#1: SARINA DUVALL - “Someone who pickets abortion clinics.” (ORIGINAL COPY)
I have never fundamentally disagreed with anyone I like more than Sarina Duvall.
As soon as she picks me up in her burgundy Mitsubishi from the Pt. Pleasant Beach, New Jersey train station, I can hardly get a word in edge-wise she’s so animated and friendly and candid, her tone touched with a thick Jersey accent that comes and goes.
Sarina is 24 years old.Her dark hair is pulled back in a tight, curly bun and she has clear, tan skin, a product of her mixed Hispanic and Italian background. Her eyelashes are accented with black mascara. Sarina smiles a lot when she talks and she’s wearing a brightly colored knit scarf. Everything about her is warm and friendly.
Sarina is also one of those people you see picketing outside abortion clinics.
Recommended by the NBC page I have yet to interview, when I messaged her on Facebook, I nervously assured her that, though I disagreed with what she was doing, I was open to hearing her out. Sarina seemed delighted to oblige me.
At Green Planet Coffee, she tells me the reason that she protests abortion clinics, specifically the one in her hometown of Tom’s River, is religion.
“But we’re not there to condemn women or to throw stones,” she says. “We offer them prayer and counseling and advice and a hug. We say ‘God loves you.’ We want to lift them up.”
Born in Hoboken, Sarina and her family moved to Tom’s River when she was 10 years old. They were Catholic, though not particularly religious; Sarina says her mother was a drinker who quoted the Bible and then swore in the same breath. Her father was absent.
Teenage Sarina got heavily into alcohol, drugs, sexual promiscuity and bullying others on the streets. Most importantly, she was wildly unhappy.
Learning how to interview people. Researching people for studio.
