Season 8 – Episode 2: From Homelessness to Owning Her Own Law Firm: Special Guest Kim Valentine

This week’s episode is a little different.

Raw. Real. And one of the MOST powerful stories we’ve ever shared on the podcast.

I sat down with the incredible Kim Valentine — a powerhouse trial attorney who went from being homeless…

To someone who now walks into the courtroom fully expressed, fully embodied, and fully herself. 💖

Her story WILL move you.

Because it’s not just about becoming a lawyer.

It’s about becoming the version of yourself you were always meant to be — before the trauma, the chaos, and the noise told you otherwise.

We talk about:

👉🏽Why dissociation and success often go hand-in-hand
👉🏽The grief no one warns you about when you start healing
👉🏽Reclaiming your voice, your body, and your right to be seen

Kim doesn’t sugarcoat anything.

She swears. She cries. She tells the truth.

And by the end of this episode, you’ll be reminded that you can rebuild too — no matter where you started.

Tune in NOW! 🎧

Love,
Sari 💖

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"I used to think being strong meant not feeling anything. But the truth is, strength is being willing to feel everything—the grief, the shame, the regret—and still get back up. That’s what makes you powerful in the courtroom. Not the performance. The presence."

Kim Valentine

TRANSCRIPTION

Sari de la Motte:

So I just want to clear, you got into law school with a GED and two years of community college. That's incredible. You're incredible.

You're listening to Sari de la Motte on the Sari de la Mottes Podcast.

I'm so excited to introduce the first guest of the season and I'm actually wearing my six, I don't know if you've seen this, Kim, but six on Broadway, which is about the wives and the queens of Henry VIII. So I was like, I'm talking to a queen today. I got to wear my queen shirt. So big, huge welcome to Kim Valentine. Thank you so much for being here.

Kim Valentine:

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited.

Sari de la Motte:

Yeah, I'm so glad that you're here.

Kim Valentine:

I'm like the first person of the season. That's even better.

Sari de la Motte:

Yes. Of our brand new season of Sari de la Mottes, not From Hostage to Hero. So Kim, you are located? Tell us where you're located.

Kim Valentine:

Mission Viejo, which is in Orange County, California.

Sari de la Motte:

Okay. So what I want to talk with you about today is you have a very, very interesting story and I think it's going to really resonate with our listeners. But before we get there, tell us a little bit about your practice and how long you've been practicing.

Kim Valentine:

So I have been an attorney since 1998, a very long time. And I practice in the area of plaintiff's elder abuse litigation. So I sue people that neglect and abuse the elderly.

Sari de la Motte:

Awesome. We're so glad you're in the world.

Kim Valentine:

It's unfortunate that it is a necessary area of law, but it is ever so necessary that unfortunately it is far more prevalent than people would ever imagine. I am so grateful and fortunate that I fell into this area of practice because I am very passionate about it. I love my job, I love what I do, and unfortunately there are some unscrupulous things happening in that industry. So it's very necessary.

Sari de la Motte:

Very necessary. I always say a lot of my clients are like, "I love my job, but I wish it didn't exist." I wish we didn't need to.

Kim Valentine:

Well, my job makes me absolutely massively paranoid about getting old.

Sari de la Motte:

Yeah, right. My goodness. You guys have all ruined me though. I mean, I can't go anywhere. I can't drive on the highway without being afraid of that semi truck or seeing this trip hazard. I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm ruined forever with my plaintiff attorneys. But do you own your own firm?

Kim Valentine:

I do. My law firm is Valentine Law Group. So like I said, we're here in Mission Viejo. I have five lawyers and we have what we like to call a boutique law firm. So we try really hard to only take a handful of cases, because almost every person who comes to us, they were treated like a number and treated like a widget. And so the last thing we want to do is do the same thing. So we have a quality over quantity type of practice. We take only 35 cases.

Sari de la Motte:

How many cases?

Kim Valentine:

35. We have 35.

Sari de la Motte:

With five attorneys?

Kim Valentine:

Yes.

Sari de la Motte:

Okay. I love this. I preach this all the time. And you know that if you listen to the podcast and people are like, how do you do that? And a lot of our people have 100 or 200 on their docket. And so I love that. Do you get to trial very often?

Kim Valentine:

So my practice, the short answer to that question is we don't end up having to try as many cases as we used to. I quite frankly, I set up my practice with this theory in mind that if I just beat the dog snot out of them at the beginning and they knew that I would leave no stone unturned, then eventually I would get great value in terms of my ability to settle my cases so I wouldn't end up needing to try as many of the cases. And that has definitely turned out to be true. So now what happens when I file cases, one of two things happens. Either the defense looks at it and says, "Oh my God, make her go away." Or they say, "Oh, this is good. This is going to be great billable hours for us," if they're down on billable hours. So we either have to just kill them, and we do, believe me, or we end up being able to resolve a lot of the cases, pretty good values early on.

Sari de la Motte:

As we always say, you often take your worst cases to trial. So if you've got good facts and a good lawyer, oftentimes they don't even get there. And I bet your name really comes in handy, right? They don't see it coming with the Valentine.

Kim Valentine:

I actually joke, because I always say that was the only good thing I got out of my first marriage. But anyway, yes, that is helpful. It's memorable.

Sari de la Motte:

Yeah. So Kim is a H 2H crew member, although I don't see you as much as I would like to see you in our calls, but tell us how you came to H2H.

Kim Valentine:

So I came to H2H because I think that when we try cases, we get lost in the forest for the trees. And as I said, because I am a quality over quantity law firm, I know every fact in the world there is to know about my case.

And so I came to H2H because I felt like I needed structure and I needed a, I don't want to say formula, because I understand it's not really a formula, but I-

Sari de la Motte:

Structure.

Kim Valentine:

I really needed help at being able to synthesize my case and not get lost in the forest for the trees. And I personally have always felt like jury selection is by far the hardest, but the most important clearly, but the hardest thing that we do. And so I really, really have loved the formula, if you will, from H2H in terms of that. I know that there's some need to tweak it here and there, but overall it gives you so much confidence to know what it is that you're looking for and to the whole formula of I'm looking for my best juror, who's my best juror, rather than looking to exclude people, looking to find your people.

That's how I lived my whole life. I'm not looking to exclude people. I'm looking to find my people. So I was like, how have I not been practicing and doing that in my trials? So I really, really love that. But most importantly, I love the fact that it just gives you this sense of confidence of knowing when you go into trial and you're standing there in what to me is the most nerve wracking part of the trial. I already feel comfortable that I know what I'm doing is going to get me the best possible jurors that I could have. And it's worked well for me even in terms of my focus group being like I formulating that same concept in my head of doing focus groups for the purposes of identifying who's my best juror. So it's changed the entire structure of how I do things and it's been really a great, great help, for sure.

Sari de la Motte:

I love that. I love that. And we could talk about H2H all day. I love H2H. but I love the members even more, which includes you. And so I didn't know about your story or your nonprofit, which we're going to be talking about, which now there's going to be a gala tomorrow once this hits. And so once Jody Moore told me about your story, I immediately remembered talking to her about this and I immediately, as we were talking, went on my laptop, signed up to donate monthly, because I was so moved by this mission. But the mission itself, which we'll talk about in a minute, starts with your personal story. So would you mind sharing with our listeners how you came up in the world and got to where you are now and how it led to your beautiful charity that you now have?

Kim Valentine:

Sure. So kind of the short way of synthesizing it is to say that by the time I was 18 years old, I had been given away, the product of abuse, homeless, foster youth, a teen mom. I had lost and regained custody of a child and I had been a juvenile delinquent and I... Oh my gosh, I'm getting emotional even saying that out loud. And then I became a United States marine. And even before that also-

Sari de la Motte:

Hold on, hold on. That's a lot right there.

Kim Valentine:

I forgot one important part of that. I also became an emancipated minor when I was 16.

Sari de la Motte:

I was going to say, so you said you were given away, you mean by parents?

Kim Valentine:

Yes.

Sari de la Motte:

Who abandoned?

Kim Valentine:

Yes. So I say all of that to say that in the first 18 years of my life I had lived five people's lives already. And then for probably the next decade, I really feel like I live five more people's lives in the next decade, just to try and try to overcome, if you will, the first 18 years. And so that was the foundation of who I am as a human. I will fast-forward to say that that was not an easy trajectory by any stretch of the imagination. But if somebody were to say you could go back and you could change your life, what parts would you change? I would say I can't change any of it. I literally would live my life again. I would choose to live my life again. I would choose all of those experiences and I would not change one of them because the outcome that has come full circle is so fantastically beautiful and I feel like I'm so grateful, and I'm so... I don't want to say lucky because that's not the word, because there was a lot of work to get to where I'm at.

But the place that I sit today is the place that I wish for everyone. I wish everyone could feel the joy and the gratitude that I live with every day. And so in order for me to have gotten here, I had to go through all those experiences.

Sari de la Motte:

Absolutely. You wouldn't be who you are today without having gone through those. So for a time, I understand, correct me if I'm wrong, you were homeless and living on the streets as a teenager, is that right?

Kim Valentine:

Yes. I was 14. And so if we kind of go back, I grew up in a really unhealthy environment. It was a very physically abusive environment. And so when I was 14, I actually chose to live... Well, I chose to leave. I don't think I fully appreciate it as you would not at 14, what that really meant. But I chose to leave my home and I went from being literally a straight A student and student council president one day to being homeless the next.

And I did that just because I could not tolerate the degree of the abuse any longer. And for whatever reason something snapped in my head and I literally said to my mom, "I just can't do this anymore." And I left.

And I tried to go to school, but that didn't last very long because you can only when you have your belongings under one of your friend's beds and you're trying to come and take a shower when their parents leave to go to work in the mornings, and that only lasts for so long. So within a matter of a couple of weeks even, I was no longer able to go to school.

And then you find yourself in these predicaments where you're doing whatever it takes to survive. And when you're 14, it's not like you can get a job. I mean, you're in some pretty dire straits, and so you resort to doing things that you know are wrong, but you end up stealing because that's how you eat. And that ends up being the juvenile delinquent part. So in the process of all of that, I went through foster homes, I went through group homes, I went to juvenile hall.

I found out I was pregnant when I was admitted into juvenile hall, and I spent six of the nine.

Sari de la Motte:

How old were you?

Kim Valentine:

I was 15. I spent six of my nine months of my pregnancy in juvenile hall. And then when I was released from juvenile hall, I ended up in an unwed mother's home. And I was there for a while. I ended up in another group home. And then when I, I kid you not, I can't make this up and this is going to sound unbelievable, but it's true. So I was working two jobs and going to school and I came home one day and I was told by my counselor that there had been a hearing about me that day and that the court had decided that they were going to emancipate me. To which my response was, "What is that?" I didn't even know what it was. And they said in 12 days, "You are considered a legal adult and you have to leave."

And now I'm 16 and even I knew this was a terrible plan, baby. I haven't graduated from high school. I have a child, I have a job that I will lose because I do not have a car. I do not have a driver's license. And so you are literally throwing me back out into the street and putting me in a situation where I'm going to end up where, and the theory behind it was, "Well, you make enough money with your job that you can afford..." Because I mean, let me tell you how crazy this is. I was working at Wendy's, I worked at Wendy's from four o'clock to midnight and then got up at five o'clock in the morning and went to school. I mean, it was just crazy. But regardless of how crazy it was, it happened. And so I went right-

Sari de la Motte:

And you're rolling in the dough at Wendy's. That's a ton of money.

Kim Valentine:

So I ended up being emancipated. I survived for the next two years, is all I did. And I didn't survive well. I was living in the most God awful places you could ever possibly imagine. This was back in the era of the 1980s where they were selling crack cocaine on every street corner. And that's eventually, quite frankly, how I ended up going in the Marine Corps because I knew that I had no choice but to go in the Marine Corps because it was the only shot I had, and I didn't have a high school diploma, so I had to get a GED in order to be able to even go into the Marine Corps.

And then I got my GED, and went into the Marine Corps. Best thing I ever did. I didn't love it, but it accomplished what I needed to accomplish, which was it gave me a steady income, it gave me stability, it gave me a career path. And quite frankly, it really helped me. It looked really good on my resume. I definitely got a lot of interviews once I got out of the military, people looked at the resume, I'm sure, and were like, "United States Marine." So anyway-

Sari de la Motte:

Okay, I'm going to pause you because that's amazing. That's amazing. So what's happening to your baby at this time when you're in the Marine Corps?

Kim Valentine:

So that is by far the most troubling part and the biggest struggle that I had is I actually lost him. Well, I say I lost him. I didn't really lose him, but they took him away. When I was in the group home, his dad had been in jail, youth authorities had come out. We got into a physical altercation, as someone who grows up in an abusive environment does, they continue to be people that are very similar. And so I had a black eye, and the counselor, they called social services and they took him away. And they took him away when he was two months old and that's how he ended up in the group home. And so I spent the next three years fighting to get him back for three years. And by the time I got him back, it was literally, literally to the day three years.

And I now have a three-year-old that has no idea who I am. And so now again, I'm going to fast-forward to the part where I have... It's a miracle, I think. I really think that one of the most miraculous parts of my life is my ability to heal my relationship with him because he literally remembers he was in this group home, he was very close to the foster mom. She thought I could never get my life together, so she essentially was in the process of trying to adopt him out from under me. And she had told him she was his mom and he thought I took him away from his mom.

And so he really struggled with me for a very long time. And now I'm an 18-year-old with a child who doesn't know who I am, and I'm an 18-year-old raising a child where I hadn't had one, and I've come from this very dysfunctional environment. It's been quite the challenge, let's put it that way. But there's been a lot of therapy, a lot of healing, and I have a really good relationship with him.

But I will say that's the hardest thing. And when I look back and I say all these wonderful things about, it wouldn't change a single thing, I know I can't necessarily change that component because I think that the drive that I had to do all the things that I needed to do in order to get him back probably was a major part of who I ultimately am. But the fact that it hurt him in the process and created this really broken foundation for another human for a very long time was more than I could bear. I mean, I lived in a place of guilt for a really, really, really long time. And then I realized that the guilt was actually doing more damage than it was tolerable for either one of us. So

Sari de la Motte:

Well, you were a victim as well in that. And so I have to ask, how's your son doing now?

Kim Valentine:

So my son is well. You know you're old when your son is 43.

Sari de la Motte:

Oh my gosh,

Kim Valentine:

I know. And he has the record of the longest relationship of anyone in my immediate family. It's great. I have a granddaughter who is going to be 20 in January. They currently live in Arizona, but they're actually moving back to California to be closer to all of us.

Sari de la Motte:

Oh, nice.

Kim Valentine:

So we're good.

Sari de la Motte:

Awesome, awesome. Okay, so you're 18, you're a 3-year-old. How old are you when you get out of the Marine Corps?

Kim Valentine:

So I've been in the Marine Corps for four years, so I am 24. I went to paralegal school my last year of the Marine Corps, and that was my immediate transition into law. The minute I set foot into paralegal school, which is actually just crazy all by itself. At work one day I'm in the Marine Corps, one of my Marine Corps buddies comes up to me and he is like, "Hey, I'm going to go to this paralegal school, you should come with me." And I'm like, "What is that?" I didn't even know what it was. And he's like, "Well, it's this law thing and I know you don't want to be a Marine, so maybe you should consider it."

And at that point, I just knew I needed a different career. I knew that dragging my son all over the country or all over the world really wasn't going to be a good option for him. So I said, "Okay." I went to the very first day of paralegal school in Cypress, California and knew I was going to love it. And so I finished that program and as soon as I got out of the Marine Corps, I literally within days had a job working in a law firm, and I've been working in law ever since.

Sari de la Motte:

Well, there's a big gap there. So how'd you go from working as a paralegal to now a massive power lawyer, owns her own firm? I mean, there's a story there.

Kim Valentine:

Yeah.

Sari de la Motte:

A story, a story, a story.

Kim Valentine:

I know. So the beauty was as I started off as a paralegal, and I am a bit insecure about my lack of education because I'm a paralegal with a GED, really, right? So I'm thrilled that I have a job that has enabled me to buy my first home when I'm 25, and I'm able to be self-sufficient. I had another child along the way, and so now I'm a single mom with two kids. And so I was just thrilled that I was able to be really self-sufficient and able to provide a stable environment for all of us.

But I started working at this law firm with a gentleman who I had this incredible debt of loyalty to because when I... Shortly after I got out of the Marine Corps, we had the Persian Gulf War, and I quit my job just to... Well, I had worked, I had given notice at a position and was working out those last two weeks when I got orders that I got recalled when we had the Persian Gulf War.

So I went to the new firm and said, "I appreciate you offering me this job, but I can't start because I'm going to be gone." And he said, "When you come back, find me and I will make a job for you." And he did. So once I started working for him, I had this incredible debt of loyalty to him because he really did make up a job. They had given my job to somebody else and whatever. So I worked for this man for many years and he became sort of my pseudo dad, if you will. And at one point he finally came to me and he said, "So you're obviously really bright, but you're obviously really under-educated." And I was like, "Really? I thought I was pulling that off pretty well." And he was like, "Not much."

So he said, "You need to go back to school." Well, little did he know that I had actually already re-enrolled in community college. That's my love for community college. So I had known pretty early on that I felt like I was wasting my potential by not going back to school. But school, the only option I really had was to go to community college because now like I said, I have two kids. And so I was taking classes at community college and I graduated from community college, and then immediately went from community college into law school with the support, if you will, of my boss who allowed me to work, because I was working full-time and going to school at night, and so I was trying to work this 50 hour a week job and go to school at night.

But with his support, sometimes he would let me take a class during the day so that it would make the process quicker and things like that. But more importantly, I think the biggest thing was that he believed in me and he absolutely totally believed that I was going to make a great lawyer. And I ended up really wanting to go to law school because I had, as a paralegal working for him, I used to send him off to take the position with this whole outline of all these things I wanted him to ask. And I had this whole theory on, if you ask these questions first, you're going to set him up, so by the time you get to the question that matters, they're going to have to answer the question that matters the way you want them to, because you're going to have set them up so well.

And then he would come back from the deposition, I'd be like, "How'd it go?" And he'd say, "Well, they didn't say what you said they were going to say." And I'm like, "Well, what did they say to these questions? The leading questions?" "Well, I didn't ask those questions. I just asked the ultimate question." I'm like, "That's why they didn't do it that way, why they didn't say what I needed him to say." So I was so frustrated with him, and eventually I was like, "Well, if I can write all this out and tell him to go do it-"

Sari de la Motte:

Yeah, I can do this.

Kim Valentine:

Right.

Sari de la Motte:

So I just want to be clear, you got into law school with a GED and two years of community college?

Kim Valentine:

I did.

Sari de la Motte:

That's incredible. You're incredible. I mean, this whole story is just insane. And so how did law school go? Did you love it? Was it difficult? Was it easy? I mean, you're so incredible. It's insane.

Kim Valentine:

It's funny that you asked that. I sat in the first day of law school, and I have to say, I remember when I first got accepted to law school, and I just remember sitting and saying, "Law school?" Because you have to imagine this human at that point who's had all of these limitations along the way. I felt like, how is that even possible that I'm going to go to law school? So then I'm sitting in the first day of law school and anybody who's a lawyer knows how they sit you in law school, and I look to the left and look to the right, and in six months time, at least one of those people won't be there. And I was like, "Oh my God, that's totally going to be me because I'm the most uneducated person in this room." I was so freaked out about being uneducated.

And so I set this... I had always been this person who sat at the bar being like the best at everything. But when I went to law school, I had this conversation with myself, "You are not going to do that. All you got to do is just get through. All you got to do is pass and get to the bar, and that's all you got to do. So just chill out and just try to make it through." Well, at the end of the first year, I sat back and I reflected and I said, "Well, that was not nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be."

But true to form, if you're only aiming for a B, you're never going to get an A. So I was like, "You need to revamp that and you need to go back to aiming for the top grade in the class." And so sure enough, by the time I graduated law school, I had entered six of my classes and graduated in the top 10%. And the only thing that kept me from being even higher was the first year where I didn't set my standards or set my sights on trying to be the top person.

Sari de la Motte:

Well, I need to ask you, how does a young woman who was raised in domestic violence so much so that she thought the streets would be safer than living in her own home, and multiple things I know happened on the streets and whatnot, what do you credit with this sense? There's something that you probably had even way back then, which was you're a survivor. Where do you think that comes from? And when you reflect back, there's something special about you, but what do you think that is?

Kim Valentine:

That's a really, really, really good question, and a question that I ask myself all the time because I really do wonder and I reflect on a particular moment. I think that there are these really pivotal moments in all of our lives. And I think back to that moment where I had grown up in an environment where you did not talk. You literally didn't talk. My goal every day when I went home from school was to be a speck of dust on the couch.

Sari de la Motte:

To not be seen.

Kim Valentine:

That was the thought I had in my brain. Please just don't see me, just be silent. So I didn't even speak. And I think of that day where all of a sudden I snapped and I just had had enough. And the day that I walked in and literally stood in front of this person that I had been so petrified of my entire life and just stood there and said, "I'm never going to let you do this to me again." And I'm like, that kid was 14 years old. Where did that come from?

And then I think about all the things, all those pivotal moments that occurred thereafter, even going into the Marine Corps. Somebody asked me not too long ago, what was that one biggest moment of your life that changed your life? And I think about it, I'd never even been on a plane, and so I was so afraid, so deathly afraid. But I was also... I think it's almost like desperation, where you're like, but there's something in me that makes me not satisfied. It was like I just couldn't accept that this is just what it's going to be. I just couldn't do that.

And even when I was working these terribly dead-end jobs, I would go to work every day as a waitress. I was the world's worst waitress, but that was how you had to survive. But I was terrible. I was a horrible waitress because I hated it. And I would go to work every day and literally say, as I walked in the door, "Please God, don't let this be the rest of my life. Please God, don't let this be the rest of my life."

So honestly, I don't know. And I reflect on that a lot because I feel like that's such an important question and answer, because I'm working to identify what that is, to be honest with you, I really am. Because I feel like people say that I'm an enigma. They call me an enigma and a unicorn. And I say that that's a misnomer because I don't think that's true. I think that every single one of us are just staggeringly unstoppable and that we are limited only by what we allow to limit us.

And it has been... I love my children and God knows it's got to have been difficult for them to be raised by me because I tell them all the time that the only thing that is a limit for you is what you choose to be your limit. And that's it.

There's only a couple of things like, look, we can't all be Olympic athletes and we can't all be drop dead gorgeous, and we all can't have massive... There are certain things that are limited, for sure. But for the most part, 90% of what you need in life is literally one choice away. And the sad thing is that sometimes we tend to make excuses rather than choices. And so that's someone me a long time ago, what made you different than most 15-year-old teen moms? And I said, the difference was that I took that experience and I made it into the reason why I had to do everything instead of the excuse for why I could do nothing.

And that mentality, it's beaten into me that, I mean, it's how I've literally lived my entire life is just-

Sari de la Motte:

I love it. It's a choice, because both of those are choices. And both of them are hard.

Kim Valentine:

Again, the whole loss of my son and all of that, it also... Look, it all sounds beautiful on paper, but let me tell you, there was just a lot of catastrophes along the way and a lot of fallout along the way. But the reality was, at a very young age... I've done everything a decade before most people. And so at a very young age, I had this realization that I just had to be better and that I needed to work every single day because I had hurt people along the way. I had a kid at 15 and 21, and now I have to set this example for them and I have to be the best version of myself. And I came from this incredibly broken environment.

And so, now my job is to break the goal and make sure that we don't continue this cycle down the road. The amount of energy and effort that I put into trying to be a better human every single day, it really is a staggering amount. It's not even, I think, comprehensible because it's so much work. But that too is a choice.

Sari de la Motte:

That's absolutely a choice

Kim Valentine:

Every single day, what you choose to do. So I'll say one other thing, and that is the other just mind-altering in terms of how impactful it was to me, as I also knew that I had to be forgiving of the people who hurt you along the way. And so I also had to find a way in my head to be able to do that. And so I... The thing-

Sari de la Motte:

Why? What's important about that? What's important about... You didn't have to. You could have gone on-

Kim Valentine:

I did.

Sari de la Motte:

... angry and hateful.

Kim Valentine:

I did, because by the time I was 21, I can tell you that I was dark, I was angry. And when I said angry, I was mad. I was mad at the world. And my philosophy was, why did I get this life? You saw all these other people who, go take your SAT and then off to college you go, and you get to live in the dorms and do this whole trajectory that so many people just... That's just life, that's just normalcy for them.

Sari de la Motte:

Prom, homecoming.

Kim Valentine:

And so I was really angry, and it was dark and it was heavy, and I had no idea how to even have fun at all. And so it became very clear to me that the only way I was going to get past that was that I had to forgive. And so the way that I was able to do that is I had to learn how to be grateful and I had to be grateful for the life I did have. And so I did this exercise that is so simple and yet so profound. And the exercise was... And I did it with my sisters. So when I was 21, I also found my biological mom. And in the course of that, I found out that I had biological sisters. And so that's a whole other story. I'm telling you, I could do five operas. But anyway-

Sari de la Motte:

This is like a book. If you haven't written a book, you need to.

Kim Valentine:

Anyway, in the course of, that's part of how I realized once I met my biological mom, and that also was one of those pivotal life-altering moments because that was when I was able to say, as bad as it was, it could have been worse. And so it enabled me to be able to find the good in the things that my parents had done that I would not have had, had I stayed with my adoptive mom. But so back fast forwarding to where I was with my sisters and the gratitude, if I had the three of us. They're 10 and 14 years younger than me. So we started this process where we wrote three gratefuls to each other every single day.

And you couldn't skip. I called myself the Grateful Nazi because if they didn't send me their gratefuls every day, I was like, "Where's your gratefuls?" And so every day, and the goal was we had to do it for a month. For our 30 days, you have to find three things that you're grateful for, and you can't repeat. And so it starts off really easy. The first few days are really great. I am grateful for my dog, I'm grateful for the sunshine, whatever, super easy. But after a while when you can't repeat, you actually have to go through your day and you have to look for the things that you're going to be grateful for. And what you find is cognitive therapy. It is re-mapping the channels of your brain because once you do that, your brain processes your entire day through looking for the good instead of looking for the bad. And I kid you not, it worked. It literally changed the pathways in my brain.

Sari de la Motte:

We talk about it here all the time. You can change the way that your brain works.

Kim Valentine:

I mean, now people pay thousands of dollars to therapists. I didn't even know what I was doing at the time. I had no idea that this was actually a real thing. But all I know is that I started doing it with them and I saw this dramatic difference. Now, what's interesting is that it works as well as the amount of effort you put into it.

Sari de la Motte:

That's right. As does everything.

Kim Valentine:

As is everything. But it was life-altering for me.

Sari de la Motte:

What I'm finding so amazing about this story is that at any of these points, you could have stopped and said, "For someone who came out of where I came, this is enough." So it could have been even losing your son. You could have been like, "Well, I'm a teen. What am I going to do? I lost my son." But you fought for him to get him back. Once you were in somewhat of a stable situation, you could have been like, "Well, this is it." But you went to the Marines. And after that you got this great paralegal job that you loved. You could be like, "This is it." And you've never stopped even to the point now where you are a highly successful plaintiff's attorney and you still haven't stopped.

So this is where I want to ask about your giving back and your charity that you started, because I think it is incredible that at any point you could just rest back and go, "I've had enough. I get to just enjoy that I survived." But you've never done that. You've always looked at what else you can do to improve yourself and to improve the world. So tell us a little bit about Operation Helping Hands.

Kim Valentine:

So the way that my nonprofit started, it started because I believe when you have kids that your kids don't listen to the things that you say. Your kids watch the things that you do. And so I was watching my kids, as I was raising what I was concerned were privileged humans, who as a parent who didn't have a lot, you have this tendency to make sure that your kids didn't have the life that you had. So I was raising these kids in Orange County.

My youngest son, for example, came home from the hospital in the exact same home he had lived in his entire life. I was creating what the wholesome story should be, if you will, as best you can. But I was also worried, like I said, that I was raising these privileged humans. So my nonprofit started off as a project, a family project in my garage where I had the kids and their cousins and their friends come over, and we made little brown paper bags, and I had them fill them with hygiene items. And they were young enough that at the time, they actually drew pictures on the back. There was a drawing station for the brown bags. and they drew pictures and they wrote poems. And the greatest thing, which is having no idea where this was going. I, to this day, have a photo of the poem that my youngest son wrote on the first back. And I'm so glad that I took that.

Sari de la Motte:

Send it to us so we can put it in the show notes.

Kim Valentine:

So we had made these bags and I took them out to San Diego and I took them out on the street. And it was again, another one of those pivotal moments that was life-changing, and you don't even know it when it's happening. But I had my son pass out the first bag, and it just so happened we went to this encampment and he walked up to this tent, and it so happened that the person he walked up to was a woman. And well, she was in the tent, so I guess he just walked up to the tent. But anyway, it was a woman.

So she opens up the tent and she's kind of mean to him. At first, she's like, "Why are you here and what's in it for you?" And he was very kind, and he just said, "Look, it's Christmastime and we just want to do something nice and there's no catch. We're just giving this to you." And she warmed up to him and she said, "Oh my gosh, this is really great and this is awesome. I'm going to take what's in here. I'm going to give it to my daughter. This is going to be the only thing I'm going to be able to give her for Christmas." And so I watched him. I had stood by the car because I felt like having been homeless, I felt like she could receive this gift, if you will, from a child much better than an adult and feel less shame from that.

Sari de la Motte:

judgment. Yeah.

Kim Valentine:

So I just stood back and I was just far enough that I couldn't really hear exactly what they were saying, even. He told me later what they said. But the moment that changed everything was when he came back to the car, the look on his face, I opened the car door, and as he started to get in the car, he looked up at me and he said, "So we're going to go find more people, right?" And I was like, "Whoa."

Sari de la Motte:

How old was he?

Kim Valentine:

He was 12. And I was like, "Oh, okay." So we only made 50 bags. Okay, 50 bags in a homeless environment goes in about five minutes. And so the kids were like, "Mom, mom, we have to go to the store and we have to go buy more bags and we have to go buy more blankets and we have to go buy..." I mean, we literally went and made a whole second round, went to different stores, bought more stuff, and I also have a photo of them as they're literally skipping in this square in downtown San Diego with literal store bags, because we had gone and done a whole second round.

And these kids were so excited, and they were like, when it was all said and done, they were like, "When are we going to do it again?" And I was like, "Wow, okay. That went way better than I thought." And so we quickly realized brown bags were not sustainable, and so we turned them into backpacks. And so then we turned it into a project at my office and we invited people to come and work with us to make the backpacks. Well, the 250 backpacks turned into 500, turned into a thousand. So before you know it, we had turned this into this whole project where we were having the kids from the schools coming, and it just grew. And it became something we did on at least on every other semester basis with school.

And by the time my youngest son left to go to college, we were now a completely functioning 501(c)(3). And he even came home from college to even do the first project with me, even though he had already been gone. And it was really this beautiful thing. But the only glitch to that was... Well, let me just say one thing. We wanted to not only help the homeless, but more importantly, we wanted to educate the kids. And so when we were doing the projects with the high schools, we would rent 15 passenger vans, and we turned it into a weekend project where we would do assembly day on Saturday, and then the kids would come back on Sunday and we would take them out in 15 passenger vans and we would take them to San Diego. And we even took them, I always went to Long Beach, which is where I was homeless, and it also served as this great reminder for me every time so that I never forgot where I came from.

Sari de la Motte:

More gratefulness.

Kim Valentine:

So we would do these projects, but the only glitch was that even though we would never be able to see how impacted the youth were, we would never know if we changed any of these youth's lives because they had this in their lives. And we obviously were not able to look at the homeless people that we helped and be able to identify people who we really had changed their lives. So we had this goal, but we were such a grassroots operation. Well, then COVID happened and we sort of sprung what was something I'd always wanted to do, because I had felt like education was what saved me. My ability to go to school is what saved me from having just a basic debt and job to being able to have a career. And so, I knew that without community college I could have never done that.

And so, what I wanted to do was to create a scholarship program with community colleges where we could give scholarships to housing insecure community college students, so that we could help them get through community college.

Well, when COVID happened, it sort of gave us the time to now... Because we couldn't take the kids out. So it gave us the time because every single person on my board, we're all full-time, we all have our own jobs and we all have firms, and we all have businesses. And so it's all volunteer work. But the biggest saving grace was that I was a member of a trial lawyers association, and they nominated our nonprofit as the beneficiary of a gala that they had. So they awarded us a pretty substantial sum of money, which then gave us the financial means to put this vision into place. So we very quickly grew into doing these scholarships and to the point where we're now in eight colleges, we give a thousand dollars a month per student towards their housing, and we have a waitlist of 14 more schools that want to join, but obviously-

Sari de la Motte:

So these kids are getting to go to these colleges and also get money for housing. And how many kids have you actually been able to serve so far?

Kim Valentine:

So far we've served 13 students, but we have such an incredible... We have a couple of people that are just really incredible success stories. So one of our earlier students, she was actually a student in San Diego, and when she originally applied for the scholarship, she had been formally incarcerated and she was really very apprehensive of telling us about that and about telling us about her life. But she was so clear to me that this circles back to that question that you asked me earlier about what it was that you had? And I don't define it, but she had it.

Kim Valentine:

And I knew immediately she had it. Right. And so she was homeless when we met her, but she had a 4.0, can you believe that? She had a 4.0. And so we gave her the scholarship. She became housed. She graduated from community college with a 4.0. Her grades were so great that she got a full ride scholarship to Berkeley. She would send me her report cards every semester that she was at Berkeley, and she would send them to me because she had an A plus GPA. Like I don't even know that's a thing, but it's a thing. They actually give you A pluses on your transcript.

Sari de la Motte:

Wow, I want that. How did they not have that when we were in school?

Kim Valentine:

While she was at Berkeley, she became published in conjunction with a study that she did with Stanford. She had an internship at Princeton. She is currently working at the Alameda Courthouse as an intern. She's about to graduate in December, and she's already been accepted to a master's program at San Jose State.

Sari de la Motte:

Okay.

Kim Valentine:

She's amazing.

Sari de la Motte:

That's incredible. That's incredible. You are changing lives. And listeners, if you haven't already decided to donate to this amazing cause, I don't know what you're waiting for. I want to give you the information now. If you want to learn more about Operation Helping Hands, either... You still do the Backpack program?

Kim Valentine:

Yes, I do. Yes.

Sari de la Motte:

Backpack program and scholarships you can go to OHH for Operation Helping Hands, SC like for Southern California. So I donate every month. You can donate once every month, and you have a gala going on tomorrow too.

Kim Valentine:

Our first inaugural gala, and I'm thrilled. We have 350 people coming to our gala, so we're very excited about that. Chloe, the girl I was telling you about, she's coming to speak and tell everyone about her experience. We have another student who's coming as well, who just got accepted into UCLA, having lived in his car when we met him. And so, we have some great success stories that are going to come and tell their stories, and so it should be a great event.

Sari de la Motte:

Well, I just think you're incredible. You are incredible. And I actually do think I know what it is.

Kim Valentine:

What is it.

Sari de la Motte:

You must be part Finn. Because in Finnish, in Finland, all Finns have sisu, and that means this grit. We never give up. We always want to do things and be better. So you're an honorary Fin. I'm going to say that right now you have sisu, but even with the COVID story, at that point you could have stopped and went, "Well, it's COVID. We're just going to hang back." And you took that opportunity to even do more. I literally can't wait to see what you do next. I'm so glad Kim Valentine, that you are in the world and doing amazing work. And listeners, just get on that website and donate to this amazing, amazing cause. People like Kim are actually changing the world, which is what we're about here at H2H. We're not just about trial skills. We're like our trial lawyers, and here's one example, we're going to change the world, whether that's through verdicts or through nonprofits, both and other things. I want to thank you so much.

Kim Valentine:

I want to thank you for your support of our organization as well, because you are also helping me in terms of being able to change lives. Because if it wasn't for people like you donating to our cause, we couldn't do it. So I appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Sari de la Motte:

Yeah, thank you. And I am going to wait for that book, which I think is going to turn into a movie or several movies because this, like you said, is like 10 lives baked into one. Thank you so much for being with us today. And listeners, I'll talk with you next week.

Ever wish you had a place to practice your trial skills and connect with other lawyers who get it and connect with me? Grab your seat. In the H2H Playground, it's where you get a real coaching community and strategies to actually grow your practice. Head to sariswears.com/play and get enrolled. Until next time.