Pregnant and addicted to drugs, she needed a miracle. She found it in the Tri-Cities

Vanessa Brown’s modest apartment is decorated for Christmas.

A 6-foot tree sits in the corner with a smattering of presents underneath. Three stockings are hung on the wall underneath a reproduction of Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper.

While it may be far from glamorous, having this home is a miracle for Brown, who has spent nearly a decade homeless.

It’s a miracle that she credits to a lot of support and prayer, and her 4-month-old baby, Kayden Hedrick, who prompted this change in her life.

Last year at this time, the 33-year-old Pasco woman spent most of her days looking for her next heroin fix.

A four-time mother, Brown didn’t think it was possible to become pregnant, and figured the next time she did, Child Protective Services would take custody of the infant.

A longtime Seattle resident, she realized she had a choice eight months ago when she learned she was pregnant — stay and die or leave and survive.

“I was using a lot of heroin,” she said. “I knew if I wanted a chance to be a parent I needed to get away.”

That is when her uncle reached out to her and suggested coming to the Tri-Cities. After spending a couple weeks at the home of her fiance’s mother, they went into the Tri-City Union Gospel Mission. Almost five months pregnant and a few weeks clean, she met Chariss Warner and Debra Biondolillo.

Warner is the ministries director at the mission, and Biondolillo the director of the women’s and children’s shelter. The two along with Brown’s case worker helped her when she came to the shelter.

The staff worked with her to get her through rehabilitation and helped her get the apartment, Warner said.

“They helped me with clothes. They helped me with baby stuff,” Brown said. “After I got clean and sober, I realized this is the better place to be. The resources out here are a lot better than the resources in Seattle.”

Born three weeks early, Kayden was 6 pounds, 14 ounces, and still recovering from the effects of Brown’s addiction. He needed to take a course of morphine.

Brown had one more hurdle to clear before she knew she could keep Kayden: approval from CPS. The last time she dealt with the state agency two years ago, she had gotten clean, but was still homeless and didn’t have the ability to take care of her daughter.

When CPS showed up, the case manager told her they were taking the right steps.

“I thought I wasn’t ever going to have a second chance at being a mom,” she said. “I realized if I got my stuff together, anything could happen.”

It was two months later that Brown ran into her second miracle. It started when she noticed a small deformity near Kayden’s belly button. It looked like something was sticking out of it.

When she brought the child to get it checked, the doctors became concerned that it might be cancerous. Blood tests showed elevated levels of white blood cells.

She turned to her new support system at the mission and the church, and the prayer started. When she took him back a few weeks later, the growth had shrunk from the size of a quarter to the size of a pea.

When she brought him back recently, the growth had disappeared, just in time for Kayden to celebrate his first Christmas.

“I know if I was in Seattle, I don’t have a support system like I do here,” she said. “It makes me feel good that I can go to my uncle or Debbie or the pastors, and they just help, and it’s an awesome feeling.”

This story was originally published December 23, 2017 at 4:29 PM with the headline "Pregnant and addicted to drugs, she needed a miracle. She found it in the Tri-Cities."