Oral history interview of Helen Michels, who was born in Palm Bay, Florida on May 4, 1936. Michels and her parents and thirteen siblings migrated to Sanford in 1942. She attended Sanford Grammar School, located at 301 West Seventh Street, and Seminole High School, at 1700 French Avenue. When Michels entered college, she originally began as a lab technician, but changed her major to education. Following college, she became a schoolteacher in Hollywood and Melbourne in Florida and then in Puerto Rico. After witnessing social justice issues while teaching in Puerto Rico, Michels decided to enter into drug therapy work for about ten years before she became the director of a halfway house for federal prisons. Upon retirement, she moved back to Sanford. This interview conducted by Patrick Rotton at the UCF Public History Center in Sanford, Florida on October 23, 2012.
