From addict to business owner: A Milan woman's journey

(MILAN, Ind.) – A Milan woman has turned her life around and is now thriving as a small business owner. 

35-year-old Sara Riley is not scared to talk about her past and hopes her journey can inspire someone else. 

“I was an addict plain and simple. I had no dreams, hopes, or aspirations of going anywhere in life,” she recalled. 

Sara remembers that life of sleeping under bridges, coming up with lies and excuses and disappointing her family. 

“I was tired of having nothing, living the dirty gross lifestyle of an addict. I didn’t think I would see 30 living the way I was. My kids needed me to show up and no one was going to do it for me,” Sara said. 

Her mom passed away while Sara was in jail and that changed everything.

“They weren’t going to let me even be part of her funeral. I couldn’t do it anymore after that,” she recalled. 

She got clean and started working at a gas station before taking a job with a home healthcare organization that served clients who had worked at the Fernald plant in Ohio. 

“Most of those clients have some kind of cancer from the uranium. I would get attached to clients while helping them with basic cleaning, organizing, and every day tasks around their homes,” Sara recalled. 

She was a single mother of two children and that job wasn’t enough to pay all the bills. 

That’s when Sara decided she would also start a part-time cleaning business in order to make ends meet. 

“I have always loved cleaning. I used to help my grandma when she had her cleaning business,” Sara recalled. 

She started out with nothing more than a cardboard box and a few bottles of cleaner. 

“I took the jobs no one would want and I would underbid just to have the business,” she said. 

Getting those part-time jobs wasn't easy as she was only two years into recovery, and knew some homeowners wouldn’t want a former addict in their house. 

It was around that time when one of her home healthcare patients that she was close with passed away. Sara knew she couldn’t stay in a job that brought that much emotional loss for much longer. 

So, she took a major risk and decided to go full-time with the cleaning business. 

“I printed business cards, and left them everywhere I could think of. I made a business page on Facebook and shared it around,” she recalled. 

Riley is now celebrating her 7th year of owning and operating Sara’s Residential and Business Cleaning! 

And she’s done it all while maintaining a completely sober lifestyle and raising her children. 

“I’m very detail-oriented, maybe a little too much that some may think it is OCD,” she laughs. “But helping people keeps me sober and the cleaning tasks itself is like therapy for me!”

Sara stays so busy that she now employees one of her friends and the two of them often work seven days a week.  

She feels blessed by the large number of homeowners and businesses that she’s been able to assist across the Tri-State. 

“I have clients who are a little older and just happy to have a little extra help around the house to local businesses that have entrusted me to get their stores back to healthy, safe conditions for the public, and that means a lot,” she said. 

Sara even helped an Aurora gas station reopen and pass their Board of Health Inspection following the floods in April 2025. 

She’s built her own successful business and it all began with just a cardboard box, some cleaner and the drive to change her life. 

“This small business is my heart and I take great pride in the work we do! I never thought I would do something with my life like this and it may not be much, but to me it’s huge,” she said. 

Riley hopes her story can reach someone who might be struggling or thinking about using again. You can follow Sara’s Residential and Business Cleaning by clicking here.