When Bottle, Needle Are Winning, Mission Steps In With Hope

Lee Johnson was living on the edge and shooting “John Belushis”--potentially lethal combinations of cocaine and heroin--into his arm when he wondered one day if he would ever crawl out of his own personal black hole. He was 40ish, going on dead.

“I didn’t want to go to some phony-baloney dry-out place where the owner’s son is doping the place and the counselors are hooked, so I started talking to the chaplain at the Union Rescue Mission.

“He asked me, ‘Do you want to accept the Lord?’ I had to accept something from somebody because what I was doing wasn’t working,” Johnson said.

So the street-wise but worn-out Johnson, who had led a life of “fast cars, fast women, fast police and slow drugs” in Los Angeles, agreed to give his life a Christian focus and be sent to a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in Vista.

“I said, ‘Vista? Where’s that, the other side of Mars?’ But I figured it must be greener grounds, and here I came.”

Salvaging Lives

“Here” is the Green Oak Ranch, a 142-acre retreat and rehabilitation center in northern San Diego County quietly owned and operated by the Union Rescue Mission to salvage the lives of men who were going nowhere fast on Skid Row.

At the ranch, set in a rural little valley snuggled between new industrial parks and one of Vista’s hallmark residential neighborhoods, more than 1,000 men who were momentarily sober enough to seek help at the Union Rescue Mission in downtown Los Angeles have learned to put distance between themselves and the booze and drugs that drained them of their dignity.

In groups of 40 at a time, they live here for a year or more, combining a program of schooling, job training and Christian devotion in order to dry out, learn a skill and get a job. Not all of them will succeed but those who do--like Johnson--say they’ll never return to the Skid Row of any city.

Johnson remembers his first impression when he arrived at the ranch nine months ago: “ ‘I think I just took a step towards Heaven.’ They told me I couldn’t leave the ranch for a month and I kept on wondering, ‘Why would I want to leave?’

“And now you’re looking at the closest thing you’ll ever see to a miracle,” he said. “. . . As long as I can say I haven’t shot up any dope today, I’m winning. For me, it’s been almost 10 months.”

The rehabilitation center is only half the story of Green Oak Ranch, albeit the more dramatic portion.

Half the ranch is open to the public, developed as a youth camp and retreat center. Any given year, more than 5,000 people stay at the complex where they enjoy horseback riding and hay rides, campfires and swimming, horseshoes and volleyball.

The ranch began operations in 1950--back when the area was virtually undeveloped--and has operated without controversy ever since, even as growth has encroached upon neighboring hillsides.

Ranch operators say the rustic environment, with its trees and stream, horse corrals and barns, serves an important role in helping to develop new beginnings in life for men who thought they were facing dead-ends.

But most important to the success of the ranch program, they say, is the commitment and fellowship of the men who come to Green Oak Ranch.

If Los Angeles’ Skid Row used to be the domain of men in their 40s, 50s and 60s who bottomed out in life by looking into the bottom of wine bottles, today’s fraternity includes younger people like Kingsley Johnson who have hit bottom because of drugs.

Johnson is 26. He was fired from his job on an assembly line and had a drug-related rap sheet when he walked one day into the Union Rescue Mission, looking for food.

He ended up in Vista, at the chaplain’s suggestion.

“Every day I’m here I’m growing stronger. When I first came here, I could hardly provide for myself. Now I want to become a meat cutter and now I’m thinking about starting a family so I can provide for others, too.”

The men are selected for admission to Green Oak Ranch based on an interview with Union Rescue Mission chaplains in Los Angeles and Vista.

“They have to be willing to commit themselves to becoming sober through the rigors of an alcohol and drug abuse program, to put in eight hours of work a day and in going to school,” said the Rev. Bill Bird, the head chaplain at the Vista facility.

“We look for commitment, for them being honest to themselves, to God and to us, and to have gratitude. If they’re not going to have thanksgiving in their heart for God, they won’t make it here.”

Newcomers are put in an eight-week orientation program centered on daily Christian study and devotion, as well as participation in the Alcoholics for Christ sobriety program.

In addition, they are given basic training in such areas as work ethics, money management, personal hygiene and etiquette. “Most of these men have never worked before, or have never had to report to a boss,” Bird notes. “And most of them have never opened up a bank account, or are even confident about the proper way to use a knife and fork.”

Volunteer Tutors

Tutoring in reading, writing and mathematics is offered by volunteers, and testing is done to determine the men’s skills and interest areas. Some are enrolled in local high schools to earn their high school equivalency diploma; others are enrolled in local community colleges for vocational training.

At the end of the eight-week newcomers program, the men are evaluated; usually, all decide to stay on for the full tour, called the “New Life” program.

In that program, the men attend area schools and work full schedules at the ranch, tending to any number of chores and jobs ranging from construction to maintenance to kitchen duties. It is more than busy work, ranch managers say; the camp needs to be maintained not only as a residential complex for the men but also as a summer and retreat camp for the public.

The men stay in the New Life program for as long as necessary--sometimes a year or longer--before graduating into the final Half Way program in which they are allowed to remain at the ranch while looking for, and starting, jobs outside. They are required to put most of their earnings into a savings account for the six-month period so when they are ready to move off the ranch they have enough money to rent an apartment, put down utility deposits and buy necessary furnishings.

All the while, the men are encouraged to establish affiliations with churches off the ranch. “We don’t believe a man who hasn’t made a commitment to God will be successful in the outside world,” Bird said.

Raphael Williams, 28, has been at Green Oak Ranch for five months.

“I was tired and depressed, always trying to get high and stay high, and I finally decided I didn’t want Scotty (cocaine) to beam me up any more. So here I am.

“I had always believed in Jesus Christ but the things I was doing in L.A. weren’t allowing me to stay in contact with Him. But I really need that spiritual life. It’s been the cement that has helped keep my life together.”

The Union Rescue Mission initially bought 130 acres of the property “for a place for men to get away from the downtown L.A. environment,” said John Dunham, general manager of the ranch. Later, 12 more acres were bought, giving the mission ownership of the entire small valley.

Today the property is worth millions, but there are no plans to sell it, Dunham said.

The entire facility, including both the public retreat center and the men’s rehabilitation complex, costs about $1 million a year to operate. It is funded both by donations and income from the campground/retreat center.

The men in the program do not mingle with children at the youth camp unless under direct supervision of ranch staff. In addition, they are fingerprinted and subjected to background checks to make sure none is a child molester or sex offender, Dunham said.

Each man is given a small allowance, ranging from $11 a week for newcomers to $50 a week for men in the Half Way program, and generally they are allowed to leave the compound at will.

“If we tried to keep them cooped up here for a year, what do you think they’d do the first chance they had to go out?” Bird asks.

Some men do walk away from the ranch in mid-program and never come back. Some men who are not succeeding are dismissed--and are given bus fare back to Los Angeles where they are encouraged to return to the Union Rescue Mission for another program.

Success Rate of 40%

About 40% of the men who come here end up getting a vocational certificate or educational degree of one sort or another as well as a job, and usually stay in San Diego County, Dunham said.

“We’re told that’s a high percentage (success rate), given the kind of people we’re working with.”

Lonnie Floyd spent a year at the ranch and left on his own because he didn’t think it was doing him any good, only to decide to come back and give it a second try. This time, he has been here eight months.

He remembers how he would get by in Los Angeles by selling blood and putting a quarter in a news rack, taking out all the newspapers and peddling them on the sidewalk. “And I ripped off friends and family. That’s not a very good feeling.

“I was tired of hanging my head down. Now that I’m here, I’m getting a lot of loving and caring here that I couldn’t seem to find anywhere else,” Floyd said. “We’re all here showing each other that we care. We’ve all been through the same thing in L.A., and now we’re here to help each other, to show that we have value.”