vulnerable place,” Margolis says. They’re often “really concerned about what it’s going to be like to be a student again,” she adds, while others have lost out on a job or a promotion because they lacked a credential and “are feeling bad about what has happened.”
But after working with Margolis and one of 15 volunteer tutors, many clients are “amazed at … the progress they’re making, the things they can do now that they struggled with in the past,” she adds.
Margolis says Bautista was incredibly motivated and focused. She passed her GED test in six months, and started accounting classes at Bellevue College soon after.
And though Bautista was nervous about being in class, Margolis recalls, she refused to let that fear get in the way.
“She was just awesome at asking questions and being really open about what she understood and didn’t understand,” Margolis says. “And that was wonderful for the community, because then other students were willing to be vulnerable too.”
Once Bautista saw how her own attitude was helping her classmates, Margolis says, she took on a leadership role. Bautista is the kind of person “who makes her classmates feel taken care of,” Margolis says.
Bautista has brought that attitude to Samena Swim & Recreation Club in Bellevue.
Since starting in 2021, Bautista has helped streamline the club’s accounting processes, which makes everyone else’s jobs easier, says Scott Polovitch-Davis, Samena’s executive director. Her focus is “helping everybody be more successful,” he adds.
That has also been Bautista’s approach on the Hopelink board, whose rules require a third of its 21 members to be Hopelink clients or individuals with similar “lived experiences,” Crump says.
Bautista used her own experiences with low-income housing to help other board members understand how low-income individuals must often go to numerous nonprofits just to gather funds necessary to pay rent, Crump says. That helped lead to changes in Hopelink’s funding approach.
As she nears the end of her first three-year term on the board, Bautista is getting more settled in acting as a bridge between Hopelink and the communities it serves. Having someone like herself on the board means clients “have a voice” in how the organization operates, she says. It also “allows me to feel like I can … help more people,” she adds.
On Wednesday, Hopelink confirmed Bautista as board vice chair, a role that starts in January and transitions to board chair in 2025.
In this, Bautista’s life has come full circle.
She says her community-minded approach reflects her own disrupted childhood and the way that neighbors stepped up and made sure she had food, clothing and other necessities whenever her dad disappeared.
“It was basically the neighborhood that took care of me,” Bautista says. “And so I knew from a young age that when I was old enough, I would be that neighbor.”