Lesa Booker is the face behind Lesa’s Dairy Dip, located on College Street in Bowling Green Kentucky. This place is a popular location for residents in Bowling Green for a great home feeling nostalgic burger. What residents aren't aware of is the same hands used to make their food, are from the same hands that used to shake with addiction. “I’m from Smiths Grove, been here my whole life,” Lesa Booker stated, “I’m a recovering addict and alcoholic. Forty years, every day—either drank or did drugs. But today, I’m sober. And it’s only by the grace of God.”
This restaurant that serves Bowling Green residents daily, has a deeper cause. This place holds a second chance, even if that is in disguise. The staff behind the counter are not just employees, they are women rebuilding their lives. Every woman working at Lesa’s had either been through or was currently living in Sisters in Sobriety, the sober living home Lesa has founded. “I couldn’t stay sober in my hometown. So I opened a house—so people like me could live with me. I needed them as much as they needed me,” she said. “They don’t realize it, but every single person who walks through that door helps keep me sober.”
“They come in with nothing—barely any clothes, no cars, no job. But before long, they’ve got work, they’ve got a vehicle, and they’re looking for apartments. That’s what this place is about. Learning how to live.”
Lesa's journey has never known easy. “I started trying to get sober at 54. Kept messing up. Got arrested. Got out. Relapsed. My mom, she always came and got me. She was my biggest cheerleader. Losing her nearly broke me.” When speaking of her mother, she would take quick pauses to catch her emotions. “But she taught me everything—my worth ethic, how to be a good person, even when I wasn’t one.”
Her mother once owned a similar resturant. When her brother inherited it instead after her mothers passing, Lesa was crushed. “I thought I wanted out of that restaurant. Then I didn’t get it. And that door closing—it crushed me. But then God opened another one.”
The new door that had opened was Lesa’s Dairy Dip, started not out of business ambition, but a mission. “I’m too old to be opening new businesses,” she’d laugh. “But these girls needed jobs. And I needed to keep them—and myself—busy.” Lesa shared how the business and the girls were her fighting cause to stay sober.
“I love these girls. With all my heart. They’ve been yelled at and put down their whole lives. But not here. Here, everybody gets treated like somebody. Everybody deserves a chance.” Lesa gives that second chance to those women, helping them each and everyday. What they don't know is that, they are also helping her more than she is them.