In 1979, when Ana Miguel was 16, she worked for a company that made wigs for Broadway shows and Hollywood films. It was a taste of glamour and an exciting closeness to fame for Ms. Miguel, who that year had dropped out of high school.
Ms. Miguel, who moved to New York with her family from Puerto Rico when she was a year old, crocheted the curly mops, long braids and neat pageboys that paraded across the stage.
But when the company was in danger of closing, her boss set her up with a job in Chicago at Hair Club for Men, putting her on dual and crossing paths of moderate professional success and increasing internal instability.
While working in Chicago she lived in Gary, Ind., and commuted the 30 miles to work, a journey that was longer and more expensive than she had expected. After a few months, she lost the job.
Ms. Miguel had been using drugs and abusing alcohol since she was a teenager, she said, and fleeing an abusive relationship, she moved into a homeless shelter for battered women. The shelter helped her find an apartment and gave her a job. Ms. Miguel “quickly rose through the ranks to become manager,” she said.
[For more of this story, written by Tatiana Schlossberg, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12...ers-do-the-same.html]
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