Sonia Acosta sits in a chair at Partnership for Families, Children and Adults on Eighth Street in Chattanooga on Tuesday before talking about the tires she received from Neediest Cases. Acosta suffered over a decade of abuse from her husband that has left her with daily headaches and impaired vision.When it rained, Sonia Acosta’s car would slide across the road and she’d cry out prayers.
“Oh no, Lord, please,” she’d say.
Having left her husband a year ago, she had no money to replace the bald tires on her car, which she uses to pick up her two youngest children from school, to drive to her part-time job as a house cleaner — when she could find the work — and to drive to the Crisis Resource Center on East Eighth Street, where she told other women her story of escaping domestic violence.
Without her husband, Acosta struggled to make ends meet. She didn’t have anyone to ask for help. So she turned to the Crisis Resource Center at the Partnership for Families, Children and Adults.
A few weeks ago, her victim advocate at the Partnership, Lydia Salva, saw Acosta using a portable air compressor to fill her bad tires, so she signed Acosta up for the Neediest Cases fund at the beginning of December.