Rediscovering self-worth: Bill's Story
“I don’t think I’d ever before worked in an environment where I felt like everybody liked me,” said PACS volunteer Bill Leissner. “It’s really quite heavenly, literally, to be able to go to a place where you know that people appreciate you, and they’ll go out of their way to appreciate you, and if you stick around long enough, you know it’s not a lie.” Bill credits his time at PACS for helping him rediscover his workplace skills and sense of self-worth, but the process of getting there wasn’t free of challenges. Prior to 2001, Bill had always held down a job. He had shot 3500 rolls of film as a professional photographer in Austin, Texas. He had worked as a Network Administrator in New York. But shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Bill experienced a mental health crisis. While he had relocated to Vermont a few months before that event, he had multiple friends who were impacted, including a firefighter who lost his life after going into one of th