Once upon a time, she was Jessica, an exotic dancer from Penticton raising her three kids, moving around a lot like she’d always done as a kid but hanging in. But then the bad stuff started piling up, including her mom’s suicide. One bad turn led to another, and another. There were still lots of “chunks of normal life” in there, and 17 straight years without drugs. Then the slow slide into a life she never wanted took its hardest turn on Feb. 18, 2017, when she found herself homeless on the curb outside Rock Bay Landing. “I remember the day exactly. I sat outside for three weeks, wondering what I was going to do. I lost the other life so fast.”