“I will hold your hand the first time for new appointments. When you start to walk on your own, I will be right behind you and when you become like a rebel teen, I’m here if you ever need me.”
For Rosemary “Rosie” Dyer, it is the simple things. The sunsets. The smell of the ocean and hearing the waves. And she enthuses, “shopping.”
Last spring, Dyer, 67, was released from prison after serving 34 years of a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the fatal shooting of her abusive husband. Her sentence was commuted by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Thanks to San Francisco’s nationally recognized restorative justice organization, Five Keys Schools and Programs, she moved into new home on Treasure Island — Five Keys Home Free. “I finally had a home,” she says.
When she got out, she had a lot to catch up on — like, the digital age.
That is where Gilda Serrano stepped in. As the Program Services Coordinator for Home Free, Serrano facilitates programs for the five women who live at the Home Free transitional apartments, encouraging them on the journey from decades in prison to a new path into the 21st Century. Like Dyer, the other Home Free women were unjustly serving anywhere between 15 to 40 years in prison for either defending themselves against their abuser or were at the scene of the crime under the coercion of their abusive spouse or boyfriend. As part of the Home Free team, Serrano ensures that yoga classes, healthy eating habits and treks to Muir Woods and the beach play an important role in the physical, emotional, and spiritual rebirth for Home Free women.
Gilda provides technological resources so the Home Free women can catch up with current knowledge. Serrano spends much of her time supporting women as they navigate the system — registering for address changes, applying for social security cards, birth certificates and other needed entitlements. She also focuses on finding permanent housing, creating realistic budgets and provides support to apply for jobs online. In many cases, that means escorting women to government offices, health clinic/doctors’ appointments and ensuring needed support.
“We take for granted that everyone has these documents,” says Serrano, a single mother of three grown children and three grandchildren who was born in El Salvador, Centro America and came to the United States when she was 16 years old. Her first challenge: She got a job cleaning houses and learned to speak English so she too, could support herself. “But try finding a job when you have been in prison and are in your sixties, and are expected to upload it on an employment web site. One of the first questions the women ask me is ‘what can I do?’ One of my biggest roles is listening.”
For Serrano it is a mission. A survivor and “thrives” she is passionate that Dyer and other women at Home Free are treated with safety and respect and with great dignity.
“I joke that I have a PhD in domestic violence, meaning I can relate very personally to what they are going through,” she says. “One thing I can also relate to is what it is like not having much, then suddenly you can have things. One of our challenges here is helping women understand not to buy everything they see and stocking up on everything they like. I try to help them understand that they are free now and things are not going to go away. It is important to understand the relationship of wants and needs.”
Teaching the lesson of independence is at the core of everything Serrano does.
“I’m a strong believer that these women need to learn to do these things themselves,” she says. “I tell them, ‘I will hold your hand the first time for new appointments. When you start to walk on your own, I will be right behind you and when you become like a rebel teen, I’m here if you ever need me.”
Serrano also has tremendous respect for Dyer and other survivors. “People have weird misconceptions about what people who are leaving prison are like. But I respect them so much. Even though they were told they never would be able to be free again, they still educated themselves and kept jobs and cared for each other.”
When she’s not working long days at Home Free, Serrano runs her own foundation, the Ribbon Dream Project, which closely parallels the work of Home Free. Its mission is to offer dignity, empowerment, and hope for victims of domestic violence so they can lead healthy lives for themselves and their children. The organization provides dignity bags with basic personal necessities, community resources, and a handwritten card with a quote to bring hope to a survivor of domestic violence. These dignity bags are given to first time incarcerated survivors due to domestic violence upon release from the San Francisco county jail.
“Often when police are called to a home for domestic violence, the women are scared to speak out when the police come because their abuser is right there … so they are then the ones arrested because they’ve done something else to defend themselves,” she says. “I know desperate, scared and lonely. So when they are released, we give them a folder with community resources and other things like toiletries and a handwritten note to say we care.”
Helping others is an avocation for Serrano who joined Five Keys five years ago as a data entry specialist and became a restorative justice community services coordinator. Prior to that, she was a crisis manager for a couple of San Francisco organizations.
“I understand what it is like and I know I could have never survived if others didn’t help me,” she says. “Now, it is my passion to help them.”