More Than Just Luck Podcast
GeFZNBm2cEs
Bella arrived at Vista Maria believing she would be there for one week.
What followed, on her account to Greg Wier, was a fight to get out. She ran every chance she got. The episode title is her line: I ran every chance I got. The months did not resume the life she thought was waiting a few days out. She describes being trapped, and she describes what she says she had to do to avoid something worse. The episode warns viewers before it starts. It does not need a narrator to invent the worse thing. Bella is the one who lived the choice.
I ran every chance I got.
Watch Voices Unmuted Podcast Series on More Than Just Luck YouTube
A week is a specific promise. It tells a girl to cooperate, to pack light, to treat the building as a pause. Bella's story is what happens when the pause does not end and the exits are treated as misconduct. Running, in that frame, is not a character flaw. It is the only clock she still controlled.
Greg Wier, author of More Than Just Luck, lets the repeated attempts stand as the structure of the episode. She tried to leave. She was still there. She tried again. The facility in Dearborn Heights was supposed to be care for at-risk girls. Bella's account is about a stay that ignored its own timeline and then raised the cost of refusing it.
A civil lawsuit filed in Wayne County Circuit Court in April 2026 named six plaintiffs who say they were abused as minors while living at Vista Maria between 2000 and 2025. More than 100 former residents have come forward this year. More Than Just Luck has documented more than 25 stories of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, unsafe conditions, and negligence at the facility.
She thought the stay had an end date. The episode is what she says she did when the date turned out to be a story the building told her at the door.
Hosted by Greg Wier, the author of "More Than Just Luck," a no-nonsense, real-life memoir about ambition, betrayal and triumph, this episode is part of "Voices Unmuted." The series keeps each account at full length because a short clip leaves out the part that matters: what the guest says the place was supposed to be, and what she says it was instead. Bella thought Vista Maria would last a week is that account, written out so it can be read on its own.
End the Deadline on Justice for Child Abuse Survivors in Michigan.
