October marks Domestic Violence Awareness Month and to bring attention to this important issue, we caught up with Carol Minchew, a volunteer with Sojourner Center, a Phoenix-based domestic violence shelter founded in 1977. “Sojourner Center has been at the forefront of providing outstanding services to victims, their children, and recently, their pets, fleeing the trauma of both physical and verbal/mental abuse,” she says. Retired from a successful interior design career that spanned 40 years, Minchew is the mother of two grown children and four “amazing” grandchildren and has been married to her second husband, Weldon, for 48 years.