How Does She Do It?

Detective Cookie Bouldin: Stopping Violence with a Chess Board

- Janet Pelz

It seems like everyone knows Detective Denise “Cookie” Bouldin, even at the times she hadn’t known herself. In the Chicago projects where she grew up, opportunities to make the wrong choice were a plentiful commodity. But thanks to strict parents and a number of adults who took the time to care, Denise Bouldin learned to know herself. And she’s determined to return the favor those people paid her, in a hundred different ways, every single day.

In a loud and lively lunch spot in Seattle’s Rainier Valley, I wait my turn to say hello to Detective Bouldin. Dressed in police blacks with a purposeful bearing, makeup and nails mastered from her days modeling for Ebony and Jet Magazines, her entrance commands the attention of wait staff and diners alike. She knows someone at every table, shaking hands and patting shoulders, some stopping her proudly to show off their children and grandchildren. She finally takes a seat at my table, but not before her eyes meet most every other pair in the room.

Everybody here knows Detective Cookie.

(photo credit: KING 5 News)

I came to know her after listening to a story about her by Jamala Henderson on our local public radio station KUOW.

I stayed in the car until the piece was over and scribbled a note to myself. It took a while to track her down and find a time to squeeze into her schedule for a quick lunch between two elementary school classroom visits where, as a community relations worker for the Seattle Police Department, she delivers lessons in anti-violence. And chess.

It started like this. A while back she was given the task to organize an activity for kids in the neighborhood – something healthy for them to do while interacting with the police in a positive way. So Officer Cookie organized a basketball game between the neighborhood kids and a police team. It was a rousing success. The kids outlasted their grown-up opponents and relished the chance to rub it in.

So, when time came around the following year for another activity, she assumed she’d be organizing a repeat match.

“But the kids said, Officer Cookie, ‘We don’t want to do a basketball game again. Not all of us play basketball.’ And when I thought about it I realized, there were a lot of kids who didn’t play basketball but just sat and watched. So I asked them, what did they want to do? And a few of them said, ‘Let’s have a chess tournament.’ A chess tournament? That’s the last thing I expected to hear. But I’m saying to myself I gotta make this happen, so I said, OK!”

But then what? Officer Cookie didn’t know much about the game and what she did know, she didn’t particularly like.

“As a kid, I was pretty much brainwashed that I wasn’t smart enough for chess. I never saw a black person playing chess. Never. And then someone showed me all the pieces on the board and said, ok this is what this one do and this one do, and I got frustrated ‘cause I kept forgetting. And I said, you know what? I hate this game, I hate it, hate it, hate it. Don’t ever want to play it again,” she declared, hand sweeping the table as if she were clearing the board. “My brain just wasn’t made for chess. And when anyone would try to teach me I would say, I can’t do it, I’ve tried.”

But this was for the kids, not for her. So she went to the Parks Department and got some chess boards and organized a picnic in a local park.

“So, we got ready for the chess tournament and I set up the boards, and to my surprise there were only a couple of kids who knew how to play chess and the rest of them were just standing around watching.                          (photo from Detective Bouldin)

“I asked the kids, be honest, how come you don’t play chess? And they would answer, ‘I’m not smart enough to play chess. I don’t play because chess is for smart people. Chess is for white people, for nerds.’ I realized that the answers these kids were giving were the same answers I gave for not playing chess. The same reasons!

“Now, I was a real good, set-the-chess-board-up-person. And making sure kids came. But whenever the kids wanted me to play chess I would just mimic their moves. Wherever they moved their piece, I would move my same piece. I had no clue to why or whatever reason it got there and for what purpose.”

She was getting ready for another such match when she heard a little kid whisper to her opponent. “He was about 4 or 5 years old and he said, ‘don’t worry, you’re going to beat Officer Cookie’, and I’m like, oh no he didn’t! No, he did NOT say that! All I could do was laugh, but he was so right!”

So Officer Cookie connected with the American Foundation for Chess, who promised her she would be playing chess in 30 minutes or less if she came to one of their trainings.

“So I went. And they taught me chess piece by piece. We started with just pawns. And after about 20 minutes, I was playing chess and I was LOVING it, I could not get enough of it. And I wanted to play chess day and night.”

And the more she played chess with kids in the neighborhood, the more she realized that it was much more than a game.

“I use the chess boards to teach anti-violence and to teach about making good choices. Cause if you don’t make good choices, there will be consequences. If you’re so quick to take somebody’s pawn and you don’t notice that there’s this knight over there hoping you make that move so he can take your queen, it’s going to kill you! Same thing on the streets! You’ve got to make this choice -- do you want to be in a gang? Do you want to pick up a gun and shoot somebody? What are the consequences? I’ve had kids tell me, Detective Cookie, you know, chess is like real life! And when a kid tells me that I know I’m getting through.”

(photo from KING 5 News)

Denise Bouldin knows well what real life is like for these kids.

“In my neighborhood people tried to get me to do drugs, to sell drugs, to do prostitution. I refused to do that, basically because my parents were strict. Back in the day, you knew you would get a whipping -- you wouldn’t get a time-out or spanking, you got a whipping. After you get one, you don’t want to get another. That’s not to say I didn’t try. Some times I would meet my friends dressed in hoochie-mama clothes,” she confesses, arching her eyebrows to make sure I knew just what she was saying.

A young Denise showed up once at the local Boys and Girls Club wearing some super-tight pants when an older woman pulled her aside to offer some advice. “She said, you know what? You’re not that type of person. Because of your clothes, it’s going to make people think different of you. She gave me a long talk about it. Back then, everybody could say something to a kid; everybody was your parent. I tell people today, talk to kids, cause sometimes just saying something can make a difference like it did with me.

“I trusted what this lady said and I never dressed like that again. I started thinking about how other people would see me. It made me realize, I had friends who were gang members, but I wasn’t in the gang. I didn’t want to be seen like that so I had to give up some of my friends. Someone could come by in a drive-by shooting, they’re not going to tell me to move aside because I’m not in the gang. They just shoot.”

When Detective Cookie addresses third graders at a south end elementary school, she shares this life history with kids who sit up straight, hands folded on their desks, listening intently.

“There’s going to be times when someone is going to ask you to do drugs -- by the time you get to high school, maybe even middle school. You will have to be ready with your answer. If you have a weak ‘no’ they’ll hear that as a ‘maybe’. Don’t be afraid to say no; you have the right to say no; you have a right to mean no. Make your no mean no.”

And then Detective Cookie gets out the chess boards. Quietly, the group divides into pairs and sets up. The kids have all learned the lesson of the first move – reaching across the board to shake hands. And then they get started. Most of the students seem to have a good command of the game. Solid moves and captured pieces activate the classroom. The few who are still learning the game work together in one corner where Detective Cookie circles back frequently to answer questions.

In the school hallways the kids smile at her and wave. “Hi Detective Cookie!” is offered down the line. She knows these kids and she knows their families. If one of them misbehaves in school she’s got the family’s number on speed dial in her cell phone, and she’s not afraid to use it.

This kind of police work has earned the recognition of many notables. In 2011 U. S. Senator Patty Murray awarded Detective Bouldin a “Golden Tennis Shoes” award. In accepting the honor, Detective Cookie used the podium to inform the crowd the chess club would be coming to an end due to lack of funding. Read this clip from The Stranger about her moving address. 

 

 

 

In 2011 she received a Community Builder Award from the Seattle Neighborhood Group. In 2010 she was chosen as the Best Police Officer by the Rainier Valley Post.

Becoming a police officer would surprise the people she grew up with. Back then cops were rarely your friend. “I hated the police, just like everybody else. I thought all police harassed young black people.”

(photo credit: Red Fish Blue Fish Photography)

But when she got to high school, “I met a police officer who was at our school everyday, it was his assignment -- and this police officer was the nicest person. You could go up and talk with him. That’s when I started thinking I might want to be a police officer like him, interacting with people.”

Success in the Seattle Police Department didn’t come easily. “When I came to the Academy they thought I was sort of joke, because I didn’t look like a police officer. When I went to my personnel interview I dressed like my other job -- a professional model. I was in my modeling clothes; make-up perfectly done.”

There was one white woman in her Academy class along with about 25 men. And one African American woman in the entire Seattle Police Department.

After she graduated she learned that her classmates had placed bets that she would fail. “The ones betting against me didn’t make it through the Academy themselves! What they didn’t know, I’m from Chicago, I got five brothers, I’m street smart, very street smart, I’m athletic, I’m a tomboy.”

After the Academy she had to make it through training. Although she met some encouraging officers along the way, “some were trying to get me to quit. We would sit down for coffee and they would tell jokes about the white man, the china man and the black man, and always the black man would get the butt of the joke. I didn’t say anything, all I wanted to do was to get through. One guy wrote me up for taking too long to do my report. He didn’t mention that before we got to the precinct he had us running all over town picking up his laundry and all his other jobs.

“I had a supervisor tell me the same thing, I took too long on my call. But you have to realize what I’m doing! This old lady got in a car accident, it totaled her car. I’m waiting until the tow truck comes to get it and I’m not going to leave this little old lady ‘til the cab comes to get her. We once did a raid on a house and I stayed a little longer because I saw that there were kids in the house with no food, so I went out to get some. And then I volunteered to take the kids to child protective service so they could get in a foster home. It takes me a little longer because I’m not going to leave until the job is done.”

(KOMO TV: see the full clip here)

Detective Cookie finally made it through training, and this day over her lunch order delivered to the nodding waiter as ‘my regular’, she realized she had just passed her 32 year anniversary on the force.

“I tell kids, you gotta start planning your roads now. What you want to be way down that road to success -- start that road right now. Even if you’ve done some wrong things in the past, you can make a change right now. I stopped hanging with people doing the wrong things, and it allowed me to become a police officer. “

As a police officer Detective Cookie has experienced some of her proudest moments. She was a body guard to Rosa Parks when the civil rights leader spoke at Garfield High School. “And I was one of the Seattle Police Officers on security detail for the inauguration of President and First Lady Obama. I had tears running down my eyes. I got a beautiful gold badge. This is something I will cherish for my whole life.”

Look for an upcoming column on Detective Cookie along with directions for how to support her Urban Chess Program.

One Year, 25 Amazing Women and 13,000 Page Hits Later…

 

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It was one year ago that I launched How Does She Do It? promising prospective readers:

“You’ll be inspired by the extraordinary and ordinary life stories of women in the Seattle area.

Each week I’ll interview a single mom, elite athlete, artist, or community volunteer; women who have arrived at their destination or women in transition – about who they are now and what choices they made to get to this point.

I’ll ask these women to tell who has made a fundamental impact on their lives, and what resources they turn to for support. And I’ll ask, whom should I interview next? We’ll start a thread that could weave throughout the region, and we’ll follow it wherever it takes us.”

  With the first story about my mother Kelly Pelz I’ve gone on to write about 24 other women, ranging in age from 13 – 99, women involved in the arts, sports, non profit organizations and business; women making an impact in this country and around the globe.

In the process I’ve also had my eyes opened to the power of the web to connect us. Google provides more information than I can use, but here are some of the more impressive statistics:

• Since I posted my first story, I’ve had more than 13,000 page hits. When I started writing, I was excited to see the number of readers rise by 25 with a new story. Now I regularly get between 30 – 60 hits on the days I don’t even post from people who have Googled something and seen my page on their results page.
• My biggest single day was 328 hits about Lacey Evans, captain of the Rat City Roller Girls. By way of update – you’ll recall she was planning a kickball game at her wedding to determine the couple’s new last name. The groom won, and Lacey is now Lacey Ramon.
• 85% or so of my readers in any month are new to the site. These are people who might be looking to read about a specific person I’ve profiled, or they may be looking for information on a topic like raising children as a single mom, living with ALS, or owning and operating a restaurant.
• Through Google searches I’ve been found by readers on every continent. A reader in Kenya read about Trish Dziko’s efforts to educate children of color. Someone in Venezuela read about Marla Smith-Nilson’s organization Water First and their efforts to bring clean drinking water to the poorest parts of the planet. Readers from European and Asian countries regularly visit my site.
• Without question the story that is most often Googled is the one I wrote in two parts about the young violin virtuoso Simone Porter and her mother. Simone’s high profile as an international performing artist has inspired a lot of interest. (She got a nice acknowledgment for her performance with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the concert she was preparing for when I interviewed her).
• Sometimes another web site directs their readers to me. There was the time when the website Feministe picked up my story about Joanie Warner, who has been living with breast cancer for 17 years and her daughter Abby, who was organizing a rock concert as part of a high school project to raise money to eradicate the disease. I saw a spike in readership from that link, including one woman who was an old friend of Joanie’s from North Carolina. The two friends found each other through my web site and are once again in each other’s lives.
• 70 of you currently subscribe to the site – thank you for your vote of confidence! If you don’t do so yet but like the idea of each new story showing up in your inbox when I post, just fill in the white box in the upper right hand column where it says “enter your email address here” and hit the “subscribe” button. No cost, no obligation even to read, but it’s there if you want to. Likewise, if you prefer not to receive my regular emails notifying you of the new story, please don’t hesitate to ask to be taken off the list. I know how email overload can become an issue.

While most women eventually agree to be interviewed, almost all of them start with the disclaimer that they aren’t interesting enough to merit a story. A few have turned me down, including one woman I greatly wanted to interview who sent me this:

“I do wish I could say I'm enjoying my time as a full-time teacher with the Seattle Public Schools, but that's sadly not the case. Rather, I feel thwarted at every turn. It seems to me that creative people are not wanted in the public schools. I don't believe I can continue as a public school teacher.

“Due to my present lack of inspiration, both for teaching and writing – teaching has taken all the time and energy I had for writing – I'm afraid I'll have to decline Janet's gracious invitation for an interview at this time. I wish I were in a better place to provide inspiration for other women.”

Heartbreaking.

Although I get wonderful kudos about the stories I write featuring other women, I don’t feel as successful in trying to establish the site as a place for readers to connect with each other. My other goal in starting was this:

“So, how do you do it?

Is your secret as basic as a crock pot or as meaningful as the words Aunt Lola whispered to you on your wedding day? What gets you up on a rainy morning and sustains you through one more meeting, rehearsal, breast feeding, burnt casserole, proposal deadline, or arrival of the Great Hormonal Onslaught?

I’ll open up topics and ask you to weigh in.

We’ll learn from each other, share our secrets, and promote the people, organizations, books – even kitchen gadgets -- that add value to our lives.”

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The times I’ve put out a question for your response I’ve been met with deafening, well, silence, which makes me think, either I’m asking the wrong questions or you don’t have an interest talking to each other through the milieu of a web site.  Consequently, I’ve become reluctant to try.

Likewise, the comment function of the site doesn’t get much use. My hope is that the site could grow into something more like a book club than a text message – something that inspires conversation rather than tweets.

All of this represents the growing pains, the adjustment period.  You can help me with your ideas by clicking here to take a survey.

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And finally to the business side of this project. I spend between 10 – 20 hours a week on the site, arranging and attending interviews, writing and posting stories and trying to master the technical aspects of blogging. As compensation, I’ve made about $94 in advertising and referral sales. I thank the person who ordered a camera on Amazon by clicking from my site -- that grossed me a whopping $16! If you want to help support this project, you can do your Amazon (and affiliated sites) shopping by clicking their ad on my site. I’ll get a percentage of your sales as a referral fee at no cost to you. Similarly, if you just click on any site ad, you’ll earn me a few pennies even if you never make a purchase.

Obviously, I don’t have the business model to make this a financial success, but I definitely feel as if I’m building something of value in writing these stories. I’m looking for other ways to share them (a book, perhaps?). If you have any ideas, I hope you’ll send them along.

If you have a few minutes, I’d appreciate your responses to a brief 10-question survey. Click here to take survey. I’d love your ideas for how to make the site a more valuable place for you to spend some of your time each week.

I can’t thank you enough for your support.

- Janet Pelz

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Trish Millines Dziko: Transforming Public Education for Kids of Color

Trish Millines Dziko has a question for you. How much do you care about public education and how involved will you become to make it better?

For Trish the answer to both questions is ‘lots’. “Right now I spend most of my time trying to transform public education for kids of color.”

She has many reasons to care. Four of them live in her house. But there are hundreds of thousands more reasons as well. People Trish has never met and never will but whose stories she knows all too well. These are the forgotten children of color, low income kids, girls. The ones who, by virtue of the happenstance of birth have been tracked into low achievement and even lower expectations.

Trish might have been one of those back when she was in high school, but “I got lucky and had some teachers realize that I was put in the wrong track, and they made sure I got to where I needed to go. That meant I had to go to summer school every single year starting my freshman year all the way through college, in order to catch up.”

Catch up she did.

She went to college and got a degree in computer programming, setting in motion a course for her life that would continue to circle back to that realization, that she, among legions of African American girls, had been shown a door that she pushed her way through.

After graduation, Trish moved through a career ladder that wasn’t exactly accommodating to people who looked like her. “It was hard getting a job because people weren’t hiring Black folks no matter how smart they were. Really, the only place where you could get a good job was with a government contracting company.”

That path took her to, among other places, Hughes Aircraft Company. “I realized that was going to be a dead end, working on military style machinery, going from radar systems to missiles.”

She came to Seattle in 1985. After a stint with a start-up that crashed and a time working for herself, she got swept into the Microsoft maelstrom. Before long, she was working the not-atypical Microsoft workweek of 70 – 80 hours as she and her team pushed to get a new product to market.

After leaving that group, Trish got hooked into Microsoft’s outreach efforts to attract more people of color. Trish would do campus visits to the historically Black colleges, “where I would tell them, I could not have made it in Microsoft as my first job. I was not confident enough, but you are.”

Then Trish had a run-in with management about her commitment to grow in the company. “Because I had made a commitment to recruit students of color instead of staying behind to work, the comment was made, ‘you’re killing your career’. My manager at the time didn’t want me to go on this one recruitment trip, so she found another colleague, who was in marketing mind you, not technical, and she says, ‘John can go for you, he’s half Black’.”

Trish made the trip.

Then Microsoft created a job for her, the Senior Diversity Administrator. “It was a tough move – it’s where my heart was but it was hard, because if you’re not a technical person at Microsoft you don’t have much credibility.” During her two years in that position, “I realized this stuff is never going to change unless we change the pipeline.”

In a real way, this notion of feeding the pipeline is one that has guided Trish ever since. Recognizing that it takes a long time, Trish has directed her life to seeding the pastures of change.

She approaches life with the sensibilities of an engineer or a program manager. You can’t expect a quality machine if you use faulty parts. If your expectation is for a quality, diverse work force, the people coming into that system must be quality and diverse. What goes in comes out.

Trish met her partner Jill in 1995, a social worker whose clients were in the middle school behavior disorder classrooms “where there were always lots of African American boys. One day Jill brought a group of her kids over to the campus to meet some of my interns. We took them over on the campus shuttle and they were a little rowdy. And then we walked into this conference room, where there were six interns doing product testing. You could have heard a pin drop. Jill’s clients could not believe they saw these kids, who were just a little bit older, doing this work.

“It was an ah-hah moment. It was the thing that said to me, we need to do more.”

And that’s how TAF, the Technology Access Foundation was born. http://www.techaccess.org/

Jill and Trish left their respective jobs in 1996 to work fulltime for TAF, which:

“…prepares students of color for success in today's technology-driven world. With support from our programs more students in our public schools graduate high school on-time, ready to enter college.”

“I watched over the years how in the technology industry you really don’t see growth among people of color. Girls have had a little easier time. In corporate America you’ll have more women at the top and every rung all the way down. But with people of color, you may see a few at the top but then nobody else until you get all the way to the bottom, so the ladder isn’t full.

“I felt that I could help the generation behind me make their way through this industry a little bit easier. You’ve got to hold your weight once you walk through those doors, but some of those doors have to be opened for you.

Trish wasn’t seeing those doors open, so she committed herself to transforming public education for kids of color, to prepare them for careers at the next Microsoft, or whatever else they might take on.

While others might be intimidated by the enormity of the challenge, Trish seems to draw on her experiences of pushing through year after year of summer school, or successive 80 hour weeks bringing a product to its launch point. It’s not a dispassionate approach – you have to be hugely passionate to set a goal to transform public education– but it is analytical. It’s deliberate. As I listened to her talk about everything from her kids to educational pedagogy, I was struck at how Trish is intentional, about all manner of choices, even about the books she reads. (“I read one at bedtime and one during the day. My day book is usually about some sort of management/work thing. My bedtime book is my ‘social’ book.”)

By their second year (1997) TAF had launched two programs, Connecting Communities of Color (C3) and Technical Teens Internship Program (TTIP). In 2000 they started TechStart, a free K-8 afterschool academic enrichment program for students of color. Then after some time, “we saw that kids were coming to the after school program having had no academic rigor in their day-to-day schooling,” so in 2008 they reached a major milestone in opening their first school, the TAF Academy. http://www.techaccess.org/Programs/TAFAcademy.html

They opened a public school, located in a diverse community in Federal Way (south of Seattle). TAF Academy is a 6th through 12th grade public school “that prepares students for college and life by using project-based learning rooted in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).”

“Our goal is to have 75% kids of color, and 50% girls.” Into their second year, TAF Academy has come close to meeting their goals. “We’re working hard on outreach and marketing, but it’s pretty tough. For so long these kids have been hearing, ‘you can’t do this stuff’, so it’s become internalized.”

I asked Trish if she were concerned that TAF Academy would become popular with white families, taking away places for her target students. After all, it’s a public school where preferences aren’t allowed. “We’re very public about who we’re trying to attract, so only the bravest of the white families will come – those who don’t have issues with their kids being around mostly kids of color.”

TAF plans to open a network of five TAF Academies by 2015. Interestingly, it’s not likely that one will be in Seattle, the state’s largest city with a highly diverse public school population.

Putting it nicely, Trish has some issues with Seattle’s commitment to educate all its children.

Perhaps not ironically, Trish and Jill have moved their kids out of the Seattle Public Schools. They recently moved to Vashon Island, a short ferry ride away. True to form, Jill and Trish made an appointment with school administrators there before moving the family. They liked everything they saw. “The staff was very open and accepting of our family structure and our kids seemed excited to visit the classroom.

“We went to some of the stores in town to see what kind of reaction we would get. People are so nice it’s ridiculous. We decided it was the place for us.”

When I asked what it was like, to work hard creating learning environments where the majority of kids were of color and then to send her own kids to schools that were primarily white, Trish was pensive. “I look at our family and we have a lot of resources and I look at the kids that TAF serves and they don’t. What we are trying to do at TAF is to create the best public school environment for where you live. Not everybody can move to a better school.”

Trish and Jill carry their sense of purpose to the raising of their four kids, three of whom are adopted.

“We’re very intentional. I want my kids to live, so I talk to my boys about how to act if they get stopped by the police, because I want them to come home. Things haven’t changed that much. People tell us, your kids are so good. Well, our kids are good because they have two strong parents that brought them up that way.

“I want my kids to be proud of who they are and I want others to release their stereotypes when they deal with my kids of what they think Black people  behave like.

“We have a lot of strong Black men and strong men of color in our family. It’s really important that our boys see responsible men of color as role models. And our daughters, should they end up straight, that’s the kind of man they want to have in their lives. Those kinds of things are important to us, and we have the ability to surround our kids with those kinds of people. That’s not necessarily true for all kids.”

Trish’s kids are part of the pipeline, and like the many other children given a hand by TAF, they’ll be ready to take on whatever they dream of no matter, like the task Trish has set out to accomplish, how ambitious its scope.

Trish’s not-so secrets for How She Does It:

• “I have a lot of good people in my life, starting with my partner. We are very lucky having two adults in our house with one of those being at home at all times. I was raised by a single mom, so I know how tough it is.
• “Two things are important to me – my family and my job. I’m getting better at compartmentalizing so I can let the work go when I come home.
• “We live a very, very modest life. We don’t have a lot of things. So the priority for us is doing things with our kids; making sure we’re there for their activities, parent teacher conferences, and I’m lucky I have a job that allows me to do that.”
• In terms of taking care of herself – “that’s the thing I haven’t squeezed in yet, but I’ve begun to make it a priority.” Trish is recovering from a pulmonary embolism, a condition she learned is common yet rarely discussed. Of those who get it, 20% of people die in the first 90 days. It occurs particularly among people who travel a lot -- too long sitting in one place, they get blood clots in the leg that travel up to the lungs. “Right now I can’t walk for more than about two minutes before I start to get exhausted, but I’m trying to get up to six.”

What book is Trish reading these days?

• Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography, by Sidney Poitier
• The Audacity to Win, by David Plouffe
• Stones into Schools, by Greg Mortenson
• First, Break all the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, by Marcus Buckingham.

Whom does Trish hope I interview next?

• Stephanie Ellis Smith – also recommended by Donna Moodie, so Stephanie and I are trying to find a time to get together!
• Rebecca Sandinsky, who started Powerful Schools

Want to help Trish and The Technology Access Foundation?

Here’s an event coming soon,

or donate on-line here: http://www.techaccess.org/Contribute/giveonline.html

By Janet Pelz

Ewa Cuprys: Speaks 6 languages; holds 2 Masters Degrees; owns her own business

The Polish Government was nice enough to give them a choice: leave the country or go to jail.

Having served once already for political dissidence, Ewa’s husband preferred the other option. So, at age 27, with her husband, two young daughters and a Master’s degree in Economics, Ewa (pronounced ‘Eva’) left for Italy. It was to be resting point on an eventual journey to America – that was the future the young couple talked about. Until her husband was struck by a drunk driver while riding his bicycle to work. He died before reaching the hospital.

After putting her life back together, Ewa kept their dream alive, and with the money she saved from managing a small church in Rome, packed up her two children and set off for the United States. She chose Seattle as her destination, somewhat serendipitously, after a Tacoma native working at the U.S. Embassy in Rome recommended it. That was one of many lucky moments in her life Ewa will point to.

She could have gone the route other Poles took, to the big cities of Chicago or elsewhere, but Ewa knew if she surrounded herself with people who only knew her native tongue, she would have no reason to branch out. Seattle was a good choice in that regard. She came here without knowing anyone, and though she was already fluent in three languages, she knew nothing of the one that would pose the greatest challenge to her – English.

An international refugee organization helped her find an apartment and collected donations of furniture and home supplies. She arrived in Seattle on Thursday night. By the weekend she was settled. And on Monday, after her nine year-old daughter spoke to the building manager for her in English, she got her first job, painting apartments.

“I had never painted before and I’m sure I made many mistakes. But he was very patient, and I had a way to feed my family.”

After a time, she met another Polish woman who cleaned houses. “I had been cleaning houses since I was a little girl, so I knew I could do this. I was going to school four hours a week to learn English and raising my daughters. I needed a job I could do at different times of the day.” Ewa approached housecleaning as she had everything else in her life. “You have to commit to doing everything well.”

With political restrictions lifting in her native Poland, Ewa’s friend decided to go home. She turned her business over to Ewa, another piece of luck. That was twenty years ago.

From a single housecleaner then, she has steadily grown her business. She still does her share of cleaning, but more of her time is spent scheduling and supervising her eight full-time employees. The number of current clients, my family among them – too hard to count. Many residential customers now ask her to clean their downtown offices as well. “That’s good for my workers, some of whom can only work nights.”

 Ewa standing in my very practical kitchen, which she helps keep clean

These eight workers come from El Salvador, Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Mexico, and Costa Rica. Six different countries, four different languages. Ewa speaks to each of them in their native tongue.

“I think it’s not fair to expect them to speak English. Many of them have just come to the United States, some are too old to learn a new language. They can’t afford to go to school here. So, I just teach myself their language and then we can communicate.

“It took me just about two weeks to learn Russian. Of course, I had studied it in Poland – I read Dostoyevsky in Russian. But because of political conflicts with the Soviet Union, we would only read it and write it, never speak it. So it just took me just a little bit of time to learn to speak it. It’s a beautiful language.”

For me, my twice-monthly house cleaning is an indulgence.

For the women employed by Ewa Cuprys it is a lifeline.

You see, I’m their source of income. When I start washing my own floors, their families do without.

“Some of these women have no husbands, or their husbands cannot find work. They have green cards, but they can’t pass the citizenship test, which is now being given just in English. Some are sending money home to their children in another country. I really admire how hard they work. I guess they love their families more than they love themselves.”

And how about her daughters, who came here with Ewa at ages 4 and 9? Well, one went to Lakeside (for those unfamiliar, it’s the moneyed prep school that claims the likes of Bill Gates) on full scholarship where she impressed teachers with her command of six languages. Ewa would rise with her at 4:30 each morning to take her to ice skating lessons. She went on to the University of Chicago and then the University of Washington Law School and is now a practicing immigration lawyer in Miami. Her sister, also in Miami, got her law degree from Columbia after doing undergraduate work there.

When the girls still lived at home, they helped their mother earn her second Master’s Degree, this one in International Business at the University of Washington. Laughing, she described how the girls helped correct her papers written in the language that was still challenging her.

Yes, her daughters have done well for themselves and are living independently. But that’s not the end of raising children for Ewa. A year ago, her 16 year-old nephew moved in after his mother, Ewa’s sister, died.

“Maybe when he goes off to college I will do something new. But I like what I do now.”

Ewa’s (not so) secrets for how she does it:

• You cannot allow yourself not to do a good job.
• You cannot be afraid – it doesn’t matter what you are doing you must trust yourself.
• There is no ‘no’ in business. Always find a way to do the job.
• Take responsibility for yourself and teach your children to take responsibility for themselves.
• Live for more than yourself. Do something for others and help make a better world.
• Appreciate what you have – you probably don’t need more.

Ewa’s tips for house cleaning:

• Fancy cleaning products are no better than the basics: Comet cleanser, Soft Scrub, a degreaser for the kitchen, and only vinegar and water on wood floors (and dry them well – don’t let the water sit)
• Planning a kitchen remodel? Stainless appliances look good in the showroom and for about an hour after you clean them, then they get covered with grease and finger prints
• Don’t put wood floors in the kitchen or bathroom or marble counters in the kitchen. They look nice but they are impractical – very difficult to keep clean.
• Are you looking for a housecleaner? Contact Ewa at [email protected] and tell her you heard about her through “How Does She Do It?”

What book is Ewa reading?

• Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life, by Queen Noor of Jordan

Whom does she want me to interview in the future?

• She knows many immigrant women whose lives, she suggests, are even more interesting than hers.