Business owners to meet with Tricia

TRICIA St John is a step closer to getting a job after two business owners contacted her to meet and discuss possible work with their companies.

St John feels she has been discriminated against and denied job opportunities because she has only one arm. Her left hand was chopped off by an angry ex-boyfriend 15 years ago.

Since Newsday highlighted the story last week, the mother of four said she has received numerous phone calls from people encouraging her. Others, she said, promised donations to help her buy a prosthetic arm.

She said this is the beginning of her life and she prays she will be successful in getting one of the two jobs.

“I am so overwhelmed. My faith in humanity has been restored a little bit. Imagine sending out hundreds of resumés and being to hundreds of interviews and turned away year after year and now to know that there is a possibility that you may finally be given an opportunity to work. I am so happy,” an emotional St John said.

Her heart is filled with so much joy she cannot stop thanking the business people, she said.

“I am so grateful to everyone who called, and two of these two business people – thank you so much for giving me a chance.”

St John, who said she is qualified in clerical, secretarial and social work, has had hundreds of interviews in the last ten years. She is doing a degree in social work at the College of Science, Technology and Applied Arts and said she survives on a disability grant of $2,000.

Her arm was severed in Princes Town on April 2, 2004, after she ended a ten-year-long abusive relationship.

She is also hosting a dance and fashion show to raise $93,109.08 to buy a prosthetic arm. She said while she is capable of using one hand, this arm will help her with other daily activities.The show will be held on July 13 at the Chaguanas South Secondary School at Helen Street, Lange Park, and she is asking the public to support her by buying tickets.

She can be contacted at 342-4627.