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LANE DeGREGORYWhen the chance to change came, the girl next door reluctantly agreed to try. A year later, she never wants to go back her old life of crack cocaine and hooking.
CLEARWATER - She's sitting in the front row of the courtroom, between the church ladies, twisting the gold cross around her neck.
The last 17 times she was in court, Melissa Collora had to stand beside the bailiff in her jailhouse scrubs.
Today, she's in the audience, dressed in a flowing, ankle-length skirt. Her mauve blouse has long sleeves, to hide her eight ball tattoo.
"Your Honor, before we begin, I'd like a moment to confer with Melissa," the public defender says. The lawyer turns and scans the courtroom, searching. "Melissa doesn't appear to be here yet."
"Yes I am," Melissa says, waving. "I'm right here."
The public defender squints through her glasses. She stares at the pale young woman with the shiny black hair. In the last year, the dark circles under Melissa's hollow eyes have faded. Her sunken cheeks have filled in. She has gained 70 pounds.
"Melissa?" her lawyer asks. "Could that be you?"
A year ago, at 23, Melissa Collora was the second-most-arrested prostitute in St. Petersburg. She worked Fourth Street, by the Applebee's, for more than five years. She even carved her name in wet concrete to mark her corner. She needed quick cash to buy crack, she told the cops. They busted her in mangrove bushes, behind Dumpsters, at the In-Town motel. She once sold herself for $8 and a Baby Ruth bar.
"The guys in vice have this joke," St. Petersburg police Sgt. Tim Montanari said last year. "We see Melissa naked more often than we see our wives."
To Montanari, a police officer for 16 years, Melissa was not just another hooker. He had known her all her life, had watched her grow up. He remembers her as a laughing little girl roller-skating in the driveway, swinging in the back yard, ponytails flying.
She was the girl next door.
He used to babysit her. He knew her parents and her brothers and her stepdad. He knew what happened to her when she was 13.
So last summer, when Montanari caught Melissa half-naked, on her back, emaciated and so high her eyes were rolling, he knew he had to help her.
He called two women he had met who run a ministry for prostitutes. Tracy Leigh and Linda Chaney call themselves Women of the Well. Montanari calls them the church ladies. They told him about the Walter Hoving Home, a 60-bed, Christian rehab center in upstate New York where former prostitutes go to repent, pray and learn to balance a checkbook.
If Montanari could get the judge to let Melissa go there, the church ladies promised to pay for it.
When Melissa went to court last September, she was facing 10 years in prison for felony prostitution. Montanari trembled on the stand when he asked the judge to show mercy. Judge Philip J. Federico said he had never heard a cop testify for someone he had arrested. Impressed, he ordered two years of probation for Melissa and sent her to the Hoving Home. He asked for monthly progress reports and told Melissa if she ran away, he would lock her up.
"I don't know nothing about God," Melissa told the church ladies. "But I'll take your word for it."
Like a lot of women who are sent to the Hoving Home, Melissa arrived with a borrowed suitcase and a lifetime of baggage.
Her father died of a cocaine overdose when she was in diapers. Her stepfather started abusing her when she was 11. About that time, her mother became ill, first with leukemia, then breast cancer.
Melissa was 13 when her mom committed suicide. Her big brother Richie found their mom hanging in the garage. She left the kids a note: "Melissa, forgive me. I love you. Vinny, I love you too. Richie, take care of yourself. I also love you."
For a while, the three Collora kids lived alone in their big house. When her brothers finished high school and moved out, Melissa went to live with an aunt in New Jersey. "A very cold woman," she said. "She treated me like a stranger invading her home."
When she was 15, Melissa dropped out of school and started taking the train to New York City, where she smoked crack and turned tricks to pay for it. Her aunt shipped her back to Florida to a girls home. When Melissa was 18, she ended up on the streets.
Guys called her Olive Oyl because she was so tall and skinny and because she wound her black hair into a tight knot, like the cartoon character. She'd jump into the back seat with anyone who pulled over. She usually was too stoned to be scared.
At the Hoving Home in Garrison, N.Y., Melissa shared a third floor room with two other former prostitutes. She read the Bible and watched Christian self-help videos and studied for the GED test. She cut cucumbers in the kitchen, shoveled snow. She answered phones and swept floors and sang in a choir.
After the first month, she was ready to run. "I miss my adventures," she told her roommates.
"Where're you going?" one of them asked.
"How're you going to get there?" another wanted to know. The Hoving House is surrounded by acres of trees. It's a car ride, at least, from the nearest town.
All night, Melissa thought. Finally, her head was clear. She didn't know where to go. How to get there. What to do.
She didn't want to go back to Fourth Street. She didn't know anywhere else. So she stayed.
"They pounded the Bible into me," she said. "They made me work and study and do housework. We weren't allowed to talk about sex or drugs or anything - unless it was "edifying.' They loved that word. We weren't allowed to listen to secular music or watch TV, except for 7th Heaven." When Melissa got caught with a rap CD, she had to read a book about honesty and write a two-page report. When she got busted with a Forrest Gump video, she almost got booted from the home. "The hardest part for me was keeping my mouth shut," she said. "I had to learn not to cuss, and to not say stuff I was thinking."
The Hoving Home doesn't have any drug counselors or trained professionals. Most of the rehab is provided by former prostitutes who stay to work in the program. After a few months, Melissa started helping in the home's "Kicking Room," restraining girls trying to come down off heroin.
By Christmas, she was being bused to churches to give her testimony, sing and praise Jesus. Some weekends, she spoke at fundraising banquets for the home. She became a resident adviser. She had to tell girls to fold their clothes, keep their voices down, scour the sinks. "They thought I was mean because I made them make their beds," she said.
"In my old job, I never had to tell anyone to what to do - they told me."
She made it through another month. Then another. She was getting used to the routine. Every month, the church ladies sent her money for room and board, plus pocket money for sodas and snacks. God provides, they kept saying.
One month, they sent her Jessica, another prostitute from St. Petersburg. Jessica had been headed for jail, but the church ladies rescued her and got her into the Hoving Home. They wanted Melissa to look after her.
Melissa tried. But Jessica kept lying, breaking rules.
After a few weeks, she ran away.
"That was the hardest time for me," Melissa said. "She was gone. And I was still there."
Sometimes, when she felt like fleeing, Melissa thought of God. Sometimes, she thought of the cop, Montanari. She calls him Officer Tim. The last time she saw him, after court last year, he gave her a note. "You can do this," he wrote. She saved it. At least he believed.
In March, the church ladies sent Melissa money to fly back to St. Petersburg, to testify at their church. On the way to the airport, she vomited in the van. She wasn't ready to come home, she said.
She made the driver take her back to the Hoving Home and stuck it out another six months. She got her high school diploma. She called her brother Vinny to brag.
He called his Aunt Diane and Uncle Ted, who live in New Jersey, not far from Melissa. Like the rest of the family, they had lost track of her. They are her dad's brother and sister - Aunt Diane is not the one she had stayed with before. Vinny told them about the cop and where Melissa was now, how she was trying to get clean and start over.
"Where is she going after she finishes?" his aunt asked. Vinny didn't know. Melissa hadn't hoped that far ahead.
They gave her a clock. And a Bible. And a silver-framed certificate, saying she had stayed one year.
One of the church ladies bought her a plane ticket to Tampa. Melissa had to come back to court. And she wanted to see her brother and the nephew she'd never met.
For a while when Melissa was living on the streets, Vinny had kept up with his sister. He'd see her on Fourth Street and buy her something to eat. But Melissa never wanted help, he said. He got tired of trying. So for several years, they had lost touch. Vinny never told his 3-year-old he had an Aunt Melissa.
When Melissa called from New York to say she was coming home, Vinny was glad - but worried. She'd be staying with the church ladies, she said. He invited her to sleep over Saturday. He wanted to see for himself who she was.
He barely recognized her when he opened the door. He hugged her hard. His son hid behind his legs, peeking at the tall stranger. "I want you to meet someone," Melissa remembers Vinny saying. "This is your Aunt Melissa."
Vinny took her to dinner at St. Pete Beach. He drove her past where their old house used to be. Someone had bulldozed it. A new mansion was springing up in its place. He drove her by Applebee's, past the corner she used to own. The mobile home park where she used to camp out was demolished. The In-Town motel where she used to take tricks was shut down.
All her old haunts were gone.
Saturday night, Melissa tickled her nephew and caught up with her brother and went to bed early. Church tomorrow. About 2 a.m., she got up from the bed in her brother's guest room and padded to the bathroom. She did her business. Shuffled back. As she lay down, she heard Vinny walking down the hall.
"It's all right," she called from under the covers. "I'm not running back to Fourth Street. I just had to pee."
The next morning, Vinny gave her a gift, a thick, gold cross he had held onto for 11 years, hoping. He clasped the chain around his sister's neck.
"This was Mom's," he said. "She'd want you to have it now."
On the streets, and in jail, they thought Olive Oyl was dead. Word was, she had run away from the Hoving Home and OD'd on heroin.
See? They told each other. They knew Melissa, of all people, would never last at a Christian home.
Then, in early September, a new rumor started sweeping through town: Melissa was coming back. But she wasn't herself, her old co-workers heard. And she wouldn't be hanging around her old corner.
She was going to be preaching in Pinellas Park, they heard. Imagine! Melissa preaching.
Just before 11 a.m. on the Sunday before she went to court, the church ladies ushered her into the sanctuary of Praise Cathedral and Renewal Center. They wanted Melissa to give her testimony, so everyone could see she'd been saved.
Melissa has testified at dozens of churches. She has her talk down to four minutes flat. But she still isn't sure who she's supposed to be up there, when she's talking about who she was.
She walked up the aisle toward the pulpit. Then she stopped and gasped. There, in the third row, she saw two faces she never expected to see. Kay and Sarah used to work with her, on Fourth Street. When the church ladies told them Melissa was coming back - and Olive Oyl was gone - they had to see.
"Look at you! Just look at you!" Kay shouted, hugging her old friend. Kay got clean in jail, and when she got out, she got a real job. She just bought a car.
Sarah, who has been on the streets since before Melissa was born, is still struggling with drugs and hooking. "Kay thought I'd be a bad influence. But I just had to come see you. I'm not going to do anything to tempt you, baby. I'm so proud of you. Geez!" Sarah said, wrapping her arms around Melissa. "When they took you to New York, I thought you'd be right back here on the streets in a week. But look at you, sweetheart. I'm so glad you're doing well. You give me hope, girl!"
In the front row of the courtroom, between the church ladies, Melissa listens to the lawyer tell her story. The cop sits behind her, smiling.
Just before she takes the stand, she raises her mother's cross to her lips and kisses it.
The Lord be with you. And also your mom.
"I have no desire to return to my old lifestyle," Melissa tells the judge. "I want to go to college."
The cop had found a way. He knew a man, Kevin Cureton, who endowed a scholarship in honor of a daughter who passed away years ago. The cop told the man about Melissa. Cureton immediately agreed to help her.
But there was a problem. The scholarship was supposed to be for St. Petersburg College.
Melissa can't stay here. If she's going to start over, she has to get out of St. Petersburg. She knows this. The church ladies agree. Lead us not into temptation.
So the cop rigged a way to transfer the scholarship money to any school. Cureton promised to pay for as many years as it takes Melissa to graduate. She wants to be a phlebotomist - someone who draws blood - or maybe a respiratory therapist.
"I want to go back North, to New Jersey. My aunt and uncle have an apartment over their garage where they said I could stay," she tells the judge. Uncle Ted promised he'd teach her to drive, something she'd never learned. Aunt Diane is going to take her to church.
"Do you feel like you're ready for that? Ready to move on?" the judge asks.
"Oh yeah," Melissa says, looking up. "I don't have those old desires anymore. I'm ready."
The judge asks about her aunt and uncle. Then questions her about the Hoving Home. "And what happened to that other girl we sent up there?" he wants to know.
For the first time all day, Melissa laughs. She throws back her head and slaps the air with her hand. "Jessica?" she cackles. "That girl was crazy. She left."
The judge smiles at Melissa. He never thought he'd be saying this. "You've made tremendous progress," he tells her. "We're all very proud of you. And I don't see any reason to continue your probation."
In the front row, the church ladies clap. Melissa's lawyer shakes her hand. Montanari gets up, grinning. "I'm so excited for you," he says, hugging her. "I've been praying for this."
He follows her out of court, into the hallway. Sunlight spills through a wide window. The church ladies want to snap a few photos. So they stand, arm-in-arm, in the bright beams, posing for pictures: the cop and the former prostitute.
Melissa knows who she was. Now it's time to find out who she is.
- Lane DeGregory can be reached at 727 893-8825 or degregory@sptimes.com