Moment of Truth : Ex-Skid Row Addict Turned Life Around

Nearly four years ago, in an alley off 5th Street downtown, Askia Abdulmajeed said he faced his moment of truth.

That night the 48-year-old Jefferson High School graduate--homeless and a crack addict--watched as an acquaintance clubbed a passerby over the head with a piece of pipe and then stole his wallet.

“I knew then that I was either going to become a criminal or get myself together,” said Abdulmajeed.

Now sober, employed and able to pay for his own apartment, Abdulmajeed said he made the right choice. He said the story of his remarkable turnaround so impressed Gayle Wilson when he met her this fall that she invited him to apply for a job working for her husband, Gov. Pete Wilson.

Abdulmajeed has a Dec. 17 letter from Wilson Chief of Staff Bob White asking him to apply for a post and said he has returned the application. A Wilson Administration official said the status of all applications is confidential. The letter is similar to hundreds sent out to people who have expressed an interest in working for Wilson.

Abdulmajeed and four other men were honored with commendations from Mayor Tom Bradley on Friday at Skid Row’s Union Rescue Mission, where they turned for help to overcome their addictions and have proven to be success stories. The 100-year-old mission feeds about 2,600 people a day and provides beds for about 800, spokesman Warren Duffy said.

“They were broke, they were alone and then one day someone said, things don’t have to be this way, Duffy said.

That is the same message Gayle Wilson heard when Abdulmajeed, who works as the Rescue Mission’s community affairs representative, gave her a tour in October, said John Savage, the mission’s vice president.

“He gave her a 40-minute tour and shared his bout with cocaine, his joblessness and eventual recovery,” said Savage. “It looked like she was moved by Abdul’s story.”

Abdulmajeed said that after working as an insurance salesman and then a bus driver, his life took a turn for the worse in 1986, when he first tried smoking crack cocaine.

“I filled my lungs with that smoke and it was a tremendous rush of euphoria, straight to the brain, like a 100-yard dash that never ends,” he said. Weekend cocaine binges soon crippled his ability to work and he was fired. When the money ran out, he became homeless.

“I used to come down to Skid Row to buy drugs but suddenly I was there because I had no other place to go,” Abdulmajeed said.

After seeking help from the mission, he is passing the message of hope and inspiration to the homeless men who eat their meals at the mission. Soon, he hopes that job will take him to Sacramento and into the Wilson Administration.

“But I will go where I can do the most good,” he said.