A Ticket Out of Drugs, Skid Row : Rehabilitation: L.A. Mission’s rigid program tries to break the cycle of despair. The latest two graduates prove it can be done.

Tired of prostituting herself, of craving crack cocaine, of furtively peddling the drug from sidewalks and back alleys of Skid Row, Vanessa Strond decided last year to ditch her world. So she ran, she said, as far as she had to.

She ran across the street.

“I was staying at the Frontier Hotel over there,” said Strond, 28, sitting in the Los Angeles Mission and pointing to the nearby hotel. “I knew I couldn’t go too far from my addiction if I was going to beat it. When I came here, they wanted me to go to a home in Pico Rivera. But I had to stay here, so I could see where I had come from.”

Strond joined up with “Missing Peace”--an intensive, yearlong rehabilitation program for women that operates out of the mission’s downtown facilities. And on Wednesday, she and recovering addict Jean Vavao, 28, became the fourth and fifth women to graduate from the program.

About 40 men and women had come in off the streets of Skid Row and gathered in the mission’s tiny chapel for the ceremony. Standing in front, Strond and Vavao cradled their certificates of graduation and swapped experiences and words of encouragement with the others, some of whom they know from their own days on the street.

To the women especially, they declared that a firm belief in God and self would transform lives ravaged by substance abuse, homelessness and lost dignity.

“I used to get high with many of y’all in this room,” said Strond. Her voice and the whir of ceiling fans were the only sounds in the chapel. “And you know that I really didn’t want to (join this program). But I had to, and I did. And it changed my life.”

The program, started two years ago by its director, Marsha Tennyson, puts participants in intensive study and behavioral programs that consume much of their time. For the first six months, the women do not leave the mission.

“We’re really strict,” said Tennyson. “The women have to be respectful and obedient. They have Bible study and they have to read books. Sometimes people are willing to give some of themselves, but not all. They come in here with good intentions, but aren’t really willing to change. We try to get them to give all of themselves.”

Tennyson said 11 other women are now enrolled in Missing Peace. Forty have participated since the program began, but graduation is rare.

“It’s not that we don’t help those who don’t graduate,” she said. “Many of them just leave before graduation. . . . But we know how tough it is to graduate this program, so we wanted to do something for those who do.”

Thus, they staged Wednesday’s ceremony.

Vavao and Strond say they are pleased with the program, happy to have restored their lives. Both have overcome their drug addictions and recovered custody of their sons--Vavao has a 2-year-old and Strond a 9-year-old. They are working on their high school equivalency diplomas, and Vavao intends to go on to UCLA.

“I want to become an emergency medical technician,” said Vavao, who said her drug addiction had left her depressed and temporarily homeless. “I want to work for an ambulance company. I’ll probably stay at the mission in the meantime and help out around here.”

Strond said she simply wants to make a home for her son, a dream she has harbored since she left New Jersey for Los Angeles three years ago.

“I came out here with my baby’s father,” she said. “We got here and we didn’t have enough money, so we started staying at the Frontier. That’s how we got caught up in that lifestyle I had. Now, I want to get out on my own and lead a nice life.”