Collin

Collin is Linda May’s son-in-law and Audra’s husband, a commercial-storage sales worker whose severe migraines and vertigo interrupted his employment and strained the household’s finances. His story connects the family’s day-to-day efforts to support one another with the instability of work, health, and housing that eventually left them facing eviction.

Identity and Work

Collin worked in sales for a commercial storage firm that installed equipment ranging from gun and evidence lockers to museum archive cabinets, often on government contracts. The job linked him to a project at a Veterans Affairs hospital, where he noticed a gap in the work plan: new signs were being installed, but nobody had arranged to remove the old signs or patch and paint the walls beneath them.

The opening became an important source of income for the family. Audra took on the hospital job and delegated some of the preparation and painting to Linda. The work paid Linda fifty dollars an hour; within a couple of months, she had saved ten thousand dollars. Collin’s role was not simply that of an employer or provider: by recognizing an overlooked need in a project connected to his work, he helped create a temporary opportunity that reached across generations of the family.

Family Life and Health

Collin lived with Audra, their three teenage children, and Linda in a crowded rented house in Mission Viejo. Space was limited: one grandson slept in a doorless dining area, and Linda’s place was the couch beside the front door. Linda loved her family but felt stranded and worried that her presence made it awkward when the others went out without her. Her dependence on their household was also difficult because several relatives were dealing with significant health concerns.

Collin, the family’s breadwinner, developed severe migraines and vertigo that forced him out of his office job. His illness added to the strain already created by his granddaughter Gabbi’s prolonged weakness and later diagnosis of Sjogren’s syndrome, his grandson Julian’s type 1 diabetes, and Audra’s arthritis. These circumstances left the family with overlapping needs for income and care, while limiting their capacity to support one another.

Support for Linda’s Plans

When Linda announced that she planned to return to the road, Audra encouraged her and offered to cover her smartphone bill through the family plan. Collin added that they would make sure she had plenty of data. Their offer mattered practically: it gave Linda a way to remain connected while she pursued seasonal work and a more independent life, rather than making the family’s support conditional on her staying in the house.

The family’s help also ran in the other direction. By finding the hospital preparation work, Collin helped Linda build savings toward her own plans. The exchange illustrates how their household relied on a mixture of paid work, family connections, and shared resources, rather than on any single stable source of security.

Eviction and Aftermath

By Thanksgiving, the family was being evicted from its rented home. Collin had lost the short-term disability benefits he had begun receiving after vertigo and migraines forced him out of work, and the family could no longer pay the rent. Linda responded by giving them her old twenty-eight-foot El Dorado motorhome, which had been in storage. She was relieved that they could use it, but worried about how two adults, three teenagers, and four dogs would fit.

The proposed sleeping arrangement made the limits of the solution plain: Collin and Audra would use the bedroom, Julian the loft above the cab, and Gabbi and Jordan the fold-out dinette, with the dogs placed wherever space allowed. The motorhome offered shelter, but not a return to the family’s former housing. Collin’s arc is therefore defined less by a decisive personal resolution than by the way illness and lost benefits contributed to a household crisis—and by the family’s improvised, reciprocal efforts to keep one another housed and connected.