Imperiled Haven for Drug Addicts Gets Proof That Love Is the Answer

Doug Earp believes in miracles.

As far as he’s concerned, that’s what it took to save his First Love Ranch, founded to take in the so-called dregs of society, addicts and drug abusers, and help them turn their lives around.

Earp’s miracle occurred when hope was nearly gone, his dream slipping away. The ranch near Mabton was on the verge of foreclosure and his options were running out.

He needed $165,000 to pay off the mortgage. Fund-raising efforts brought in about $20,000 last year--not enough to make the $28,000 mortgage payment, much less the full amount that was Earp’s goal.

He tried to stave off the inevitable by selling most of the ranch’s 168 acres, but the buyer he found couldn’t get a conventional loan.

Then, in early November, a lawyer representing the ranch mortgage-holders showed up and asked Earp to sign over the property.

“I couldn’t do it. I just did not feel God had brought me seven years into this venture to just give up,” Earp said over a recent lunch at a Yakima restaurant. The lawyer “expected me to just sign them. He finished some light talk, and then said, ‘I’ve come to get the papers.’

“I said, ‘I feel like God has told me not to sign the papers. I feel I’m not to give up.’ . . . That was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”

The lawyer said he’d start foreclosure proceedings the next day.

“I went up and prayed. What do you do? I can’t go out and earn $165,000 tomorrow,” Earp said.

He believes his prayers were answered that night, when a longtime supporter came through in response to his 11th-hour cry for help.

Earp, a former heroin addict, has never taken the easy way. In 1981, he started a street ministry in Yakima for troubled youths. That grew into two safe houses, for men and women, which he operated for seven years.

In 1988, with a loan from a private organization, he realized his dream: a haven in the country for anyone in need.

Earp calls the ranch “kind of a life-restoration, Walton-family-type center” that helps people break cycles of addiction and abuse. It’s a registered nonprofit organization and receives no federal or state funds, mainly because of its Christian-based teachings. It operates solely on donations and doesn’t charge those who come for help.

Those who come stay as long as they want. Earp recommends a year, but some of the ranch’s first residents are still there after eight years, including ranch manager Lonnie Bentz.

Others leave quickly, unable to accept the ranch’s Christian teachings or its isolation. The ranch is just outside Mabton, about 40 miles southeast of Yakima. The little town of 1,625 people has a handful of stores and a few blocks of houses surrounded by farmland.

The night before foreclosure proceedings were to begin, Earp called someone who had helped in the past, a man living nearby, and asked him to lend money to the party interested in the acreage.

The man asked for time to discuss the matter with his wife. The next morning, he agreed to finance the loan.

Earp said he was speechless with relief--and overcome when he picked up the check and found out the loan was really a gift to First Love Ranch. He paid off the entire mortgage, and the ranch was free and clear.

There was just one condition, Earp said: $30,000 was to go to another ministry, the Center for Sharing in Walla Walla.

“That took us from being the tail to being the head in one day,” Earp said, grinning. The ranch is going ahead with the sale of its acreage, and for the next 15 years, the payments will subsidize the ranch’s operations.

There’s nothing fancy about the ranch. It houses as many as 100 people at a time in men’s and women’s dormitories. Small apartments and trailers accommodate families. The donated furniture looks like it came from garage sales or the Salvation Army.

Residents share cooking chores. They eat communal meals of ranch-grown vegetables and whatever has been donated. One former resident jokes that she thought Christians were vegetarians until a farmer donated a cow.

Earp now has all kinds of new dreams for the ranch.

“Now that we know we’re going to be here . . . we can start planning where we’re going with some permanency,” he said.

His vision includes a commercial radio station, for which he recently acquired a license, and a training program for residents interested in a role there; a carpentry program led by a Yakima architect for residents not interested in broadcasting; and a Bible school for residents’ children, with eventual expansion to include Mabton youngsters.

The goal: to provide residents with training that will help them find good jobs if and when they decide to leave.