The Life of Judy Pruitt has been a whirlwind of turbulence, abuse, neglect, violence, and the redemptive grace of a Living God. 
At the eye of her stormy life has been her belief in a God who loves her despite all the things she has done to stay alive, the invisible wounds of trauma.

Born into a family of abuse and neglect. Judy was sent to Texas Youth Commission, TYC, at age 11 for her violent behavior-in the context of trauma abuse, acting out.  Until her release as an adult at 18, she ran away three times and was returned each time pregnant.  Judy’s reasons for fleeing the TYC were validated almost 30 years later when international headline news of systematic and institutional sexual and physical abuse dating back to her teenage years in the custody of the state.

Those days as a teenage runaway, Judy earned the nickname of Snow, because of her fair skin and innocent look.  Snow was part of an estimated 1,000 street kids who lived on Westheimer Street in the Montrose neighborhood.  Accepted by the drag queens as a child, Snow was a Covenant House dropout, a real hard-core hustler- a term Judy used to describe her life in those days.

A chance encounter a few days before Christmas in 1988 between Snow and photojournalist Ben DeSoto lead to a collaboration spanning two decades in sharing to the public an understanding of underlying causes of chronic homelessness.  Snow was barefoot and panhandling the afternoon traffic with a sign “just a little help.”   The photograph published in the Houston Chronicle the next day   shows a smiling girl, a freeway overpass at back with an estimated 300 people living underneath it, including Snow.