Written by Tanya Terry
Flint Resident De’Anna Hodges recently became one of five recipients of a free Dell laptop given by the Flint Courier News, made possible through Comcast. Comcast and the Courier gave the laptops away as part of a contest in which contest entrants told the Courier why they needed the laptops. The winners were notified around Cyber Monday and interviewed before the Christmas holiday.
Hodges lost everything in a basement flood while she was helping to support her husband who can’t work due to epilepsy and their toddler.
She considers the laptop to be a “breath of fresh air.”
Hodges said she had her daughter in mind when she contacted the Courier, requesting a laptop.
“She’s so smart and so adventurous,” Hodges said of her daughter. “With the little savings we did have, there’s so much I want to do. With inflation on the rise, not just with food and gas, but with medicines, co-pays and things like that, I figured I’d still like to have a laptop. I said ‘it’d be really good for her development, instead of just watching TV. Even though we try to do hands-on activities, people that I know from out in the community, they give us so many resources. Still, at the time we had one computer and so many things going on, eventually I knew she was going to have to get her own.”
Hodges has been mostly working from home since the pandemic. She had a temp job filing unemployment claims and assisting callers with claims by phone as assistance payment worker for the Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency. She also worked for New Paths, Inc., which provides comprehensive substance use disorder treatment for drug and alcohol disorders. She is now working as a preservation worker, which she described as being somewhat similar to being a social worker.
Although Hodges needs her laptop for her current role, she told the Courier it was slow and” barely usable.”
Hodges husband was diagnosed with epilepsy in 2018, the same year the lifelong friends were married. The couple’s basement also flooded. They were told by the City of Flint around early summer 2022 this was an issue with how the home the couple bought was routed with the drain.
“We lost our dryer. God revived our washer, somehow, someway. But it was the washer, the dryer, the hot water heater that we lost. We also had an air compressor down there, too. All that stuff was gone. With the little savings we did have, we got the hot water heater fixed.”
Hodges and her husband each lost family members who were like second dads to them at around this time. Hodges said things were getting a bit overwhelming for her.
But Hodges knew she needed to stay focused and positive.
Besides using the laptop for work, Hodges said the laptop will help her with her goal to be a book author.
“I want to get my books out there. I write about my life. I want to get my book out there published…It’s going to be called ‘Divine Beauty.’ It will be my testimonies. I thought about children’s books. I also have a crazy idea. I want to write about a serial killer who finds love. But, with the serial killer they’re not killing with their hands, they’re killing with their tongue as far as being a ‘negative Nancy.’ It’s like whenever you talk to that person, you feel death. But with that serial killer who found love, it’s not a romantic love. It’s a God love. It’s about how they got their life on the right track.”
When asked how she felt about getting the free laptop from the Courier, made possible through Comcast, Hodges said it was a “breath of fresh air.”
“It’s a blessing. It’s one thing financially I can check off our list. When it comes to things like electronics, it’ll be better than having something cheap that you have to replace over and over again. We know what we want to do. We know we have a 2-year-old. She’s going to be doing all kind of stuff. It was like a breath of fresh air.”
