PAYING IT FORWARD
Janet St. James reports
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DALLAS - If Andrew Espitia seems more excited than the average guy to be at work, there's good reason.
In Texas, the number of jobless jumped by 44,000 last month. Espitia - a father of four - is proud to say he is finally not among them.
Six months ago, the Flower Mound resident was doing odd jobs in blue jeans and boots after being laid off in September of 2008. His six-figure salary plummeted.
"Well, today is $15 an hour," Espitia said in April as he was installing filing cabinets in the basement of the Dallas Museum of Art.
After unemployment ran out, he struggled to pay the bills for his family of six.
"We had people pay our mortgage," Espitia recalled with tears in eyes. "We had people pay our mortgage. We had perfect strangers leave gift cards."
The past year, he said, has been humbling.
After applying for more than 600 jobs, Espitia finally got a break.
He is now director of client services for a Dallas communications company called Unified360. Espitia's first order of business was hiring a sales staff.
Most of them, he's proud to say, were also unemployed and looking for someone to believe in them.
Espitia has put away his steel-toed boots in favor of leather dress loafers.
"The steel-toed boots are still in my closet, and - believe it or not - I look at them every day before I put on my shoes," he said. "I can never forget what happened over the last year. And that's what will keep me continuing to get better each and every day."
Those work shoes, he said, will forever be part of his soul.
