Soy Kim has been a Huckleberry CARC Mentor for a little over a year and feels a very special connection to Huckleberry’s programs. When she was 15 years old her, “situation at home wasn’t pleasant,” she says. The police brought her to Huckleberry House where she stayed to work through the issues with her family, accessing our shelter and counseling services.

Now 24 years old, Soy works to make a difference in the lives of Huckleberry clients as a mentor for youth who have been arrested and are brought to Huckleberry’s Community Assessment & Resource Center. Of her experience as a mentor she says, “I received so much more than I was actually giving.”

Since her time as a Huckleberry House client, she has kept Huckleberry, “very near and dear,” to her heart and has even referred her younger sister to Huckleberry services. Her sister has accessed medical exams at the Huckleberry Youth Health Center on Cole Street.

Soy graduated from UC Denver in 2013 and is now a certified sexual assault counselor for an agency which serves various parts of San Mateo County.  As part of the work, she is responsible for answering calls on the crisis hotline, providing medical accompaniment to individuals who have been assaulted and are in need support, as well as speaking and presenting to youth about sexual assault.

“During my short but memorable stay at Huckleberry House, there was another young woman who found shelter there as well.  Although I don’t remember the reason for her stay, her presence and letter to me gave me hope and without Huckleberry House, I could not have had the fortune to meet this wise young woman.  Her letter gave me hope in all my darkness – hope that there was still good left in this world.  Hope that there are good people.  Hope that even in bad situations, we can still find some good.  And hope that I still had the choice to make what I can from these situations, good or bad.  To pay it forward, I wish that of all things.

To give back to our community, hope — a virtue I was given the opportunity to embrace by the young woman I met through Huckleberry and of course, Huckleberry itself.  Thank you.” – Soy Kim.