Sunita Williams wasn’t the kind of kid who wanted to be an astronaut when she grew up. She wanted to be a veterinarian. But she managed to achieve the former kid’s dream job, anyway.

Williams, 52, has completed two missions to the International Space Station, spending over 11 months orbiting the Earth in total. She holds the record total cumulative spacewalk time by a female astronaut, having spent 50 hours and 40 minutes outside the International Space Station. She’s continued her career in space on Earth as a member of NASA’s Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap), a group of veteran astronauts that works with privately-held companies like Space X and Boeing to develop spacecrafts.

Part of her job is to verify that the companies’ spacecraft can launch, maneuver in orbit and dock to stationary spacecraft like the ISS. NASA announced the CCtCap in 2015 as part of “the Obama Administration’s plan to partner with U.S. industry to transport astronauts to space, create good-paying American jobs and end the nation’s sole reliance on Russia for space travel.”

“This is really different from my old job, you know,” Williams said. When she became an astronaut, the shuttle was already laid out. “It was all documented and out there, and [I] went through classes to understand all the systems,” she said. “The plan was there, and you had to get this, this and this done before you could go fly out in space.”

Her path to the stars began with the Navy. Williams graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy with a bachelor’s in physical science in 1987. After graduation, she was designated a Basic Diving Officer at the Naval Coastal System Command. She was designated a Naval Aviator in 1989, and went on to log more than 3,000 flight hours in more than 30 different aircraft.

Williams received a master’s degree in engineering management from the Florida Institute of Technology in 1995. In 1997, she, along with more than 100 other people, applied for a position as an astronaut. After more than a year of interviewing, she was selected by NASA in June 1998. Williams spent five months training for her first mission, and received intensive instruction in shuttle and ISS systems, and water and wilderness survival techniques. Williams also spent nine days underwater in NASA’s undersea Aquarius laboratory.

Williams took her first ride into space on Dec. 9, 2006 aboard the STS-116. “We were hootin’ and hollering,” Williams said of her first takeoff. “It is like the best roller coaster ride you’ve ever been on.”

“You take your gloves off, your gloves start to float,” she recalled. “It’s a whole different mindset. It’s pretty spectacular.”

Williams served as Expedition 14/15’s flight engineer, and returned to Earth on June 22, 2007. On July 14, 2012, Williams returned to the ISS as part of Expedition 32/33 to conduct general research abroad the orbiting laboratory. She returned to Earth on November 18, 2012.

For Williams, every day at the International Space Station was different. “One day you might be cleaning the toilet, next day you might be doing some potentially Nobel Prize-winning science,” she said.

Williams says that during her two long stays aboard the ISS, she and her fellow crew members worked to keep a normal earthbound schedule and a sense of regularity to their days. “We get up at 6 o’ clock or so, and there’s daily planning conferences with control centers all over the world,” she said.

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Sunita Williams performs maintenance during a spacewalk outside the International Space Station in 2012. The astronaut has spent more than 50 hours “spacewalking”.

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NASA Photo

On Fridays, the astronauts would indulge in films from both Russia and the United States. Williams recalled that Groundhog Day was a favorite, given how repetitive the days aboard the ISS could feel. By the time she returned permanently to Earth in 2012, she had spent 322 total days in space — at the time, her combined stints were the longest on record for women astronauts.

Since the discontinuation of NASA’s Space Shuttle program in 2011, U.S. astronauts have had to rely on Russian shuttles to get into orbit — which Williams and her internationally sourced crew did during her 2012 mission. Compared to its heyday, publicly funded space travel in the U.S. was no longer a hugely viable option for those wishing to explore space — but as it turned out, private space travel was.

Privately funded companies such as Space X and Boeing have made it their business over the past two decades to take over some parts of space travel from NASA. That business is booming — just last month, Space X successfully launched the most powerful rocket in decades. The launch was one small step toward Space X founder Elon Musk’s ultimate vision: a colony of a million people living on Mars.

In order to achieve those otherworldly ambitions, Space X and other private companies need the right kind of people working for them — people like Williams.

The space machinery of private companies that Williams now supports are still works-in-progress. “They don’t really have training systems established for them yet,” she said. “We’re sort of creating that right now with the folks at the companies.” That means deciding what things are important for astronauts to know — “classic things like getting in your seat, reach[ing] all the controls,” she said. “We’re establishing all that with the companies right now.” Her contributions have helped to build the Boeing CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX Dragon.

Williams’ work has also provided transportation for NASA astronauts to her old base, the ISS. And more broadly, Williams says that private space companies just want to keep learning and exploring. Though she works with familiar components and protocols, she says her new job feels like a new frontier. Williams hopes to revisit the ISS in the future on the very spacecraft she’s helping to develop.

“We want to keep finding the next thing,” she said. “And this type of exploration with a common goal, a common good of looking at something farther and bigger than ourselves. It totally opens the door for collaboration and cooperation for people from all over the world.”

NPR’s Noor Wazwaz helped to produce this story for broadcast.

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Autumn Weese thinks she was fired last month, but she isn’t entirely sure. Weese told her boss at an Arkansas coffee shop she needed to cut back her hours as she pursued her master’s degree.

“The last email I got from her said that she … ‘totally understood the situation,’ ” Weese says. But then colleagues started telling her how sorry they were to hear she was leaving in two weeks. That was when Weese started suspecting she had been fired.

“Everybody knew that I was done with the company, before I did, which was upsetting,” she says. “And also, they were all told that I quit by choice, not that I was fired, and so that was kind of awkward as well.”

Weese emailed the owners and her boss, but no one responded. So for weeks, she continued checking through a scheduling app on her phone to see whether she was put back on a shift, thinking at first that it might just be a mistake, instead of a big insult.

“I just want someone to … look me in the eye and tell me that I’m done,” Weese says.

Similar incidents have been playing out in the highest offices of government. Earlier this month, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly found out he had been fired via Twitter. Last summer, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus was canned in similar fashion. And former FBI Director James Comey found out he had lost his job from seeing it on TV.

That is not to say this is, or should be, common practice, says Dan Ryan, principal of Ryan Search and Consulting near Nashville, Tenn. He says there is no excuse for disrespecting people as you dismiss them.

“Especially now, if you’re leading an organization, you don’t need any negatives out there about how you treat people,” he says. Word gets out, and recruitment will be even harder than it is already. “I mean, it’s tough enough to find skilled people now,” Ryan says.

He says a botched firing can destroy morale for existing staff, as well as turn off prospective hires.

Employers who don’t follow the proper process could also open themselves up to claims of discrimination or wrongful termination.

“There’s every reason in the world not to fire someone on Twitter,” says Tracie Sponenberg, senior vice president of human resources at The Granite Group and an expert with the Society for Human Resource Management. At the same time, she acknowledges that rumors travel quickly over text or chat systems like Slack. In her job, she says, sometimes workers find out they’re getting fired before she gets to talk to them.

“In this day and age, nothing’s private: Something’s on Facebook, or something’s on Twitter, or something Snapchatted the moment it happened,” she says. “So, oftentimes, everyone knows before you get a chance to even talk about it.”

Some blame social media for a decline in workplace civility, but Troy Speers, and engineer in the San Jose, Calif., area, says publicly humiliating terminations are nothing new. Decades ago, he worked at a firm that conducted layoffs over the company’s public speaker system.

A couple dozen names would be read over the speakers, and those workers were told to report to human resources. After several minutes, Speers says, the roll call would restart, like a firing squad. This continued for days.

“You felt really bad for the people who got whacked,” Speers says. “Then after a while, we were like, ‘I know I’m going to be next, so call my name so we can get it over with.’ “

All work ceased, as people grimly said their goodbyes.

“All bridges are burned,” he says. “It was that wounding to your mentality.”

Bridget Garcia was encouraged to go on vacation and told she would come back to a higher-paying position. But she returned to find that everyone left her behind on an assignment and that she had no job.

Christie Meier-Livingston /Courtesy of Bridget Garcia

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Christie Meier-Livingston /Courtesy of Bridget Garcia

Blasting pink slips over the loudspeaker is one thing. But Bridget Garcia says having a boss avoid the conversation is just as awful.

Garcia, who lives in Pasadena, Calif., was working on a kids’ TV show over a decade ago when she was told that she would get a promotion and that she should take a few weeks off while the show went on hiatus.

“I said, ‘Oh, that’s great, I’ll go visit my sister in Bermuda,’ ” she says. Garcia says her boss responded: “That should be so fun for you and then you’ll come back and you’ll be making more money, so it’s not a problem.”

But when Garcia returned, she found the entire office had already left for a shoot — without her. She called her boss, who told her, “Oh, yeah, there’s no job for you. How was your vacation?”

“It felt like total betrayal because I felt I had been tricked into training my replacement, spending money that I would no longer have,” Garcia says, and she felt tricked into believing that the people she worked with respected her.

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Jacqueline Haney’s boss left a voice message firing her — on someone else’s phone.

Mark Leibold/Courtesy of Jacqueline Haney

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Mark Leibold/Courtesy of Jacqueline Haney

And then there is the case of Jacqueline Haney of Easthampton, Mass. A couple of months ago, she reported to work early, when her boss demanded to know what she was doing there. Haney says she started explaining she was fixing database errors, when her boss said, “No, why are you here, didn’t you get my phone message?”

Turns out the boss had left a voicemail firing Haney over the weekend, but on the wrong phone. “This woman who fired me for making mistakes had apparently made a mistake in firing me,” Haney says.

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Workers in traditional steel towns across the country are rejoicing over President Trump’s steep tariffs on imported steel that go into effect Friday.

Especially in Granite City, Ill., where U.S. Steel is calling back 500 laid-off workers to restart one of its two idled blast furnaces at a mill there.

That mill is the town’s largest employer and for decades Granite City’s fortunes have largely tracked the success of the steel industry.

That even goes back to the city’s founding in 1896, because the enormous steel mill that Granite City is known for wasn’t built in the town. It was actually the other way around.

“Our community here, Granite City, was originally designed as a planned community, much like Pullman in Chicago is kind of famous for being,” says James Amos, Granite City’s Economic Development Director. “This community continued to be built around specifically the steel mill.”

For more than a century, this city across the Mississippi from St. Louis has been known as a “steel town.” No one knows that better than Delmar Farless, who is more than a century old.

“I’m almost six months past! My birthday was in September,” says the 100 1/2-year-old Farless. “And I’ve lived here since 1924.”

As he eats lunch with some younger friends at Petri Cafe, Farless recalls that like many in this town of 29,000, he worked in the town’s signature mill.

“When I got first married,” he says, “I worked two years at Granite City Steel,” which is what it was called then, decades before U.S. Steel would buy it.

And Farless says it is what put Granite City on the map.

“If it wasn’t for Granite City Steel, people wouldn’t have came here,” he says. “That was the main place, boy, when I was a kid.”

At it’s peak in the 1970s, the mill was a massive operation, employing more than 4,500 people.

There were still about 2,000 people working there in December of 2015, when U.S. Steel cut way back, laying off all but a few hundred workers.

The ripple effect of losing those good paying jobs hit the community hard. It also hurt suppliers and machine shops that work with the mill, as well as those who work in logistics — running the trucks, trains and barges that bring raw materials to and from the steel mill.

“Today, we’ve got a situation where we’ve got another 40-plus companies in the heavy metals industrial cluster in the area,” says economic development director James Amos. “And so all of these businesses are integrated together, they work together in kind of a symbiotic way.”

“U.S. Steel’s production facility is by far the largest of them,” says Amos, acknowledging that the mill’s impact on Granite City’s economy is huge.

But “Granite City does not live and die on one steel mill,” he is quick to add. “We’re a bigger town than that and there are other thriving jobs in our community.”

He points to the city’s medical center, the Prairie Farms dairy, a Kraft Foods processing plant, trucking companies, the rail yards and America’s Central Port at the intersection of two of the nation’s busiest waterways, the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers.

Still, Larry Petri says he sure feels it when there are layoffs at the mill.

He runs Petri Cafe, which his parents started 71 years ago just down the street from the gigantic steel mill. He says the ebb and flow there has always affected the cafe’s fortunes.

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Just down the street from the steel mill in Granite City, Ill., stands Petri Cafe. Owner Larry Petri says for the past 71 years the ebb and flow of the mill has always affected the cafe’s business.

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David Schaper/NPR

Petri has weathered many steel industry downturns over the years, but now says that U.S. Steel is not the only game in town.

“We have another mill, American Steel, down there, we have the hospital, we have other smaller businesses that have seen the effect of the mill being shut down but they’ve survived,” Petri says.

Among those survivors is Laura Smith, who with her husband owns Holt’s Shoe Shop.It specializes in metatarsal industrial work boots.

“It has a steel toe and this plate that goes on top of it,” she explains, “so if they drop something on it, it doesn’t break their foot.”

These metatarsal boots are required for anyone working inside the steel mill and it’s a big part of the Smiths’ business.

“When they shut down, we went down about 28 percent,” she says.

But Holt’s Shoes has survived by catering to customers who work in those other, albeit overshadowed industries, including the area’s rail yards, the port, the food and beverage processing plants, and other factories.

The longtime family-owned shop, which they bought from the Holts a couple of years ago, also does shoe repairs, a personal touch that helps it stave off competition from big retailers like Walmart.

Granite City’s long-term economic development plan emphasizes the kind of entrepreneurship demonstrated by the Smiths and people like Brenda Whitacre, who spent many years working in the mill herself.

“I was a coiler operator on the 80-inch hot strip and I worked there for 15 years,” she says, before deciding to go out on her own.

Whitacre’s first venture was a quaint restaurant called the Garden Gate Tea Room, which NPR first featured seven years ago in a story on efforts to diversify the economy in Granite City after the great recession.

She still owns and runs that restaurant and is now opening a new one, a 24-hour diner.Whitacre has added a used book store called Novel Idea Bookstore & More, which also sells used record albums, vintage posters, assorted knick-knacks and includes a sweet shop with nostalgic nickel and dime candy.

“It’s just kind of a fun, funky place,” says Whitacre.

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Brenda Whitacre spent many years working in the steel mill in Granite City, Ill., before deciding to go out on her own. She now owns a used book store which also sells used records, vintage posters, assorted knick-knacks and more.

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David Schaper/NPR

And funky it is: the record room’s vinyl flooring is made up of scratched and damaged records and has to be one of the few places in America where you can pick up a Nancy Drew mystery, buy a vintage KISS concert poster and browse old Beatles and Coltrane records while your kids snack on Pixie Stix, Slo-Pokes, Chuckles and Bottlecaps.

“I always try to do something that isn’t there … that fills another niche and that you can’t find anyplace else,” says Whitacre, who is 55. “I didn’t want to copy anyone else in town. I wanted to try to create something else and to fill a need.”

Though she’s tucked away in downtown Granite City, away from busy highways and thoroughfares, the town center is just a 10 to 15 minute drive from downtown St. Louis. Her customers come from across the region.

“You would be surprised, the people who want old-school stuff,” says Whitacre while scanning through the used VHS tapes she sells.

“And I think that’s what a town like my town needs,” the life-long Granite City resident says. It needs “a different experience” to stand out in tough and competitive economic times.

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The vinyl flooring is made up of scratched and damaged records.

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David Schaper/NPR

The eclectic mix of businesses appears to be successful. Whitacre says she has 35 employees, and her businesses have grown even during the last two years while the U.S. Steel mill has been largely shut down.

“My personal business is not affected because I wouldn’t say I have a huge amount of steelworkers that come here,” she says.

There has been other business and cultural growth in the community, too, with an independent coffee and sandwich shop by day that becomes a music venue at night, a new movie theater, a new arts center in development and a nonprofit theater company that performs in a renovated old church.

But those efforts are not producing the kinds of jobs that pay like those at the steel mill when it’s running, nor like those in the industry’s supply and distribution chains.

And when the blast furnaces go cold?

“What I’ve noticed, being in business all of these years, is when you have something like the mill and it’s been shuttered and it’s in your community, and people hear that that’s no longer a viable industrial base … they view your entire community as downtrodden … it’s a dead town,” Whitacre says.

James Amos, the economic development director, echoes those concerns. He insists that Granite City would survive without U.S. Steel, but he concedes that one of the problems attracting new businesses is the perception that that mammoth mill is all this city has to offer.

“If people hear that it is not in business, or it’s on a partial shutdown or whatever, they’re just not as inclined to invest in our community,” Amos says. “They’re more inclined to take those dollars and go somewhere else.”

Amos and others in Granite City say they still have a lot of work to do to prove to investors that this town has more to offer than just steel. That includes a strong workforce and access to river, rail and highway transportation networks, among other assets, which are the very same things that initially led planners to wrap this city around a steel mill in the first place, well over a century ago.

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The Weinstein Company Holdings LLC announced that it has filed for voluntary bankruptcy and entered into an agreement to sell its assets to a Dallas-based equity firm.

It also announced that it is ending all nondisclosure agreements that prevented victims of alleged sexual misconduct at the hands of disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein from talking about their experiences.

The Weinstein Co. will enter into a “stalking horse” agreement with an affiliate of Lantern Capital Partners in conjunction with entering into bankruptcy proceedings.

“Under the agreement, Lantern will purchase substantially all of the assets of the Company, subject to certain conditions including approval of the Bankruptcy Court. The Board selected Lantern in part due to Lantern’s commitment to maintain the assets and employees as a going concern,” said the company in a statement released late Monday.

But it was the second and third paragraphs of the statement that are likely to draw even greater attention in light of the many women who have come forward to accuse Weinstein of sexually harassment and abuse.

“Today, the Company also takes an important step toward justice for any victims who have been silenced by Harvey Weinstein. Since October, it has been reported that Harvey Weinstein used non-disclosure agreements as a secret weapon to silence his accusers.

Effective immediately, those “agreements” end. The Company expressly releases any confidentiality provision to the extent it has prevented individuals who suffered or witnessed any form of sexual misconduct by Harvey Weinstein from telling their stories. No one should be afraid to speak out or coerced to stay quiet. The Company thanks the courageous individuals who have already come forward. Your voices have inspired a movement for change across the country and around the world.”

The announcement comes after a group of investors, led by former Obama administration official, Maria Contreras-Sweet, tried and failed to purchase the assets of The Weinstein Co. earlier this month. That deal, which would have re-invented the firm as a female-run company, collapsed upon the discovery of debt previously unknown by the investors.

Weinstein has been accused of raping or sexually assaulting many women over decades.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who has brought suit against The Weinstein Co., Harvey Weinstein and his brother, Bob Weinstein, issued a statement praising the announcement.

“This is a watershed moment for efforts to address the corrosive effects of sexual misconduct in the workplace. The Weinstein Company’s agreement to release victims of and witnesses to sexual misconduct from non-disclosure agreements—which my office has sought throughout this investigation and litigation—will finally enable voices that have for too long been muzzled to be heard.”

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Celina Raddatz quit her job at a nursing home in 2014 when she realized she would have to take care of her mother full-time. Raddatz’s mother, Guadalupe Pena Villegas, 83, suffers from Alzheimer’s and bipolar disorder, a combination that sometimes makes her a danger to herself and others, and thus requires her to be supervised 24 hours a day.

Raddatz and one of her sisters, Rosalia Lizarraga, 61, had been caring for their mother together. But as the Alzheimer’s progressed, the task became too stressful for Lizarraga. The full responsibility fell on Raddatz, who was determined to fulfill a promise she and her siblings had made their mother as children.

“When my mother was sane, she made us promise never to put her in a nursing home. And of course, us young kids said, ‘OK, mom we would never …’ ” Raddatz says. “But we never ever once ever thought that she would get sick like this.”

As the elderly population in the United States grows, an increasing number of people require extra help in their daily lives. Because of this, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts employment for home health aides will grow 40% between 2016 and 2026. Hiring private caregivers, however, can be a financial burden for some families who can’t afford to pay an average of $22,170 a year for extra help.

Many families take on the responsibility of caring for their aging relatives. In some cases, like Raddatz’s, it can leave little time for other employment. Luckily, there are federally and state-funded programs across the country that allow elderly individuals like Raddatz’s mother to use Medicaid funds to hire their own personal caregivers – including family members.

“We noticed that she was not right”

Raddatz, 57, was born in Mexico. Her mother, a widow, supported nine children as a food vendor. When Raddatz was 8 years-old, her mother married a U.S. soldier, who immigrated the entire family to the United States, where the couple had two more children.

Raddatz’s mother and stepfather divorced two years after moving to the U.S. in 1971 and the family relocated Los Angeles.

“My mom was a very strong woman,” Raddatz says. Due to gang activity in their east L.A. neighborhood, when Raddatz was growing up, her mother quit her job and began collecting welfare so she could stay home and keep an eye on her children.

“She would take us to school and bring us home. She would not let us walk alone to school.”

Raddatz and her siblings first began to notice their mother changing in 2005 after she had a bad fall while working as a housekeeper.

“She kept telling this story that she fell at work and her head fell in her lap and she picked it up and put it back on her shoulders,” Raddatz says. “We kept telling her, ‘Mom, that’s impossible’ and she would get upset. And that’s when we noticed that she was not right.”

In 2006, Raddatz’s mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

“It’s just constant, constant, work”

At the time, Raddatz was working as an activity director at a nursing home in La Mesa, Calif. Her job was to make sure the residents remained engaged with their community through special outings and social events. “You get close to these people after working there for so many years and we felt like a family. Definitely,” Raddatz says.

It’s a field in which she’d spent more than 30 years working across California, having started out as certified nursing assistant. And she noted, her inspiration to pursue a career caring for the elderly came from tending to her grandmother as a teenager.

So when it became clear that her mother could no longer live by herself, Raddatz’s siblings turned to her as the most qualified to look after the elderly matriarch. Raddatz knew, however, there was a distinction between providing care professionally at a facility and caring for an elderly relative at home.

“It’s a lot easier doing it at work because you get a break,” Raddatz says. “And when you go home and you work taking care of your own parent, you don’t get a break. It’s 24/7, nonstop. It’s just constant, constant, work.”

But nonetheless, she quit her job at the nursing home and moved her mother in with her.

Shortly after leaving her job, Raddatz lost her apartment in El Cahon, Calif. and moved into her sisters’ home in Riverside. She cares for her mother around the clock, preparing her meals, helping her bathe and dress, and keeping her calm and entertained during the day. They also share a bedroom, so Raddatz can assist her mother when she wakes up throughout the night.

“Cash and Counsel” program

For about a year Raddatz cared for her mother without an income until one day in December, 2015, a social worker friend of hers recommended a government program called In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS). IHSS is what is called a “Cash and Counsel” program, which allows disabled and elderly individuals to use federal and state funds to hire their own help as they need it. These caregivers help their employers with anything from getting dressed to cooking meals to making sure they take their medication. Caregivers can be anyone the employer chooses (as long as the person passes a background check), including friends and family.

“I was very excited,” Raddatz says. “I was happy to hear that the government had such a program because we were in so much need.”

Raddatz registered her mother with IHSS and completed her background check. But when a social worker came to their home to evaluate her mother’s level of need, she was only granted 44 hours a month to hire a caregiver for an hourly wage of $10.50.

Programs like IHSS use evaluations to determine how much time a day an individual requires assistance and with what tasks. For the evaluation process, a social worker from San Diego County came to Raddatz’s home and did a physical and mental assessment of her mother. Because her mother is able-bodied and was able to respond to the simple interview questions the social worker asked, it was determined she needed less extensive care.

Raddatz was taken aback by how few hours her mother had been approved for, based on the amount of care she provided her mother every day. She felt the interview portion of her mother’s assessment hadn’t been thorough enough to accurately gauge her mother’s need for care. The social worker only asked two or three simple questions during the interview, to which Raddatz’s mother’s responses didn’t demonstrate the full extent of her dementia.

Caring for her mother “until the very end”

Raddatz had learned about a home care providers’ union, UDW, during her registration with IHSS and reached out to them out to see if they could help. With UDW, Raddatz began the process of appealing the number of hours her mother was given. But even with the lack of paid hours, Raddatz says she is determined to care for her mother until the very end because “it’s more than a job.”

“It’s a family responsibility because of the promises we made her when she was younger,” Raddatz says.

After her mother passes, Raddatz says she intends to return to her old job and when she does, it will be with a greater understanding of the families she serves. It used to pain Raddatz to see families leave their relatives with dementia in a nursing home. Now, she says, she has a personal appreciation for the emotional and physical sacrifices that caring for an elderly loved one involves.

“I can relate more to these families and my heart goes out to them,” says Raddatz says. “Even more so now than before.”

After Raddatz was interviewed for this story, San Diego County conducted another evaluation of her mother’s needs. In November, it was determined her mom was eligible for the maximum number of hours allowed through IHSS, which is 283 hours a month — approximately 70 hours a week. Additionally, Raddatz is paid overtime for every hour she works past 40 a week, is receiving back-pay for hours worked since June, 2017 and was given a small raise at the beginning of the year.

Raddatz says even though her hourly rate is lower than her old job, she is now making more than she did as a nursing home activity director. With the recent improvements to their standard and quality of life, Raddatz and her mother hope to move out of her sister’s house soon and into their own home.

NPR’s Alexi Horowitz Ghazi contributed to this report.

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Singer Rihanna denounced an ad that appeared on Snapchat making a game of domestic violence that featured photographs of her and Chris Brown. And the social media app’s stock price went tumbling.

“Now SNAPCHAT I know you already know you ain’t my fav app out there,” Rihanna said in a statement posted Thursday on rival social media platform Instagram, where she has 61 million followers. “I’d love to call it ignorance, but I know you ain’t that dumb! You spent money to animate something that would intentionally bring shame to DV victims and made a joke of it!!!”

The ad was for the mobile game “Would You Rather,” which asks users a series of questions, sometimes offensive. The ad said, “Would you rather slap Rihanna” or “punch Chris Brown.”

In 2009, Brown pleaded guilty to felony assault after Rihanna accused him of beating her and trying to push her out of a car. Photos emerged of her with a bruised face.

Snapchat had already yanked the ad Monday and issued an apology. But the ad reappeared on social media as users circulated it and questioned its content.

“Just awful,” Chelsea Clinton tweeted. “Awful that anyone thinks this is funny. Awful that anyone thinks this is appropriate. Awful that any company would approve this.”

Apparently Snapchat agreed.

“This advertisement is disgusting and never should have appeared on our service,” a Snapchat spokesperson said in a statement. “We are so sorry we made the terrible mistake of allowing it through our review process. We are investigating how that happened so that we can make sure it never happens again.”

Snapchat has an automated ad-buying platform. But company policy states, “All ads are subject to our review and approval.” It also says it prohibits “Shocking, sensational, or disrespectful content.”

In her Instagram post, Rihanna went on to say, “This isn’t about my personal feelings, cause I don’t have much of them…but all the women, children and men that have been victims of DV in the past and especially the ones who haven’t made it out yet…you let us down! Shame on you. Throw the whole app-oligy away.”

Investors apparently heeded the call and threw away some stock. Snap Inc’s stock prices fell around 4 percent later Thursday, wiping out nearly $800 million from its market value, reports CNN. By Friday, it had rebounded some, but closed the week with a 1 percent loss.

Snapchat has experience with the kind of influence celebrities can wield. Last month after Snapchat changed its layout, Kylie Jenner, one of its most popular users, tweeted that she was no longer using the app.

The company’s stock quickly fell 6 percent, erasing more than a billion dollars from its market value, said CNN.

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