After my wife and children, preserving the gift of recovery for those who continue to struggle is the number one priority in my life. I am lucky that I’ve been able to give back since I first found a path to recovery after being paroled from prison in 1972.

Prior to that, I had spent the better part of 10 years progressing along a continuum that began with alcohol abuse, and culminated with heroin addiction. At 24 years old, I did not find recovery, recovery found me. After five previous treatment attempts, I entered a long-term therapeutic community.

After a decade of abuse, isolation and pain, I found a community that was unlike any I had experienced at any time in my life. That community gave me acceptance, accountability, and ultimately salvation. It allowed me to become someone I actually like most of the time. It allowed me to find a beautiful wife and father three beautiful, healthy children. And it allowed me to give back some of what I have been given.

Since 1985, I have been the director of that same program that helped me. In that time it has grown exponentially, and we now serve some 1,200 people per day in addiction treatment housing and community corrections programs.