FLORENCE, Ky. — Annette Powell is looking for a winter coat. Her breath is visible — because it’s 22 degrees and her storage unit doesn't have a heater. It’s snowing outside.
Most of her life is behind the kind of lock you’d see on a shed. From inside her storage unit, she pulls out a blue bag that says “winter” and throws it in her small SUV. Then, she unzips it. The coats are not there.
“I know you’re in here,” she said while pulling out box after box. “I put you in there myself.”
Powell already lost cherished furniture and possessions from her childhood when she and her mom lost their home in 2022. Now, she pays hundreds of dollars a month for the storage unit.
“It’s expensive to be homeless,” she said.
But she’s not anymore. That’s why she’s looking for coats.
We met Powell last summer. She’d been charged with dozens of violations regarding what Boone County Animal Services called unsafe conditions for her pets. That’s because they were living in her car with her.
“They kept me alive,” Powell said of her cats. “If it wouldn’t have been for them, I would have sat in the car and died. I know people don’t understand that, but they’re my family.”
Powell says after our story aired, WCPO 9 viewers donated enough money for her and her mom to move into a hotel. A local animal shelter helped her get updated vaccines for the cats.
“We lived and survived the heat because of you guys,” Powell said.
County officials say they tried to help her but were limited because of the number of animals she owned.
“I think that’s just deeply unfair,” Bianca Rudnick, a staff attorney for the public defender’s office, said of the original charges. “She’s living in the same conditions as the animals.”
Boone County Fiscal Court spokeswoman Elaine Zeinner said authorities could have taken the cats but never did. She said the goal is to keep animals and their owners together.
“The county works really hard to work with unhoused individuals,” Zeinner said. “We are really happy that it was able to be resolved.”
Now, with money borrowed from a friend, Powell is moving into an apartment with her mom. She still has the cats. And after talking about what it means to have an actual home to come home to, Powell hugs her mom. She almost collapses into her.
And they sob.
