Sue, in front of her InnVision-donated home.
Robert Johnson for Business Insider
It's impossible to ignore the role drug abuse plays in contributing to Silicon Valley's more than 7,000 homeless residents. Sue worked at Hewlett Packard before a methamphetamine addiction tore her life apart and left her on the streets.
2013-08-30
She was only three classes shy of her undergraduate degree when she lost everything. It was only after being arrested and spending time in jail that she put her life back together and found the help she needed.
Today, Sue shares a home donated to Silicon Valley shelter network InnVision with three other women, and is polishing her coding skills in the hope of landing a new job.
She opened her home to Business Insider in mid-July and told us, "This is the happiest I've ever been."
It wasn't long ago that Sue worked for HP in Silicon Valley making nearly six figures a year before a drug addiction tore her life apart and left her on the streets.
Today she lives in a nice home in a quiet neighborhood. The residence was a private donation by the InnVision shelter network. InnVision provides homes to women making their way off the streets and back into society.
InnVision knows how important pets are to the people it serves and allows residents to keep them as long as the animals are well cared for and don't cause damage.
Her room is a place for her to keep the few possessions she retained after losing her home. Sue keeps her treasured family photos prominently displayed on the wall.
Robert Johnson was Business Insider's senior correspondent and the originating editor of Business Insider's military-and-defense section.A former US Army noncommissioned officer, Johnson enlisted in the Army before 9/11, was injured, and spent his final two years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. It was his experience at Walter Reed in 2004 and 2005 that brought him to journalism.Johnson attended the University of Missouri and New York University.
