Sophie Ann Kestrel
Concept: Homeless Crippled Veteran


Place of Birth: Cornell, Wisconsin
DOB: 1992

Brief Highlight Timeline
1992: Born in Cornell, Wisconsin
2010: Graduate’s Highschool, barely. Joins the Army for numerous reasons: to see the world, to find some motivation in her life, to get out of her “podunk” town, to do something important
2012-2016: Does 3 tours in Afghanistan as a Motor Transport Operator. Spends the end of her last tour at FOB Turner, in the Paktika Province where her vehicle is targeted by a roadside IED and injured by the explosion. She is the sole survivor of the explosion.
2016: Grievously injured by the IED blast, she spends most of the year in various hospitals. After a long recovery process, she receives a Medical Discharge from the Army.
2017: Moves back with her family, gets fired from about half a dozen jobs: retail, receptionist, tow truck driver, mall security, and janitorial work at Cornell High School.
2018: Moves to Chicago and enrolls at the University of Chicago, in Middle Eastern Studies. Due to poor mental health and worst coping mechanisms, she drops out after a single semester.
2019: Sinks deeper and deeper into depression and addiction, can't hold a job for more than a few weeks at a time.

Family
Father: Scott Kestrel, mid 50s
Mother: Ann (Graham) Kestrel, mid 50s
Younger Brother: Brian Kestrel, 16
In the past few years, Sophie has grown extremely distant concerning her family. She loves them and cares about them deeply, but she simply cannot get over the shame she feels. She's been constantly lying to her parents ever since she dropped out of college, hiding from them the fact she is currently, for all intent and purposes, homeless.

Recent Events

• Has been evicted after not being able to pay rent for a few months.
  
• Is currently homeless.
  
• She still receives disability benefits from the VA due to her injuries but tends to drink through almost all of it.
  
• Does her best to take whatever part-time job she can get.

Short Term Goals

• Find any paying work (Get 1 dot in Ressource)
  
• Find a safe place to sleep (Buy off Homelessness Flaw)
  
• Be numb enough to forget about everything

Long Term Goals

• Get her drinking and other addictions under control enough to afford a place to stay and hold a semi-decent job
  
• Stop lying to her parents about her situation
  
• Get back into shape (Increase physical stats)
  
• Find a way to cope with her anxiety (Buy off Low Self Esteem Flaw)
  
• Get over her survivor guilt and reconnect with her army friends (Get extra dots in Contacts, get dots in Allies)

Background
Sophie comes from a terribly small town and grew up in what she'd consider a terribly normal family. The first child of two Cornell natives, Sophie had a childhood as unremarkable as herself. Although brought up by loving and caring parents, Sophie's family wasn't of excessive means when they were young, and for them, an exciting weekend was a trip to a fast food joint and a shopping spree at Wall Mart. Sophie was a quiet child and a quieter teenager. When she finally graduated high school (with barely passing grades) she found herself completely aimless. She took a job at the local roadside hotel and settled into the routine.

It took less than a year for Sophie to become scared: scared she'd be like her parents, scared she'd just grow old like all those people around her. Wanting to get away from everything, Sophie enlisted in the Army, much to everyone's surprise, and became a Motor Transport Operator. She found herself surrounded by people from all walks of life, and her lack of ambition and initiative actually became boons, at first. She found a sense of purpose and discovered she could do things she never believed she could. Her self-confidence rose, for the first time in her life, and Sophie simply began to feel good about herself. She loved all of it. Used to pass rather unnoticed in high school because of her plain looks and plainer personality, here, Sophie discovered how it felt to be the center of attention.

Being one of the few women around, and the only one in her own troop, Sophie quickly discovered she could turn a few heads. Generally speaking, Sophie considers her time in the army as the very best years of her young life, even though the scars left by her deployments run deep, psychologically and physically. In Afghanistan, it was rather quickly established that, culturally, women were much better suited to establish contact with the Afghani women and that the intel they could gather from them saved lives.

And so, Sophie found herself included in more and more patrols and assignments and ended up becoming almost fluent in Dari, the variety of Farsi spoken in Afghanistan. On the backbone of those assignments, twice Sophie applied to the army's Cultural Support Team, and although she made it into selection, twice she washed out due to her lack of leadership capabilities.

Towards the end of her last tour, the HMVVEE Sophie was driving was hit by an IED blast, which killed the 3 other occupants and grievously injured Sophie. When she came to in Germany, she had broken her back in two places, broken several ribs, broken and deeply lacerated her right leg, and gotten her entire right side peppered with shrapnel. It took her the better part of a year to heal, and the wounds she suffered that day still hamper her physically. But as much as the blast left her body broken, it made something snap in the back in Sophie's mind; she considered herself entirely responsible for what happened that day. She pulled through each day of painful physical therapy with the hope of being able to rejoin her unit and atone for what she had done.

Her hopes were finally crushed when she got her Medical Discharge papers. With all the surgery she had gotten on her back and leg, there was simply no way she could perform properly as a soldier anymore. She found herself thrust back into civilian life with a steady prescription for various painkillers and anti-anxiety medication, and her sense of purpose was completely ripped from her. From then on, every day became a struggle. None of the skills she had carried over into civilian life, and as much as people showed appreciation for what she had endured, there was only so much employers could tolerate. Sophie began taking everything she could lay her hands on to numb herself, which only made holding a steady job that much more difficult. In a year, she had burned all her bridges and abused everyone's trust. In a bid to drag herself out of the hole she had dug, she moved to Chicago and enrolled at the University of Chicago. Too much binge drinking, too many nightmares, and too much Oxycontin meant she failed about every single class rather quickly. Before the first semester was done, she was on academic probation, and by the end of the second, she had entirely dropped out.

With the various means of self-medication now completely out of control, Sophie is broke, without a job, and recently got evicted. For the past few weeks, she's been living out of various shelters around town and sleeping in her car.

Personality, Description and other Traits

• Still struggling to reintegrate civilian life. Loved being in the Army.
  
• Lacks motivation; has bouts of depression where she simply stays in and does nothing but watch tv.
  
• Finds she now has trouble connecting with people.
  
• Doesn’t talk much. Quiet. Can appear distant at times.
  
• Bites her nails.
  
• Wants to be helpful but is often afraid she’ll mess things up instead.
  
• Isn’t prone to taking the initiative, something she was often blamed for during her Army days.
  
• Likes fishing. Enjoys just driving around with no aim.
  
• Slept around a lot while in the Army. Might still be considered somewhat promiscuous; enjoys the attention but doesn’t quite know how to get it.
  
• Doesn’t like to voice her opinions too much for fear of being thought of as dumb. Knows she doesn’t know enough.
  
• Feels like she has no control over her life.
  
• Still wants to travel but can't seem to find the drive to really do so.
  
• Intimidated by authority figures and people she considers “smart”.
  
• Joined the Army to get out of her small town and because she wanted to do “something important”.
  
• Was included in a lot of missions to serve as a point of contact with Afghan women.
  
• Tried to join the army's Cultural Support Team but failed Selection due to a failure to demonstrate the necessary level of leadership required.
  
• Shitty self-esteem in her civilian and personal life.
  
• Looks young. Used to think she was cute due to her popularity while in the Army but found out quickly she was terribly bland and had no charm whatsoever when she reintegrated into civilian life.
  
• Looks as if she used to be in better shape.
  
• Takes long pauses before speaking.
  
• Self-medicates: drinks (often too much), smokes weed, will abuse prescription medication when she has a script
  
• Suffered numerous injuries in an IED blast while driving a Humvee. Is the sole survivor and still holds herself accountable for what happened. Suffered numerous broken ribs, broke her back in two places, and broke both her legs. Suffers from chronic pain (for which she both officially and self-medicates heavily) which is both physiological and psycho-somatic. Is technically barred from carrying heavy loads.
  
• Has shrapnel scars and surgical scars along the right side of her body. Has skin grafts on her right leg.