Re-Entry Program Gives Down-and-Outers a 2nd Chance

A quiet man with a gentle demeanor, Dan forces a shy smile and folds his hands on the table. With a mixture of fear and incredulity, Dan shakes his head in wonder at the life he once led.

“I remember wanting to straighten out, wanting to get sober,” he muses. “But I wasn’t ready to surrender.”

Dan, 33, remembers how low he had fallen when, in a fit of desperation, he signed up for a tough and innovative Salvation Army program that rehabilitates drunks and drug addicts, then guides a select group of them toward a career or even a college degree.

Since its beginning in April, 1986, the organization’s Re-Entry program has helped Dan and about 95 other street people and addicts return to the community as productive members. Of those who have gone through the rugged program, about 25 have continued on to college and are studying subjects such as architecture and computer programming.

Unique Center

Of the country’s 126 Salvation Army centers, only the San Diego center--the nation’s second largest--offers a substance-abuse rehabilitation program that includes career training and an opportunity to go to college.

Consider that 14 months ago Dan, who along with another participant agreed to talk on condition that only their first names be used, was among the hundreds of faceless street people in downtown San Diego who exist on handouts and pity, and live only for that next drug or alcohol score.

Now he talks candidly and articulately about his life a year ago as an aging street junkie who wanted to get clean but who could not overcome a dependency on alcohol and drugs.

“I tried to explain to my mom that alcoholism was a disease. But she used to tell me, ‘Why don’t you straighten up like everybody else?’ I once asked my mom to go to Alcoholics Anonymous with me, to give me support. But she said, ‘No, that’s your problem.’ ”

With little support from family and friends, Dan made several unsuccessful attempts at sobriety. But fears--real and imagined--that he was a failure made Dan turn to booze every time, he says. He mixed alcohol with LSD, marijuana, speed, and, occasionally, heroin.

Life was not getting any better.

Grew Up in Rough Area

Though he was born in San Diego, Dan grew up in the seedy housing projects of Oakland and in that city’s tough Fruitvale District, areas where many kids are exposed to wayward ways before they learn the alphabet.

He smoked his first marijuana cigarette when he was 11. By 12, he’d been arrested. There were other run-ins with the law and jailings at several California Youth Authority facilities. When he was 15, Dan’s probation officer had him committed to Synanon--a controversial community group whose goal was rehabilitating adult addicts without pampering them--but even the group’s uncompromising approach was of little help.

By late 1986, Dan had been back in San Diego almost a decade and had joined the city’s growing army of homeless people. Often, his bed was in Balboa Park or in a grimy downtown doorway.

By December, 1986, Dan had been a drug and alcohol abuser for 21 of his 32 years. A few days before Christmas, he was 40 pounds underweight, suffering from the flu and “ready to surrender.” He had heard of the Salvation Army’s drug and alcohol rehabilitation program and went there to seek help.

“They turned me away that day,” Dan said. “They didn’t have any room then and asked me to return on Dec. 29. On another occasion I would’ve used that as an excuse for not coming back. But I needed help. I was afraid I was going to die.”

On Dec. 28, 1986, Dan had one final drink and took one final drag from a marijuana cigarette.

“I was so nervous about coming in here. I was afraid that I wasn’t going to make it. I smoked some grass the night before to help me sleep. I walked in the next morning . . .”

Now, Dan enjoys a modest career at the Salvation Army, rising from truck helper to janitor to shipping supervisor.

“A few weeks ago, I celebrated my first anniversary of being sober,” he said with pride. “AA gave me a cake and Ed (Dr. Edward Lataille) shook my hand. Today, I’m in a different world, a better world and I’m a better person.”

The Salvation Army’s drug and alcohol rehabilitation and Re-Entry program is the best-kept secret in town, said Maj. Robert Bodine, administrator of the Salvation Army Center in San Diego. The program has helped hundreds of alcohol and drug addicts assume productive lives.

Despite its relative obscurity, both facets of the program have been overwhelmingly successful, said Lataille, a psychologist and director of the center’s clinical services. Not one participant has dropped out of the program yet.

Lataille and Bodine, who also is a clinical psychologist, refer to people in the program as “clients” whose identities are a closely guarded secret. One of the clients currently enrolled in Re-Entry is the son of a state Supreme Court justice from another state. The father of another client preparing for the program is a well-known California law enforcement official.

“We have several clients who come from wealthy families from across the United States,” Bodine said. But the majority of people in Re-Entry, which is open to anyone, arrived here after enduring years of drug and alcohol addiction, alienation from families and living on urban streets.

“We’re excited about Re-Entry because so many of our clients come to us from the streets or had not enjoyed sobriety for years,” Lataille said. “They go back to the community not as members living on the streets but as taxpayers and productive members of society.”

Months of Intensive Treatment

The Re-Entry program calls for participants to spend nearly all their time at the Salvation Army Center, which provides six months of intensive in-house drug or alcohol rehabilitation. This is followed by three months of vocational testing and educational counseling, including simulated, videotaped job interviews. While in the program, clients are subjected to random Breathalyzer tests and urinalyses to ensure that they have not regressed to alcohol or drug use.

After successfully completing the first nine months, the clients are taken out of the center and placed in a Salvation Army-owned “Bridge House” for another three months.

“Getting to the Bridge House is quite an accomplishment. It signifies that the client has reached the final bridge that will take him to complete independence and is almost ready to walk across it,” Lataille said. “It’s a transition between the structured living at the center and independence.” Lataille, who counsels addicts and homeless people and who developed the Re-Entry program, heads the selection process. He conducts an intensive set of interviews with all applicants before deciding who is accepted.

Because it is funded entirely by private contributions, the Re-Entry program is small, so applicants must be meticulously screened, and their behavior carefully monitored while they are at the center. Clients who can afford it must pay for their rehabilitation and Re-Entry services. Lataille has to decide who is most likely to succeed; more than two-thirds of the applicants are rejected.

“Our standards are high,” Lataille said. “That’s the hardest part about this job . . . having to play God and decide who’s accepted and who’s rejected. It’s painful because I know that some of the people we reject will

Program Is All Male

Currently, 17 men are going through Re-Entry. All of the program’s participants have been men because so few women addicts seek help at the center, Lataille said. Occasional women who apply for Re-Entry are given individual attention because there are no facilities for them, he added.

People like Dan are proof of the success of the program.

“I’m a testimony to others,” he said. “I’m living proof that a structured, strict program with a human face can help street people and addicts.”

National figures show that about 85% of the people who go through programs similar to Re-Entry eventually go back to using drugs or alcohol, Lataille said. However, Salvation Army officials say that because of a lack of resources to track graduates, they have no way of knowing what the reversal rate is for Re-Entry graduates.

“We have difficulty getting firm figures because our people go out with the four winds to all parts of the county,” Lataille said. “The whole idea of the program is to give them a good head start. But judging from the people who return to visit us, we think that our success rate is pretty good.”

Lataille said that he sees, either through intuition or a sixth sense, something special in the people who are accepted for the program.

“There’s a tremendous amount of potential in these people,” Lataille said. “They’re intelligent and able to learn. All you have to do is clean them up. . . . Often when they walk in here, they are dirty, withdrawn and suspicious. But after a while you see a regular person emerging, one with a heart and feelings.”

Lataille talked about a scruffy, bearded street person who recently signed up for the center’s drug and alcohol rehabilitation program. The man looked like “your stereotypical street person,” he said.

Organist Surfaced

“One day, I walked into one of our church services and there he was, playing the organ in the most beautiful way. I was taken aback for a moment because nothing about his appearance or character suggested that he had this beautiful talent.”

Lataille then turns and smiles at a muscular young man sitting across from him.

Carl, 27, has been sober for 10 months. He is enrolled at San Diego City College, taking courses that he hopes will one day lead to a degree in education.

“My long-term goal is to be an elementary school teacher,” Carl said. “I want to teach children because I think I can help them avoid the mistakes I’ve made.”

For now, Carl, who is from Rockville, Md., lives at Bridge House with Dan and other Re-Entry participants.

Like Dan, Carl began using drugs and alcohol at an early age. He smoked his first marijuana cigarette when he was in the seventh grade and before enrolling in the center’s rehabilitation program in April, Carl was using methamphetamine, cocaine and “everything except heroin.”

“I don’t put myself down for the life that I have lived . . . but I’m glad that I joined this program. I’m not exaggerating or being melodramatic when I say that this program saved my life. It gave me back my dignity and gave me the tools to put my life back together.”

The program also has helped him hold a steady job, he said.

“Oh, I’d work once in a while, but my money always went quickly. It all went to feed my addiction. One month before I came here for help, I got a job with the City of Coronado. I worked for a few weeks until I got my first paycheck. It was only a maintenance job, but it was an honest living.

Paycheck Was Squandered

“Well, when I got my first paycheck, I smoked it, shot it up and drank it away. . . . The city fired me.”

Recovering addicts such as Carl and Dan are required to attend chemical-dependency classes to better understand their drug and alcohol addiction.

“We want them to recognize that they have a disease and are not bad people. The disease makes them do bad things,” Lataille said.

Unlike Dan’s family, Carl’s parents always gave him support. Like Dan, Carl always considered himself the black sheep of the family. Now, Carl relishes his new-found freedom from drugs and alcohol and is eager to share his experience with others.

Lataille listens to Carl while he talks with a reporter and can hardly hide his glee. It is obvious that he considers Carl a prized pupil and encourages him to talk about his volunteer work. A slightly embarrassed Carl complies and describes his work with senior citizens, emotionally disturbed children, patients at the Veterans Administration hospital and at the downtown detoxification center.

Since they became sober, Carl and Dan have acquired hobbies that they say are helping them forget drugs and alcohol. Dan has become an avid cyclist and recently bought a $500 mountain bike that he rides everywhere. Carl has turned to weightlifting and trains several days a week at the Salvation Army Center’s weight room.

“I’ve lived on the streets, slept in doorways, bummed money and ate out of Dumpsters,” Carl said. “Alcohol and drugs will make you live like that. Let me tell you, my worst day at school is a lot better than my best day on the streets.”