Tattoo Removal: a Second Chance
Director’s Own Story Helps Others
Virginia Gomez’s life has come full circle. She was a teen mom, addicted to PCP and involved with a gang - and she was tattooed over most of her body until that day in 2000 when she found the Tattoo Removal Program at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center.
Today she supervises the program, helping clients whose resolve to turn their lives around is bolstered by Gomez’s own story. She tells them she’s been there.
“I tell them that I was probably a lot worse off than they are, and I made it,” Gomez said. “Sometime it’s the spark they need to look at themselves and know they can change.”
Gomez battled to become sober after her mother took her three children away. She got them back, finished her high school education and performed community service at her church. But the tattoos proved not only a hindrance in the job market, they fed her poor self image, as well.
Gomez found more than she expected at the Tattoo Removal Program—she found a place that saved her, and a career. She worked her way to the top and she uses her own story to encourage others.