Stacey Yarbrough
Skin is like paper. It gets folded, but how neatly and how many times depends on life’s experiences. Some people live their lives as origami cranes, ready to float or fly with clean creases and straight lines. Others are roughly crimped paper planes carelessly jettisoned through danger and chaos, floating along with only a chance breeze to shift their existence from a smooth sail to rollicking amongst the wind and waves. Stacey Yarbrough has lived the latter.
Growing up in Burley, Idaho, a city pushing six whole square miles, she has the vibrancy of someone who has sailed into a roiling pool that sinks many, but stayed afloat through pure force of will. We all know these places, and here in Oklahoma, we either grew up in them or had family that did. It’s six degrees of Bacon here, only Stacey’s connections led her to the kind of bacon that sizzles on your plate next to two eggs, a mash of hashbrowns, and triangles of crispy toast.
“I mean, everyone in my town knew everybody,” Stacey says with a weathered cackle. “You can’t do anything wrong without, you know, immediately your parents finding out.” That’s a familiar sentiment. For Stacey, who is lesbian and had a gay brother, even the littlest inkling of those awakenings meant being folded against the beliefs and good graces of her community, which is enough to send one into places others could scarcely imagine.
Most of her job experience was selling cars, a profession that is loaded with high stress and quick money, which can often be both a winning combo and losing hand for drug addiction. The gamble of trying to push a quota for a dealership and make your commission isn’t too dissimilar from selling the daily special at a restaurant and coming home with enough cash to pay the bills, only the stakes are much higher.
Stacey was successful at her job, but fell into an all too familiar hole in this country: opiate abuse. Most likely you know someone who has battled with it. Once you’ve experienced that particular high where the cares of the world drain from your body and are replaced with a pure euphoria that is both numb and orgasmic, how do you turn away? For many, it leads to the destruction of your bank account and personal relationships plus criminal behavior.
Chasing that particular dragon put Stacey in prison for eleven felony counts. When she came out on the other side of her cell, the barbed wire hanging to her back, she did what a lot of people do in that situation: relapse. Stacey was honest about going back to dope and her parole officer was compassionate but blunt. If she kept using, it was back to the hole. This was a wake-up call, one that ultimately spun her out of troubled waters and floating back towards the sun.
“I had never cooked a day in my life, honey,” Stacey states, her gravelly voice intoning experience. Restaurant work was not something she imagined in her deck of cards, but sometimes an eight of clubs is what you need to complete a winning hand. Stacey replied to a Craigslist ad that Sunnyside Diner posted for a $10 an hour dishwasher position, and owners Aly Cunningham and Shannon Roper were quick to hire her. The restaurant group, Happy Place Concepts, has continued this philosophy of giving ex-convicts another chance, realizing a high rate of retention.
Within months, Stacey was running food and getting an education by expediting orders, waiting tables, and helping in the kitchen, all first experiences for her and key food service industry skills. Flash forward a few years, and she’s managing Sunnyside’s Edmond location, coordinates care packages to those in need through the Sunnyside Street Team, and has been brought into the company as a shareholder, earning a percentage of their profits.
Stacey has a to-do list the size of a ream of paper, including writing a memoir, the draft of which would surpass at least a half decades worth of this magazine in size. Until it gets published and she cashes in, let’s support her and those working to make our community better by enjoying a lovely plate at Sunnyside Diner.
