Three women have been named to the state Women's Hall of Fame — and two of them are from South Florida.
Helen Aguirre Ferré of Miami Shores is a journalist and communications consultant. Elmira Leto of Key West is the founder of Samuel's House, a nonprofit that provides shelter and services to women and children. The third woman named is Carol Jenkins Barnett, president of Publix Supermarket Charities in Lakeland.
Leto says she was called by God to start Samuel's House after she began ministering to women inmates at the Monroe County Detention Center in 1992.
"I would go to the jail every Sunday and I would find that I kept seeing the same women over and over again," she says.
When she asked the women why they kept returning to jail, they told her it was because they didn't have anywhere to go when they were released.
"So I started really looking into it," Leto says. "And they were right. They really didn't have anywhere to go."
Leto converted the family business, an interior design shop, into a 21-bed shelter that opened in 1999. Samuel's House now has three different shelters with a total of 95 beds, serving families with emergency short-term housing to permanent residences.
And it's not just for women leaving the county jail. The Samuel's House clients come from "anywhere from being under the bridge to being a professional woman who has lost her home because she couldn't pay the mortgage or couldn't pay the rent," Leto says. "You name it, we've seen it."
Leto estimates Samuel's House has served more than 6,000 women and children since it opened.
She and the two other women are scheduled to be inducted into the Hall of Fame on Jan. 27 in Tallahassee.
