HAMILTON, Ohio — Serve City's Dustin Bowman had a lot to do on Tuesday morning.
People were coming through the Hamilton food pantry with a line out the door. Volunteers needed his help stocking shelves with canned goods, and clothes needed to be sorted and hung. There was also a lease for one of the shelter's apartments that needed to be signed.
WATCH: He once came to Serve City needing help. Now, he’s leading the organization and helping others find their way forward.
When the woman Bowman had been working with for months finally sat down to sign it, he stopped what he was doing.
He smiled from ear to ear.
“Are you so excited?” he asked.
She was beaming with joy.
She had been working toward sobriety and stability, and Bowman had been alongside her for much of that journey. She was so eager to reach this moment that she had asked if she could move her appointment even earlier in the day.
For Bowman, the moment was about more than a signature on a lease.
It was a milestone, and he wanted her to know it.
Then, almost as quickly as the moment came, Bowman was off again.
He checked people into the food pantry. He helped volunteers. He sorted clothes and hung them on racks. He checked in with the people who come to Serve City every Tuesday, asking what they needed and how he could help.
He seemed to be everywhere.
That energy is part of what Bowman brings to his new role as executive director of Serve City in Hamilton, but it is also rooted in a life he never expected to live.
In 2017, after losing his mother and suffering an Achilles injury, Bowman was prescribed pain medication. When the prescription ended, he turned to drugs to try to mask the pain and trauma he was carrying.
The addiction quickly took over.
“That addiction sent me into a spiral,” Bowman said. “At my bottom, I had lost my wife, I had lost my home, lost my kids and was sleeping on the streets.”
He slept in parking garages and alleys.
Eventually, he found himself in Knoxville, Tennessee, sleeping in the back of a broken-down Jeep. He called his nephew, who picked him up and brought him to a discipleship treatment program in Cincinnati.
Hamilton was home, and Serve City would become part of his path back.
“While I was on the streets, I stayed at Serve City,” Bowman said. “I was here for a few days, and the hope helped me to make it through another season.”
After getting stable, Bowman eventually returned to Serve City, this time as an employee.
He started working third shift in the shelter, doing whatever needed to be done.
“No matter what skills I had, my heart's always been to serve others,” he said. “No matter what that looks like. It could be cleaning the toilets at the shelter. It could be mopping the floor.”
He moved through the organization, working in housing and serving tenants, eventually becoming program manager and overseeing the shelter.
In January, Bowman became interim executive director during a transition in leadership.
A few weeks ago, the board made the position permanent.
Board member Pat Gay has volunteered with Serve City for more than 20 years and has worked with every director since the organization was founded.
He said Bowman’s history is exactly what makes him the right person to lead it.
“He is a perfect fit because he's lived the life,” Gay said. "And I think he understands what the struggles are and he understands the pathways to help people get to a better place in their life.”
That firsthand experience changes the way Bowman sees the people walking through Serve City’s doors.
“I think that empathy helps me to bring that perspective of knowing the why behind our policies and having that passion to help someone else have the same result that I've had going from the side of a railroad track to now leading an organization that's helping hundreds and thousands of people in Butler County every year,” Bowman said.
For people currently relying on Serve City, that perspective can mean something different.
Keron Givens is currently living in sober housing and looking for work. He said Serve City has become an important source of support.
“Serve City is like a big blessing to me right now,” Givens said.
For him, the organization's programs have provided what he described as a second chance.
“I went from homeless to this in two weeks,” he said. "And all I can say is it's God for real shining me with love and guidance.”
That same message of faith is central to Bowman’s vision for Serve City.
He talks often with his staff about their “why”: sharing the love of Jesus with people they believe are worthy of dignity, regardless of where they are in life.
Bowman knows firsthand what it feels like to need that reminder.
“Dignity isn't something that you get from just having a warm bed,” Bowman said. “It's being seen as a person.”
He wants people coming through Serve City to understand that their current circumstances do not have to define what comes next.
“Everyone was created with value, and no matter where you are in your journey in life, no matter what your story is today, it's not the end of it,” he said. “We want to really give people hope that today doesn't have to be all that you have. Tomorrow can be better.”
On that Tuesday morning, that hope was visible in the way Bowman moved through Serve City.
He wasn't simply running the organization. He was celebrating a woman taking a step toward a new home. He was helping a volunteer. He was sorting clothes. He was greeting people who came back week after week.
He was doing for others what someone once did for him: showing up when life was at its darkest and reminding them there could be something better on the other side.
For Bowman, that is what makes his new role so personal.
He once walked through Serve City’s doors looking for a place to sleep and a reason to keep going.
Now, he is on the other side of those doors, leading the organization and trying to give someone else the hope that once helped him make it through another season.
“Community is really what helps people to climb out of the pits that we find ourselves in,” Bowman said.
