shes afraid her success could disappear
An incredible journey from prostitute to entrepreneur
"I'm totally phony," declares Cathrine Ann as she pulls closer to the table in a Toronto caf. "Even these are extensions, okay?"
The 54 year old stares defiantly. "Three times, my boobs," she divulges, rattling off the procedures she's had. "Tummy tuck. Lipo. Botox. Face lift. Neck lift."
She has veneers on her "uneven yellow stone chips" of teeth, and earlier in her life underwent a nose job, which she boasts vastly improved her dating life. "I would replica louis vuitton walk replica designer handbags into a bar and say, 'That's who I'm going home with.' "
Story continues below advertisement
Total cost for plastic surgery? "In the last five years, I've had a couple hundred grand worth of work," she Discount Replica Louis Vuitton Bags says with a raucous laugh.
"There are no secrets with me," she crows.
If Ms. Ann speaks with the zeal of a convert at the altar of Truth, that's because she has spent a lifetime trying to "even the score," as she puts it saying and doing what she wanted to compensate replica louis vuitton bags for her difficult upbringing as the daughter of alcoholics in Toronto.
"I was a scammer. I was a shyster. I was an opportunist," she says with a mixture of boldness, embarrassment and humility.
She replica louis vuitton handbags was homeless in Vancouver and had just met her future husband, Marc Joncas, 18 years her junior, who persuaded her to stop working as a prostitute. (She'd met him in a bar and told him she was a doctor. She was wearing a pager for her johns.) They lived in his van while they figured out how to make money. A bank heist might not be a good idea for her young lover, she reasoned.
An offer for an eight month government course for entrepreneurs, enclosed with her last unemployment cheque (she had been selling dental implants as well as moonlighting as a hooker), convinced her "It was a sign!" that it was time cheap replica handbags to change her ways.
Story continues below advertisement
"I was still a scammer," she murmurs over coffee. "The course paid $400 a week and I thought, wow, at least we can eat, right? But I never missed a class. It was the first time I finished a thing in my life," the high school dropout says.
Her business idea was Consumer Connection. She hires freelance "mystery shoppers" who provide aaa replica designer handbags anonymous reports to companies so they can improve customer satisfaction, but at the beginning she, her boyfriend and her son would wear disguises to shop in various stores.
She frequently offered the service without pay, to prove herself. "I was so determined," she says. By the time she graduated, the company's revenue was $85,000. (She won't divulge current financial details. "I don't want to brag about it," she says demurely while pointing out that her purse is Louis Vuitton.)
Vancouver Airport, Cadillac Fairview, London Drugs and Fido are fake designer bags among their clients, says Mr. Joncas, who sits beside her dressed in casual clothes, 1:1 replica handbags a luxury watch and sparkly earrings.
Ms. Ann wears her high quality designer replica handbags wholesale contradictions as easily as her classic diamond jewellery. She likes the limelight she once appeared on Maury Povich's talk show about older women who date younger men; but she "feels vulnerable, big time." She's afraid her success could disappear, but she's not careful with her money. She plunked down "mostly cash" for a Range Rover recently, annoyed that (former) friends criticized her for staying in a "low rent" Holiday Inn. (She and her husband own a large house on the Sunshine Coast, but she doesn't care about staying in luxury accommodation when travelling.)
She loves her life, but sometimes misses the simplicity of her homeless days. "There are more challenges to being an entrepreneur than there are being homeless. I just had to worry about who I was going to scam, who I was going to rob and where I was going to sleep."
Story continues below advertisement
When she won the YMCA Entrepreneur/Innovator of the Year award in 2006, she blurted the truth at the podium: "Boy, this sure beats being homeless and eating out of garbage cans." She received a standing ovation, and the rest is lucrative speaking gigs, a book deal, a possible movie and, hopefully, Oprah.
In Beautiful Buttons, which reads like fiction, it seems so improbable, she recounts her chaotic life. Sexually abused by a family friend as a child, she became a single mother at 15 and, in short order, a prostitute. By her 20s, after her nose job, she was an office temp and party girl.
Marriage to a classy British man transpired her last name, Ann, is from that union and then a divorce. With her son Michael in tow, she was admitted to the University of Guelph as a mature student on the strength of an admissions cheap louis vuitton bags from china test, she says. For five years she tried, but failed, to get her degree.
Designer Louis Vuitton Replica Handbags Then she hatched another plan. While working as a morgue assistant in Guelph, Ont., she discovered she had a facility for performing autopsies, which led her to apply to the University of Saskatchewan Medical school, faking university transcripts. She was accepted, she says, but two years later, school officials became suspicious about her failing grades. (The university would not confirm or deny the story, citing personal privacy laws for students. )
Off to Calgary she bolted. There she ran an escort service, she writes. Shot at during a disagreement, she hightailed it to British Columbia. "I couldn't run any further because the ocean's there," she says with another wild laugh.
Ms. Ann muses that her success comes from "not having those boundaries and expectations about what should be or not." Years of therapy her counsellor, Jennifer Rodrigues, is mentioned in her acknowledgments have helped her realize the power of truth.
Story continues below advertisement
Not that there's a fully realized fairy tale ending. Her son, now 38 and married with two children, hasn't spoken to her in five years after starting a rival company to Consumer Connection. Her father is dead and she is also estranged from her mother, who lives in Vancouver.
"I have no special gifts. You just get it done. As human beings we have that strength in us," she avows, which is the content of her inspirational talks.
In the end, that's the leitmotif of Ms. Ann's life to start over, to be accepted, to matter. She wrote to this newspaper pitching a story on herself. Two years ago, when she was fed up with being overweight, she went on a diet and exercise routine, dropping 100 pounds in less than a year.
Comments
Post a Comment