Brenda Phillips hangs onto a Houston summer memory, circa 1996. It’s Friday night, she’s 26 years old and even though she’s sitting in gridlock traffic, she’s happy. When people in the cars around her begin opening doors and playing music, she joins in.
She’s single, has two wonderful daughters, and big ambitions: A graduate of Houston Community College, she’d already been working with domestic violence survivors and pregnant and parenting teens, and planned to apply to the Houston Police Academy to be a cop like her father.
Then that summer, while doing school custodial work for extra cash, Phillips hurt herself lifting a table. She reported the injury, received workers’ compensation coverage and was referred to an osteopath. But when she arrived for a follow-up appointment, she found a note on the door directing her elsewhere.
