SPRINGFIELD, Mass. - Baking cakes was not always the plan for Eileen Perez.

She said she and her four children endured years of domestic abuse from her ex-husband when they lived in Puerto Rico.

Everything changed the day she took a leap of faith.

“Seeing that my kids are suffering. I said ‘No.’ I think that is the time for me to get out from here,” Perez said.. “Because if not, I’m going to lose my life, and then my kids are going to lose their mom. So I closed my eyes and then I get out from there.”

Perez said she and her kids came to Massachusetts with only $175. She got support from her sister, but was sleeping in her car while selling homemade cakes.

Eileen started making cakes when she was 11 years old. She said she fell in love with the process when she saw her neighbor put one together.

And an assignment to create a special cake for a child helped inspire her to make baking her career.

“Spiderman. Trying to build something with the Spiderman coming down,” Perez said. “I found the toy, I put the toy, I make the cake, and he was in love with the cake. Everybody taste the cake. Everybody. So from there, until whatever you see now.”

Perez now owns Eileen Cak’s Supplies & More in Chicopee, and teaches baking classes to women, many of them stay-at-home moms.

“They working from home. They can’t go out. So it’s nice. It’s nice when you see this. You changed the life of only one- one it doesn’t matter,” said Perez. “There don’t have be thousands, but one that you see, she used to sell, you say, ‘Oh, so I’m done. I’m good. I feel good.’”

Perez said she wants to create more opportunities for people who come from similar backgrounds, and encourages all women who are in abusive relationships or feeling a lack of fulfillment in life to have faith things can turn around. 

“It’s not going to be easy. But not impossible. When you have the faith that- The first step is getting out. Once you get out from there,” said Perez. “You start looking for the tools to do what you want to do.”