The young woman takes down lunch orders and smiles at her customers. She visits each of her seven occupied tables making sure each table has ketchup and every drink is full.
It's the beginning of a busy week at Henry T's Bar & Grill for 20-year-old Lawrence native Jessie Veber.
After a busy lunch, Veber sneaks to the back of the restaurant for a bite to eat. Soon, she will clock in as a manager and stay 'til 2 a.m. It is not unusual. Veber often works everyday - every lunch, every dinner. She puts in overtime.
For Veber, it's about more than just making ends meet in a difficult economy. For her, it's about the desire to distance herself from years of addiction and abuse.
"I did every drug mixed with every drug and I didn't know if I would wake up the next morning," Veber said. Her blonde hair and bright blue eyes distract from the maze of lacerations scars left around her wrists. She does not hide her past. Instead, she smiles and reflects back to a place in her life she will never forget.
It was the moment she stood pressed against a wall with a gun to get head that she realized she had to escape her daily routine of mixing drugs and alcohol.
"I'm going to fucking kill you!" she recalled the man saying, threatening her with his gun. Veber was 16-years-old. She was held hostage in a basement by her boyfriend's father, she says, and forced to perform sexual acts while her boyfriend was away. High on cocaine and drunk at the time, Veber barely remembers the night that she almost lost her life.
"Something like that sobers you up," she said. Her 21-year-old boyfriend was a drug dealer. She met him at a party in Topeka, bur she wishes she had never had. They got high every day on ecstasy and cocaine.
Veber says everything stems from her parents' divorce. After her mother cheated on her father they moved into separate houses. Her father started drinking heavily and his alcoholism drove him to losing his business. He also started drinking with his children.
Veber remembers drinking a beer with her father when she was 12-years-old. Watching her father drink all the time was painful, but she still enjoyed spending time with him. His influence on Veber was the spark to a sequence of dangerous situations.
"If you're going to drink, then I'm going to drink," she said, remembering a thought she had while drinking with her father. Veber said she and her younger sister, Jenna, used to take care of their father because he was too drunk to cook and clean on his own.
It was when Veber's father beat her that she realized the depth of his problem. She was faced with the decision to turn him in for domestic violence.
She recalls the day she took a six-pack of her father's beer from the house. Her father beat both of her eyes black and blue.
"It looked like a jaw breaker was shoved in my cheek," she said.
One of Veber's teachers at Lawrence High School pulled her aside and asked her to press charges.
"We had to grow up a lot faster than most people," Jenna Veber, Jessie's 19-year-old sister, said. "We tried to make the best of our situation."
She loves her sister and helped her survive, she said. Both sisters agree that their love and support for eachother ultimately kept them alive.
"There were many times I gave the extra push just to be there for her," Veber said. "I couldn't give up on her, especially since so many people gave up on us."
Veber said she has not forgiven her parents for being irresponsible. Her mother was absent during her father's slide to the bottom.
"My mom just couldn't mentally be there," she said. Both girls saw their mother occasionally, but Veber said her mother was unreliable and they didn't get along.
It was when Veber's father started dating Shellia Will that Veber began to trust an adult.
"She was there when my mom wasn't," said Veber. "She has been one of the best things that has happened in my life."
Between the ages of 15 and 17, Veber battled a year long prescription drug addiction. She lived in a group home. She got arrested for battery against her mother. She survived physical abuse. She lost her job at a pizzeria for arriving to work high on cocaine. Then she moved back in with her father and, thankfully, Will.
"She was having a really hard time adjusting. She didn't have any rules and didn't see consequences," said Will, who realized Veber was a challenge. "She had a typical teenage anger but had more of an attitude."
At the age of 17, Veber admitted herself to a rehab facility in Pittsburg, Kan.
"After a while you get tired of being tired and depressed," she said. But she ran away while she was there and was kicked out after a week.
"I felt pretty disappointed in myself," she said.
The she met a guy, a nice guy. The relationship was short, but Veber began to realize good men existed.
"She needed someone to prove they were going to look out for her," Will said.
She began to change. She eased off the drugs, lived a home, got a job at Henry T's and decided to start fresh.
"I am so proud of her," Will said. "I have seen her come so far from where she was. She has more self respect and she works hard."
Veber is no longer an addict. She is the youngest manager at Henry T's, where owner Sean Gerrity knows of Veber's past.
"She has a work ethic, which so few people her age have," he said.
"There have been times when I've had the opportunity to do drugs again but didn't," Veber said. "You have to break the cycle sometime." Veber's new life revolves around earning money and planning her future.
"I would love to be in a business suit one day," she said. Veber would love to go to college. "I think it would make me think better of myself."
Veber said she wasn't able to dedicate a lot of attention to school in high school because of everything going on at home, but hopes school can be more of a priority now that she feels more grounded.
"I'm doing a lot compared to where I was," she said. "I just had to take a couple more steps than most people do."
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