Cynthia “Cymp” Stemple has always believed in second and third chances. 

So when she founded Coffee Hub Xenia in 2017, she decided to embrace those second and third chances. It started out with a call from a CPA-turned-barista in recovery from drug addiction, wanting to know more about her company and ultimately asking for a job. 

“One day a guy messaged me on Facebook and said, ‘I like what you’re doing with the coffee shop. Can we meet?’”

The decision was a no-brainer. She gave him the job and he immediately became part of the Coffee Hub family. Next came a job request from a woman in recovery named Missy to work with Cymp baking for the coffee shop on the weekends. Cymp didn’t know what to expect, but she extended the offer. Missy quickly became an integral part of the Coffee Hub team, even being promoted to manager of the Xenia location. And soon, what looked like a simple community coffee shop actually became a hub for men and women seeking second chances. So Cymp decided to run with it.

She didn’t always know that it would turn out this way. In fact, it started very differently from what she expected. After Cymp and her husband, Scott, were married, they decided to pack up their life in West Virginia and move to Ukraine to be missionaries at a time when they could see incredible amounts of change occurring inside and outside of the country. The Berlin Wall fell, sparking revolution, unrest, freedom, and chaos that no one had seen before, and Cymp and Scott built their life within it, raising their four children and serving college students. After almost twenty years in the Ukraine, the Stemples returned to the United States, and Cymp said it was one of the hardest decisions their family ever had to make.

“Much harder than going [to Ukraine] was coming back,” Cymp said. “But we did leave and I know to this day that it was the right decision.”

Though it was difficult for her and her entire family, Cymp knew that they were going in the right direction. The organization they left behind was in capable hands, and when the Stemples arrived in Ohio with four children and their chocolate lab, they had a blank slate of possibilities before them. Just a few years later she opened a brand new coffee shop which she called Coffee Hub, named not only for its proximity to the Xenia, Ohio bike hub, but also for the sense of community that filled the space from the very first day. Practically, this looked very different from work in Ukraine. It no longer looked like revolution and international relations. It was simpler: little conversations with a new customer, connecting with a homeless man who sipped coffee in the corner, training a new barista in recovery from a drug addiction.

“Although Coffee Hub isn’t a nonprofit, I still think of my job here as very much ministry-minded. It’s just loving people in a slightly different way.”

But as Cymp grew closer to her employees and looked out onto the streets of Xenia, she saw that this was a larger problem than she knew. She began to see the harmful effects of drugs on people’s families, their bodies, their minds, their aspirations. It was frustrating looking at people, knowing exactly how to improve their lives, but watching them struggle to even eat a balanced diet or budget their money. Many were stuck in cycles, having been born into broken families themselves. Cymp felt a deep desire to do something, and she knew that she couldn’t fix it alone. 

“We have a massive drug problem,” Cymp said. “We could either be part of the solution, or we can stick our head in the sand.”

Cymp wanted to give them a second chance. She wanted to give them third chances, fourth chances, fifth chances. So she began planning. She had volunteered with other rehabilitation programs around Xenia and seen the improvement that it made for people. But it still didn't seem like enough. She wanted long-term rehabilitation, transformational living, the kind that hard-wired people for improvement and renewed motivation to change. She wanted to give them second chances that would change their lives instead of simply breaking them of an addiction. This organization would be different. She worked with Coffee Hub’s Xenia manager, Missy, to find solutions together. They came up with a plan. And so Hope Hub was born, an organization that helps women through long-term recovery from drug addiction in the Xenia, Ohio area.

One of Cymp and Missy’s fundamental beliefs about working with people who have dealt with addiction is that recovery is a marathon. “Change is hard,” Cymp said, and it’s true. The issues that they hope to work through are more than just surface-level habits. They are core life changes that are hard to reconcile for people who have ridden the high of heroin, cocaine, meth. Missy and Cymp decided that they wouldn’t settle for throwing band-aids on the life-long wound of addiction. They wanted to provide lasting hope for these women. “We’re committed to a residential program that’s over a year long -- if not 14 months -- so that people have a real chance to re-learn some of those [habits].” And they decided to use Coffee Hub as just one step in the women’s process of re-learning. As women go through the program, they will be given a job behind the counter at the coffee shop, understanding the value of work while still being in a safe and compassionate environment.

What Cymp and Missy want most from this endeavor is to see these women freed. 

“We want to see women’s lives transformed so they’re no longer living a life of addiction but they’re living in freedom, that they’re ultimately set free from their addictions and the things that control them. That they would be whole. We want to see people whole.”

Aside from her outstanding entrepreneurial skills, Cymp has this core belief on her side: that there is power in being given a second chance, of being free, that every person who might seem broken beyond repair still has that chance to be made whole. Cymp wants these women to experience that. 

Hope Hub is the perfect name for what Cymp and Missy hope to see from this organization. To establish safety for women seeking refuge, and to provide hope for second chances. Hope Hub has not yet officially opened its doors, but they are excited for what is to come for the organization, from finding a building to creating a safe transformational living facility for women in recovery.