Ken was worth making the move from California, no question. He lived in Lewiston, and the two of them had had eyes for each other for years. Their parents had been friends before they were born. But after Maria Drummond got here in 1998, the 24-year-old with two little kids had no driver’s license, no high school diploma and no job prospects.

“I just started walking around, going everywhere I could,” she said. Drummond stopped at the start-up Faithworks, a piecework factory in the Bates Mill for people with imperfect schedules or work histories. The home of second and third chances.

She didn’t know that when she knocked.

“I applied for the job and I got hired the next day. It threw me for a loop. Most places, they do all these background checks; you have to wait. It was, ‘OK, we could use you,'” Drummond said.

She took classes at work to get her GED and pick up computer skills. Fast with her hands, she says she earns up to $30 an hour assembling, collating and shrink-wrapping products for other businesses.

Faithworks was one of Empower Lewiston’s early success stories. Maria is one of Faithworks’ early successes. She never left.

The firm, now Outsource Works, benefited from one of Empower Lewiston’s first grants, buying a piece of equipment – the shrink wrapper – that nearly doubled income at the factory. Sometimes with hundreds of employees, Outsource Works has only about 15 now, its orders down in the slow economy. One-third of its workers live downtown.

Drummond, her now-husband, Ken, and four children live in a second-floor tenement on Lincoln Street. They’re saving for a house with a big backyard, somewhere on the outskirts.

Growing up, her parents moved a lot. The family spent a few years on Knox Street when she was a teen before they moved to California.

“It was so hard. I was afraid to go out during the day,” said Drummond, 35.

Lewiston has changed since she’s been back.

“There is not as much trouble as I’d seen years ago,” she said. “There’s been a lot of difference, which I thought would never happen. I never thought it would clean up its act.”

Before coming back to Lewiston, she didn’t think she’d ever get her diploma. Almost nine years later, she still has her cap and gown. Drummond could have taken a job elsewhere with that certificate. She even got a few offers from those old applications after earning her GED.

But the kids, ages 6 to 12, make it difficult to commit to a steady schedule.

“If I have to leave for a doctor’s appointment, how understanding is that place going to be?” she said.

This place understands.