Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

THE ECONOMY:

Little comfort or joy for many in recession

Lost job dashed California woman’s dream of a new start

Virginia Collins

Steve Marcus

Virginia Collins says she’s about to be evicted from her Las Vegas apartment because she has been unable to pay rent after being let go from her security guard job in November. Collins’ job search has been unsuccessful, and “sometimes I cry so hard before I go to sleep.”

One of three profiles in an occasional series of stories devoted to people caught in Nevada’s recession.

Five months after moving here from Southern California, Virginia Collins’ life is boxed up again.

Collins, 56, lost her job as a security guard in early November. Except for a one-night stint as a concert usher, she hasn’t been able to find another job. She’s been referred by the state’s employment-assistance office to about 20 companies, but each one says there’s no hiring right now. Maybe next month, they say.

She doesn’t qualify for unemployment in Nevada but hopes to collect from California. She’s saddled with a monthly payment of $480 for a 2007 Dodge Charger. There’s a $90 monthly charge for a storage unit in California. And she spends between $75 and $100 monthly on gasoline, to inquire about potential openings. On this day she has $50 in cash.

To help her out, a relative wired $200, which Collins used to buy fundraising chocolate bars from See’s Candies. She then sold them outside post offices, Wal-Marts and other stores to patrons, reaping $400 initially. Collins used some of the money to pay bills and buy another $108 box of chocolate bars to sell.

The chocolate, she says, is her “salvation.”

Peddling chocolate was the last thing on her mind when she moved to Las Vegas, taking a two-bedroom apartment off South Nellis Boulevard in mid-September.

She hasn’t been able to pay her $800 rent in two months and is on the verge of being evicted.

Just a few years ago, she had $10,000 in savings from a day-care business she ran out of her Upland, Calif., home. But that business ultimately cratered, her marriage of eight years began to fizzle and she lost that $150,000 home to foreclosure. The only job she could land was as part-time school bus driver.

Her 28-year-old daughter had moved to Las Vegas and encouraged her to follow. Tickled by the idea of a fresh start in a new town, Collins lined up a job as a guard and was stationed with her daughter, also a security guard, at a communications company.

In early November, Collins lost her guard job. She says she wasn’t told why. In search of new work, she visits JobConnect, the state’s public employment agency, three times a week, so far to no avail.

And back at her apartment, she’s reminded of the despair in her life: boxes of clothes, dolls and Christmas ornaments crowd her living room and master bedroom.

“Sometimes I cry so hard before I go to sleep,” Collins says, as televangelist Benny Hinn whispers from a CD player. “Then I read the word and encourage myself in what God says. It gives me strength to go a little further. God will come through.”

Collins hoped to find a roommate to ease some of the burden, but was unaware Monday that she could post a free listing on the Internet. (She has since done so).

If Collins is evicted, she’ll move into the $826-a-month one-bedroom apartment her daughter shares with a friend. “She’s not gonna let her mama sleep on the stoop,” Collins says.

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