A LITTLE HELP GIVES WOMAN'S LIFE NEW LOOK.

Byline: Dennis McCarthy 

Her kids are already asleep when Cassandra Sanders finally finds the quiet time to sit down at the kitchen table and put it all down on paper: the last two years.

Next Sunday, this single mother of three will stand on a ballroom stage at the Sheraton Universal Hotel in front of a roomful of people she does not know and pour out her heart. The words she will write tonight: on how she got from the gutter to this ballroom.

A lot of women just like her at the Women's Care Cottage will be counting on these words being just right, Cassandra knows. They've all been where she's been. All want to go where she's going now.

The embarrassment she initially felt in standing in front of a roomful of strangers and talking about her life is finally gone - replaced with something she thought she had lost forever: pride.

But the Women's Care Cottage helped her find it again. And they couldn't have done it without the financial help and support of the people who will be in this ballroom for the Silver Anniversary of the Beautiful People Awards.

Not the skin-deep beauty. The beauty that runs a lot deeper.

So Cassandra starts on the words about that dark day in April of 1996 when she learned her company was being downsized and she was being laid off.

She moves on to May and how the bills mounted as the unemployment money didn't stretch nearly far enough to support a family of four. How utterly frustrating it was to look for work and find none because everybody was downsizing.

She moves on to June, when the eviction papers were served; then on to July, when the marshal showed up at her Van Nuys apartment door to tell her the time had come. She had to get out.

``I had three children, nowhere to go and no money to go with,'' said Cassandra. ``It was the lowest point of my life. I went to a telephone booth and began calling every shelter listed. None of them had room for a woman and three kids.''

The last call she made was to the Women's Care Cottage, which shelters battered and homeless women with children in the San Fernando Valley.

``They were my last resort and when the woman on the phone said there were no vacancies there either, I just lost it. I stood there in that phone booth crying my eyes out, my kids standing outside just looking at me, scared.''

It was getting dark outside and the woman on the phone asked Cassandra where she was going to spend the night with her children?

A park up the street, she said. She had some blankets.

No, it was too dangerous, the woman said. Hold on, she wanted to try one more place. She called the Salvation Army in Van Nuys and begged them to stay open a little while longer.

There was a woman with three kids who desperately needed a place to spend the night. An hour later, Cassandra was handed a voucher for two nights at a motel on Sepulveda Boulevard.

Three days later, there was a vacancy at the Women's Care Cottage. One big room with four beds and its own bathroom.

``When I opened the door and saw it, I just started crying,'' said Cassandra. ``It was the most beautiful room I had ever seen.''

They stayed in the shelter for 60 days, during which time the staff at Women's Care Cottage saw something special in Cassandra Sanders. They saw a woman who with just a little more help could be the kind of success story everyone wants to see in these wonderful programs.

``She was just so motivated and wanted so badly to make a success of her life for her children,'' said Kathie Mathis, executive director of Women's Care Cottage.

``She was the perfect candidate for our new, two-year transitional housing program we were starting with (Housing and Urban Development) funds,'' said Mathis.

So, that's where Cassandra and her kids have been the last two years since escaping the gutter. Living in a rent-free apartment in Tarzana. Cassandra's the transitional housing program's first graduate.

She's been going to Pierce College and been able to sock away most of the money she's received the last two years in government Aid to Families with Dependent Children.

Some of it's going for a down payment on a HUD-subsidized house she'll be moving into with the kids in a few months.

In the meantime, Cassandra's only a few credits away from getting her associate of arts degree in office administration at Pierce this semester, and plans to enroll at California State University, Northridge, in the spring to get her four-year degree.

If she gets one of the jobs she's applied for at Kaiser Permanente or the Los Angeles Unified School District, she may have to go to CSUN at night to finish her college education.

But she doesn't mind, Cassandra Sanders says.

When you've been in the gutter, and now find yourself standing in a ballroom with the beautiful people, the view is absolutely stunning.

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PHOTO Cassandra Sanders, who was downsized out of her job, has found pride and success with the help of a San Fernando Valley women's shelter.

Charlotte Schmid-Maybach/Special to the Daily News