Karen Ormiston was not having an easy time…. However, instead of telephoning her mother or off-loading her worries over a bottle of wine with her best friend, she was eventually put in touch with a complete stranger.

'It was one of the best moves I've ever made,' she claims. The woman on the other end of the telephone was Lesley McDonald, from Edinburgh, one of more than 200 life coaches in Britain.

Cheryl Barnes, a 1972 graduate of McKinley High School, had lost her parents and her home and had been laid off from a night janitorial job in 1984. After psychiatric treatment, counseling and "the inspiration of friends," she now works as a "life coach" helping other homeless women at the shelter.