Erin Stocker's Story

Erin was born and raised in Albany and relocated to St Joseph about three years ago. She works at Sam's Club as a Bakery Associate and enjoys it. Eryka, Erin's daughter loves the strawberry cake that her mom makes. Erin has learned early on how to budget her money and resources in order to save for their future and learned these traits from her mother. However, one income no matter how she looked at it just wasn't enough. "We did not qualify for a mortgage on our own," Erin said.

Erin has two children, Eryka (7 ½) and Ethyn (3). They love to take walks to the park, art and craft projects, read books together before bed every night, and visit Grandma and Papa. When they get their new home, Eryka wants to paint her new room green and Ethyn wants a Batman room. Erin really hopes that she'll have her own clothesline in her yard as she's looking forward to the crisp smell of clean laundry. "If I don't have a clothes line, after all of my construction experience it shouldn't be that difficult to install one myself," Erin said.

Erin has a friend who has recently been accepted into the program and urged Erin to apply. She followed all of the requests for paperwork and went through the home visits over the course of the spring in 2009. She was notified the week after Independence Day that she was selected to partner with Central Minnesota Habitat for Humanity. When she was notified, she was very excited and the first people that she told were her children. To celebrate they went out to dinner at Mexican Village that night!

Erin has been in the Partner Family program for only two short months and has already completed over half of her Sweat Equity. We're happy to be partnering with her so that her children can have a backyard to play freely in.