It doesn’t take much to make 38-year-old Loron Richardson happy. A walk in the park with her boyfriend Ronald, who picks her flowers and presents her with a colorful bouquet, puts a smile on her face.

“I don’t need much,” Richardson said. “When you get cremated or buried, you can’t take your car, your jewelry, your clothes.”

Richardson doesn’t have much to lose. She’s spent a year in jail and has been homeless for more than 21 years.

“No matter what happens, you have to have hope,” she said. “I know there’s a better way to live than living on the streets.”

In an effort to find that life, Richardson and Ronald, her boyfriend of more than a year, attended PHC Friday. Richardson applied for a copy of her birth certificate, and the couple filled out applications for food stamps and housing. One day, the two hope to move into their dream home, a three-bedroom, one-bath place, where Richardson’s 9-month-old son and 3-year-old daughter will have their own rooms.

Although she looks forward to the day when she will have her dream home, Richardson knows things won’t always go her way.

“You can have everything one day and lose it the next,” she said.

During her childhood, Richardson’s stepfather was sexually and emotionally abusive, and her mother did little to help. Richardson was eventually placed into the foster care system and shuffled her way through a line of foster homes run by people “who were only in it for the money.”

At 17, she ran away and moved to Denver with her brother, where she learned how to make easy money from a street gang. Eventually, she left the gang to try making money on her own. That’s when Richardson realized she was homeless.

“I have to learn from this experience of being homeless – it can make you weaker or stronger, but on the streets you can’t be weak,” she said. “Some people do drugs because that’s how they deal with things.”

Richardson is one of those people. Shortly after becoming homeless, she lost touch with her brother and picked up a drug habit.

“The only way I knew to deal was to do drugs,” she said.

Richardson, who once used cocaine regularly, now has trouble remembering her life on drugs. She does remember meeting Ronald, a fellow user, during that time in her life. She also remembers that she was high when she jaywalked across a street and got hit by a car. She suffered a fractured pelvis, a mild concussion and a foot injured so badly that the bone was revealed.

Despite hospitalization, Richardson may still need surgery to correct her foot, which became infected with a moss-like growth. She was also diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder following the accident but today refuses to be medicated.

“I told them I’m a recovering addict,” she said. “I wouldn’t take no stupid drugs for anything.”

Richardson’s drug addiction ended when she went to jail after a drug conviction.

“I got sober in jail,” she said. “When I got out, I learned to cherish what I have.”

Richardson and Ronald, who did not feel comfortable giving his last name, were reunited after she served a year in jail and the two have kept each other sober since.

“I’m lucky I found someone I love who loves me,” she said. “It’s hard to find, but you don’t give up hope. When I wake up, I thank God I’m alive.”

Richardson often sings her favorite song to her children, “You Don’t Know What You’ve Got Til It’s Gone,” to remind herself to be grateful for what little she does have.

“I’m lucky my brother keeps my kids and doesn’t put them in the foster care system,” she said. “Always someone has it worse than you.”

Richardson sees her children about once a week, and knows that eventually she will be able to care for them.

“You can’t change the past,” she said. “You can only control what you do in the future.”

For now, Richardson and her boyfriend stay at various shelters, where they often find free meals. Richardson is hoping to follow through with the housing application she filled out at PHC, but she knows she’ll never forget where she came from.

“I regret some things I went through, but not this life,” she said. “The things I’ve gone through have only made me stronger.”