After three seasons of homelessness and years in abusive relationships, GCU behavioral health student is turning her story into hope for others on the road she once walked
At a homeless resource center in Ukiah, California, Alexis Lyon is the first to arrive each morning.
Before long, people living in cars, along riverbeds and in tent encampments step through the doors of Redwood Community Services’ Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center, looking for a way off the street. Lyon, a housing navigator, helps them get onto affordable housing lists, secure rental assistance and stay housed once they move.
What many clients don’t realize is that Lyon has stood where they stand.
The 51‑year‑old Grand Canyon University online student was homeless as a teenager in New Jersey while raising her first child, homeless again in her 20s with two children, and later lived in tents and trailers on the side of a road with four kids and no running water. Between those seasons, she endured foreclosures in two states and multiple domestic violence relationships.
Now she works on the front lines of homelessness services, owns a home and is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in behavioral health science with an emphasis in trauma at GCU.
“The point of my story is simple,” Lyon reflected during her first GCU course this summer. “There is always hope.
“Stand your ground. Be strong. Don’t let people strong-arm you. If you need help, reach out. Reach out to somebody that you trust, and if you don’t have anybody, reach out to crisis services. They are there for you. There are support groups out there for teen moms and domestic violence survivors.
“You're worth more than this.”
Hard lessons, early
At an age when traditional students are navigating a freshman course load, Lyon was focused on getting through the next day.
“In my head, college wasn’t even an option back then,” she said. “I was just trying to figure out where we were going to sleep.”
She became a mother shortly after high school in New Jersey and spent years bouncing between motels, her car and short‑term rentals while trying to keep her daughter safe. There were periods of stability, but they rarely lasted.
In her early 20s, in a new relationship, she earned an administrative assistant certificate — her first credential beyond a high school diploma and proof, she said, that she could succeed in a classroom. But at 24, she was pregnant again, married and, once more, without stable housing.
Her mother helped her and her husband buy a house. It appeared to offer a fresh start. Instead, it brought another kind of crisis.
“There was a lot of domestic violence. There was CPS involvement. My kids were taken away,” Lyon said. “I couldn’t even see them unsupervised, even though I wasn’t the one that was doing anything to my kids. I was basically told by the court that if I wanted to see my kids again, I had to divorce him.”
She did. She regained custody. The house went into foreclosure. The setbacks continued.
Another relationship and another home purchase that unraveled after a motorcycle accident left her husband unable to work and disability checks couldn’t cover the mortgage. A second foreclosure forced another move, this time to Tennessee to be closer to her father.
That marriage ended when her husband, drunk, pulled a gun on her 13‑year‑old son.
“That’s when I said I had enough,” she said.
Living the reality she now serves
Years later, Lyon and her current husband loaded four children and two dogs into vehicles and drove from Tennessee to Northern California, his home. Taking a chance, they arrived without permanent housing.
For about nine months, the family lived in tents and trailers along the roadside.
She remembers helping her teenagers get ready for school from that makeshift home, determined their circumstances would not define them. Eventually, the family secured a rental, and for the first time in years, Lyon could focus on something beyond survival.
That experience ultimately shaped her career.
After working in other nonprofit roles, Lyon joined Redwood Community Services in 2022. As a housing navigator, she guides clients through the same systems she once relied on herself.
Her supervisor, Jen Aragon, support services program supervisor at Redwood, said Lyon’s lived experience is one of her greatest strengths.
“She can understand that it can be tough to navigate the system and trying to find the resources,” Aragon said. “She has compassion and understanding. She’s very dedicated and hardworking, and she really pays close attention to details,” Aragon said. “Sometimes doing the work can be really intense.
“Alexis doesn’t give up easily. She’s a survivor. She fights for her clients.”
A new chapter in the classroom
This passion for her work compelled Lyon to deepen her knowledge. While working full time, and at times a part‑time job on top of that, she enrolled at Mendocino College.
In just 22 months, she completed three associate degrees: administration of justice, liberal arts and sciences with an emphasis in social science, and ethnic studies. She graduated in 2023 with a 4.0 GPA, earned the highest honors and served as commencement speaker for the college’s 50th ceremony.
Two years later, in 2025, after years of financial hardship, she and her husband bought a home.
“Going back to school at 48 years old, I finally did it,” she said. “And even though it took me 50 years to be able to buy a house, I accomplished that with everything that’s happened in my life.”
Renewed purpose motivated Lyon to keep going. She set her sights on a bachelor’s degree that aligned with the work she was doing every day. She searched for a behavioral health program with a trauma emphasis and found GCU’s online Bachelor of Science in Behavioral Health Science. Within three weeks, she was enrolled, supported by Veterans Affairs benefits tied to her husband’s service.
“Stand your ground. Be strong. Don’t let people strong-arm you. If you need help, reach out. Reach out to somebody that you trust, and if you don’t have anybody, reach out to crisis services. They are there for you. There are support groups out there for teen moms and domestic violence survivors. ... You're worth more than this.”
Alexis Lyon, GCU behavioral health science online student
Her first course, UNV‑103: University Success, was taught by Dr. Nikki Squire, a 15‑year GCU faculty member, who was inspired by Lyon’s journey and classroom engagement.
“She challenged her classmates to think in different ways,” Squire said. “The best way to describe Alexis is resilient. She has hope. She has faith. For her, quitting was not an option.”
Returning to school has also rekindled aspects of her faith that had been shaken during what felt like unending hardship. She grew up moving between a Baptist church with her father and Catholic and Greek Catholic congregations with her mother and grandmothers, then spent years deeply involved in a Calvary Chapel church in New Jersey before life’s disruptions pulled her away.
“I’m getting back to that point of actually going back to studying the Bible,” Lyon said. “Attending GCU has given me the opportunity to revisit my faith while also giving me new hope, new light and new beginnings.”
Through her daughter’s eyes
Rosie Avant has watched nearly every chapter of her mother’s story unfold.
“With my mom’s journey, I pretty much know everything because, for the most part, I’ve lived it with her,” said Avant, now 31 and living in New Jersey. “She was so young when she had me, so it was kind of like we just grew up together.”
As a teenager, Avant often chose to live with grandparents, aunts and uncles rather than at home stuck in the chaos of her mom’s journey. There were stretches when she refused to take her mother’s calls.
Those experiences shaped her own goals despite finding herself in a similar place at 16. Both daughter and mom were living on their own at that age and met their eventual husbands at 19. But Rosie focused on steady work, at one point juggling three jobs. Today she works in insurance, earning a nice living while raising two young daughters with her husband.
“I found my own path,” Avant said. “If I felt like something was taking my life the direction of my mom’s life, then I’d be like, ‘That’s not for me. Let me figure out something else.’ I just kind of did the complete opposite. And she knows that and is proud of me. She is glad that I’ve made the choices that I’ve made and gotten to where I am now – married, kids, house.”
Avant isn’t shy about the weight she still carries from the circumstances she endured while in the same home as her mom. At the same time, she has grown to have compassion.
“When I think about the 19‑year‑old, I think about how scared and alone she must have felt,” Avant said. “She didn’t tell anyone that she was pregnant. That just speaks to how scared she was about her situation and not feeling like she had a lot of support or help.
“She really was still a kid, even at 30. She had a lot of responsibility back then, and what my mom had as an example for what positive relationships were, she really didn’t have that either.
“The 19‑year‑old and the 51‑year‑old are two completely different people. I am proud of her and who she’s becoming. It’s nice for my kids to have that version of her.”
Avant said it matters to her that her daughters know their grandmother not just through old stories, but as the woman who now works in a homeless shelter and is in college at 51.
What stands out most is her mother’s determination – the same trait Avant sees in herself.
“We both, by the way we set our minds to something and do it, are very similar,” she said. “She’s always been somebody who completely engulfs herself in things. I think it’s such a positive thing to now turn that into an education.”
Building something bigger
Lyon’s degree has a clear purpose.
Her long‑term goal is to work at Beautiful Roots Community and Wellness Center, a planned integrated behavioral health campus being developed by Redwood Community Services on the Building Bridges property. The center is designed to offer outpatient mental health care, outpatient substance use disorder treatment and a 24-hour sobering center.
“Earning a degree with an emphasis in trauma will help me contribute more meaningfully to this department and strengthen my ability to support individuals,” Lyon said. “My long-term goal is to continue on to a master’s degree, further expanding my knowledge and capabilities for myself and the community I serve.”
But the deeper purpose is personal.
“If I can give one person hope that life can change, regardless of the circumstances, then I feel that I did what I was supposed to. It gives me purpose and a reason to do what I do every day,” she said. “No matter how grim or bleak it looks, don’t give up,” Lyon said. “Just every day, get up and do what you need to do.”
GCU News senior writer Jason Gonzalez can be reached at [email protected].
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