Rachel Jupin saw her fair share of tough times growing up in the projects of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Her father left her and her three siblings when she was 9. The family barely scraped by financially, let alone emotionally. “Let’s just say listening to my problems wasn’t high on Mom’s list,” Rachel says.

Fortunately for Rachel there was one person who really cared. “I could tell my Aunt Laurette anything,” Rachel fondly recalls. “She always had the time to listen. If it wasn’t for her, I really don’t know how I would have turned out.”

Rachel promised herself she would give her children all the attention her mother never gave her. She graduated from high school in 1966 and went to work for the phone company. There she met her husband, Michael, a telephone lineman. They fell in love and were married six months later. She quit her job, and the couple had four sons and two daughters. She showered them with love and attention. “I never wanted my kids to have to turn to someone else because I wasn’t there,” Rachel says. “So I became very involved in their lives, especially with their education.”

She was happy being a mom, but in her 30s, tough economic times forced her to go back to work for the phone company. But she had bigger dreams. An avid reader and writer, she decided to go to night school to earn an undergraduate degree in English literature. It took her eight years, but she finally graduated magna cum laude from the University of Massachusetts in 1995. Within a year, at the age of 48, she became a substitute English teacher at New Bedford High. “It’s the best job I ever had,” she says.

Rachel loved the job so much she went back to get her master’s in education, so she could teach full time. By 1998, she had her degree and the full-time job she’d dreamed of. She’d finally arrived. Or had she? As a full-timer, it was soon clear that teaching was not always the noble profession she had dreamed it would be. The job required her to be a disciplinarian, surrogate mom, and at times a referee. And the stories she heard were shocking. In her first semester, a student confided she was being physically abused at home. Another, when asked to write an essay about heroes, told Rachel she had none. The girl confided she was all alone in the world, shipped from one foster home to the next. Rachel took the girl under her wing, allowing her to hang out at her house when things got too tough at home, and helping her to realize she was loved and worthy of being loved. Till this day that girl visits Rachel and thanks her.

Our story could easily end here—the inspiring tale of an inner city child beset with hardship who not only made good, but did so by devoting her life to others. Instead, the story continues, as Rachel would play a part in preventing a national catastrophe. This second act of Rachel’s amazing story concerns her relationship with another young, troubled girl named Amy L. Bowman.

Just like Rachel, Amy came from a fatherless family, with a mother who didn’t have time for her. She’d been shipped from school to school and town to town. Like so many others, she found refuge in Rachel. It didn’t take long for Rachel to realize Amy needed someone who cared and was willing to listen. And it didn’t take long for Amy to realize that Rachel was that person.

“If you could sum up Rachel in a few words, it would be she is someone who sees the good in people,” says Amy.

Before long Amy was spending a lot of time with her new favorite teacher. And she had plenty to say. Rachel discovered a neglected, misunderstood, and terribly troubled teen with a whole lot more on her mind than school. “I had a lot of demons back then,” admits Amy.

“She came from a very dysfunctional family,” says Rachel. “Amy was abused from about four years old. She was looking for someone to talk to, and I was willing to listen.”

The Teacher Who Listened The Saturday Evening Post

Not only did Nicole’s father show up for her winter wonderland wedding in Vermont on December 29, 2012, he walked her down the aisle alongside her stepfather, Dan. Afterward, Nicole and her father danced to the perfect song for the occasion—John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

Nicole Stefanowicz was only 6 when her parents divorced in 1993. It was a real shocker because she never saw them fight, and her father was a doting dad. “My mom worked on Sundays, so that was our special day together,” recalls Nicole fondly. “He was a terrible cook, so we had boiled hot dogs and ravioli, but I loved it because we were together.”

That all changed after the divorce.

Though Nicole’s mother recovered quickly—marrying a family friend who became a loving stepfather—her father Glenn spiraled into depression, anger, and alcoholism. “He really went downhill after that,” Nicole says. “It was hard to see him like that.”

Unable to accept his wife’s new relationship, in a drunken stupor, one day he vandalized the family car, forcing Nicole’s mother to file a restraining order. That was the end of Nicole’s contact with him. She didn’t see her dad for most of the next decade, only hearing occasional updates of how he had moved away to Vermont, was scraping by, was in and out of jail, and eventually wound up living on the streets.

Although Nicole knew she could do nothing to help her father, it planted the seeds of a caring heart in her—one she first noticed when a friend in high school had a drinking problem.

“I could see my dad in him,” Nicole says. “I wanted to fix people and make them better. I think secretly I wished I could fix my dad.”

Nicole became a community service devotee helping the less fortunate however she could. And a few years later, all those good works earned her a scholarship to St. Michael’s College in Vermont. When she arrived, one of the first things she did was look for her father. “Vermont is a small state,” Nicole says. “I figured maybe I could find him. But I couldn’t.”

She majored in journalism and threw herself into the volunteer work that was now part of her makeup. One thing led to another and soon she was working with the Committee on Temporary Shelter (COTS) at St. John’s Hall, a permanent housing location for displaced individuals. From the moment she arrived, Nicole was thinking about her father. But she was totally unprepared for what was to come. As she walked past the mailroom one day, she noticed a mailbox with her dad’s first name on it. “I got really nervous,” Nicole remembers. “I sat down and started playing a game to take my mind off of things. But I couldn’t stop from thinking and hoping that maybe it could be him.”

Then, as the residents were called in for dinner, Nicole’s wish came true. “My dad came in carrying his bike, and was totally nonchalant when he saw me,” Nicole recalls. “He just said, ‘Hey, there. Let me put my bike away, and I will come down and say hello.’”

Her fellow volunteers and the staff at the shelter looked on in shock and confusion as Nicole proudly informed them that the homeless man they knew as Glenn was her dad. “I was so happy to see him,” Nicole recalls. “I didn’t even think about how crazy it was. I was just glad we were together again.”

The two made small talk after dinner and left promising they would see each other soon. But Nicole wasn’t about to leave it to chance. She began volunteering regularly at the center, just so she would be sure to see him. “We would take long walks together and talk, sometimes go to the mall,” Nicole recalls. “I just enjoyed being with him.”

She also enjoyed the work. Seeing how the center helped Glenn made her think of all the residents differently. They were no longer faceless social victims, but rather they were people’s fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers. In her sophomore year, after a weeklong field trip working with Hope House Ministries—a group that caters to some of the most desperate of disadvantaged souls—she knew helping the less fortunate was her life’s calling. She switched her major to sociology, and began working a lot more with COTS. “That’s when I really began to think maybe my dad and I could have an ongoing relationship,” she says. But that notion would soon be tested in a big way.

As part of her continued commitment to charity work, Nicole went abroad the following semester. During her stay, she received word Glenn had gone back on the streets and was involved in a serious accident while riding his bike. The news terrified her. “I first thought he might be dead,” recalls Nicole. “I never really thought about that being possible before, and it really affected me. That’s when it really hit me how much I cared for him.”

When she returned to the U.S., she was happy to see he was safely back in the shelter. She realized she would never be able to fix all his problems, but she also saw that having him in her life was a gift.

When Nicole graduated from college the next year, her father surprised her. He showed up in a suit, nicely groomed, and perfectly sober to cheer on the graduate. “He was so proud of me,” Nicole recalls. “It really filled my heart to have him there with the rest of the family.”

Today, their relationship endures and grows, even though Glenn struggles to stay sober and faces mental and emotional battles. One night last year, he wound up in the hospital with a breakdown. He called Nicole crying and apologizing. When Nicole showed up, she found him cold, wet, and starving.

But, some time later, when Nicole recently told him she was getting married, he beamed with pride and promised her he would be sober for the wedding. “It’s beautiful that he wants to be there for me, but I love him whether or not he shows up,” Nicole admitted at the time.

On the big day, December 29, 2012, her father not only showed up for the wedding but also walked her down the aisle, then shared a dance with his daughter at the reception.

For Nicole, the most important thing is having a relationship with her father—even if it’s an imperfect one. And grasping that lesson has brought her peace, both in her personal life and in her career.

“For all those years I didn’t have him when I was younger, I felt like I was missing something, and now I don’t,” Nicole says. “I feel like I have a rich and full life that he adds to. As long as he can continue to do that, then whatever we can have together is better than what we would have apart.”

Photo by Todd Stoilov/courtesy Nicole Stefanowicz.

Inspiration: Father of the Bride The Saturday Evening Post

"I knew the chances of us surviving if we went down that hall were slim … but I just couldn’t walk away,” says Jacob. Photo by Doug Baines.

It was a typical hot and sweltering Chicago day in August 1972 when the emergency call came over the radio for Jacob’s firefighting crew to handle a small fire that had broken out in a downtown apartment building. They hustled as always to make it in record time. But even in the few minutes it took them to weave through the afternoon traffic, the small fire had grown to engulf the entire building. “It was already looking pretty hopeless when we got there,” says Jacob. By the time the 24-year-old fireman arrived on the scene most of the hundred or so residents had already made it out of the blazing seven-story inferno.

But the firefighters had to be sure everyone was safe. So Jacob and his partners hurriedly entered the building clad in their fire-retardant gear, busting down doors and checking for any remaining trapped tenants. “It was a real old building in pretty bad shape,” recalls Jacob. “Whole floors were crumbling faster than we could even get to them.”

The roaring fire had started on the fifth floor before spreading throughout the rest of the building. Ladders enabled the firefighters to rescue residents on the top floors, but the fifth floor was too far gone to risk entering. They heard no screams or sounds, but they had no way of knowing without a physical check if there was anyone left on the fifth floor clinging to life. “It was unreasonable for any firefighters to enter the fifth floor at that point,” says Jacob. “But I had a nagging feeling that there was still someone left inside.” Finally ground personnel, who were busy taking names and trying to account for everyone in the building, radioed the order to evacuate. “It was way past the point of recklessness to be in there,” recalls Jacob. “And they assured us everyone was out.”

But suddenly, as Jacob and his colleagues came out of the front of the building, a young, frantic woman came running up to them yelling at the top of her lungs, “My baby, where is my Kris?”

Jacob’s instincts had been correct. The woman who lived in Apartment 529 explained that she had left her 7-year-old son, Kris, alone for just a few minutes while she went down the street for some groceries. And ground personnel could not account for Kris anywhere. “I knew he was still in there,” says Jacob “I could just feel it. And the fact that I hadn’t heard him screaming or calling out signaled to me he was either in shock or had passed out from smoke inhalation. Either way I knew we didn’t have time to waste.”

Jacob and another firefighter made their way back up to the fifth floor while firefighters outside used ladders to look for any signs of life. Thick black smoke poured out of the windows and through the hallways. The heat inside had become so intense that it was about to overwhelm the firefighters’ protective clothing.
By the time Jacob and his partner made it up to the fifth floor the fire had grown so fierce, neither could see more than a few feet in front of them. Apartment 529 was engulfed in flames at the other end of the hall, and most of the floor was already impassable. “My partner looked at me and gave me the thumbs-down,” says Jacob. “As a fireman I knew he was right. The chances of us surviving if we went down that hall were slim, let alone anyone finding that boy. I had been in situations like that before where I had to accept the loss, and I dealt with it. But I just kept seeing that mother’s face in my head. I just couldn’t walk away from this one.”

Inspiration: The Gift of Life The Saturday Evening Post