On the day of our interview, Susan Ford has had a week of solid sales and just won a landslide election to become Real Change's first female vendor representative. Her reaction to the election results was to smile pleasantly, blush, nod, tell the crowd, "I don't have much to say. Just thanks."
When I explain that she's vendor of the week--thinking to myself, "She's having quite a day" -- she only nods.
Overhearing, fellow representative Calvin Turner hollers, for obscure reasons, "You're a Real Change hero!" and Ford smiles politely. My inclination is to think that Ford doesn't like to gloat -- but after a few minutes of talking, I think the thing was that Ford felt no need to celebrate.
Though born in Spokane, Ford has spent most of her life in Seattle, where her mother worked as a maid and her father as a salesman. After high school, Ford moved on to technical school and then into the health care field, where she worked in a nursing home. But she got plain "burned out."
"Everything was at such a fast pace," she says. "You couldn't give [residents] care. One day, I just couldn't do it."
So about three years ago, she started selling Real Change and now sells at the U District Post Office.
"I like the people," says Susan. "It's a good job." But she thinks she might, just maybe, get back into nursing.
"Yeah, I might go back to school," she says, coloring floridly. "We'll see."