QUINCY -- His name was Adrian, but everyone called him Ace.

He was strong and handsome, a gym rat with shiny white teeth. He drove a black Lincoln Continental, black like his hair, with a red leather interior. He was friendly and had a great personality.

To 13-year-old Darlene Pawlik, he was everything she wanted and never had.

Pawlik was physically and sexually abused by relatives throughout her childhood. When she met Ace, she was living in a tenement in Haverhill with her mother, who had a series of abusive boyfriends. Pawlik became addicted to prescription pills when she was barely a teenager. She started to drink, run away from home, and commit vandalism to express the emotions she couldn't understand. Ace represented an escape from that life. Pawlik was so enamored by him that she never questioned why he didn't seem to have a job or why he spent his afternoons hanging out with young girls.

"Everything about this guy shined, and my little 13-year-old underdeveloped self went shiny," she recalled. "I had no idea that I was his target."

Ace groomed Pawlik and sexually abused her, later revealing that he was a sex trafficker who wanted to sell Pawlik to other men. He promised her that with him, she wouldn't have to worry about money. She refused, but after getting in a fight with her mother on her 14th birthday, she came back to Ace.

"He was so cool, and he sold me that day, and hundreds and hundreds more times," she said, adding: "I was a mess. Messiest mess you ever knew."

She was trafficked until she was 18 years old. She had never learned how to take care of herself or live in the adult world. She had no formal schooling or form of ID. It was as if she didn't exist. Eventually, she became pregnant and was pressured to get an abortion. She made the appointment under duress and cried herself to sleep that night. When she finally fell asleep, she had a vivid nightmare that she was an unborn baby being aborted. She woke up screaming.

"God," she prayed, "if you're real, I need you to show up because I'm not doing that."

In a sense, God did show up. Through a social worker, Pawlik met Marilyn Birnie. Birnie was the founder and leader of Friends of the Unborn, a nonprofit that operates a group home for pregnant women and their babies who otherwise would have been aborted. At Friends of the Unborn, Pawlik learned self-reliance, decision-making, and how to talk about her feelings. She was taught nutrition, personal finance, and other important skills for young mothers. She went on retreats and did spiritual exercises with priests.

"It's a respite for us to gather ourselves, to be able to retreat from that grind and from the turmoil of life, and to be able to learn how to just be and grow into ourselves," Pawlik said. "That's what Marilyn taught us."

Pawlik, who is now married with five children and seven grandchildren, shared her story at a 40th-anniversary gala held for Friends of the Unborn at Granite Links Golf Club in Quincy on Sept. 12. Prior to the gala, a 40th-anniversary Mass was celebrated by Father Michael McNamara at St. Mary Parish in Quincy. Both the Mass and the gala were attended by hundreds of donors, supporters, and volunteers.

"We have a lot of nonprofits that do a lot of good work, but none more important than what goes on in this program," Quincy Mayor Thomas P. Koch said in his remarks at the gala.

Pawlik said that Birnie was the first person she ever knew who showed her "love for love's sake."

"I didn't know people like you existed, people who would open their hands, their wallets, their hearts, their homes," she said. "I didn't know you existed. Everyone I knew had used me or abused me or both, or if they did take care of me, it was out of a pure sense of duty. Marilyn was different, and this ministry is different."

Pawlik herself was conceived through rape, a fact that her mother revealed when she was very young. This made Pawlik feel ashamed and worth less than others, but her mother would tell her, "We're in it together." She never even considered aborting her daughter.

"Opposed to that intense shame, I also had respect for life," Pawlik said, "because she saw me as a person before anyone else even knew that I existed. There was no doubt in my mind or in hers that I was worth having."

Birnie, who died in 2019 at age 77, founded Friends of the Unborn when she was living in Hull. She was a single mother of two daughters, Rachel and Heidi. Birnie met a pregnant woman named Jackie who was considering getting an abortion, and invited her to stay in the Birnies' extra bedroom. With the help of the Archdiocese of Boston Pregnancy Health Office, Jackie moved in on Sept. 11, 1984.

"Now, this is when you know that God was involved," Rachel said in her remarks. "I don't know if any of you have raised a teenager or especially a teenage girl at that, but Heidi and I, our answer was 'sure' without even a question."

To support Jackie and her baby, Birnie began speaking at churches. People quickly took notice of her ministry and began donating food, money, and supplies.

"I have to say that growing up in this unconventional environment doesn't seem unusual to me," Rachel said. "It was only when I got older did I really recognize what miraculously big, amazing, incredible things had happened, and what God can do with so-called ordinary people."

She recalled that Birnie used to say that "Friends of the Unborn is the result of 1,000 yeses."

"It's a blessing to the courageous women who said yes to life," Rachel said, "but it's also a vehicle for the incredible volunteers, so many of you in this room who share their time, their talent, their treasure, and their hope."

The current Friends of the Unborn home is 124 years old. The organization plans to give the home a $1 million renovation, which would gut the first and second floor, add new bedrooms so the mothers no longer need to share them, remodel the kitchen, add a new electrical system, insulate the house, replace the siding, and install new windows. More than half of the cost of the renovation has been donated by a single benefactor, and speakers encouraged gala attendees to help provide for the rest.

"We don't experience coincidences and luck," said Friends of the Unborn Executive Director Joan Bailey. "We witness miracles every day. And my favorite miracle of all is a newborn's smile, and that mother's smile, because of her renewed sense of faith, hope, and a better understanding of true love, God's love."

Former Friends of the Unborn resident Kelly Boitos also shared her story. Boitos discovered she was pregnant at 27. Both her boyfriend and her father were furious and demanded that she get an abortion, but she refused.

"I was sure the baby the Lord had given me was a gift," she said.

She believed this was true even as her pregnancy had complications. She developed hyperemesis, which caused severe nausea, weight loss, and vomiting. She was hospitalized several times for dehydration and became so sick that she could no longer work and, therefore, could no longer afford rent.

"I reached out to my mother and received the same painful rejection," she said. "My last-ditch effort was to seek support for my church, and I was met with harsh judgment. That was the most alone I had ever felt."

Then, she found a woman who led her to Birnie and Friends of the Unborn. Shortly after she moved in, she received a donation of brand-new clothes that were just her size (being almost six feet tall, finding clothes that fit isn't easy for her).

"It felt like a big hug from God," she said.

She and six other women at Friends of the Unborn ate together, did chores, learned how to be mothers, and studied the Bible. They had baby showers and were given new items as gifts -- Birnie refused to accept anything secondhand.

"Through all I went through," Boitos said, "the pain, the rejection, the humiliation, the abandonment, the accusations, I learned that my precious daughter and I were not forgotten. We were treated with love, unconditionally, without judgment."

Boitos gave birth to a daughter named Amanda. Amanda, now 26 and married, joined her mother on stage at the gala.

"Knowing all that my mom went through, how could I not feel the immense love shown to me before I took my first breath?" Amanda said. "But let me remind you, I am only one of many."

She asked those at the gala to imagine all of the babies saved by Friends of the Unborn as adults, on stage with families of their own.

"I don't know that they'd fit up here," she said, "but I say that because this is kingdom work that Friends of the Unborn is doing. This work changes the Kingdom of God."