Joe Appler’s a Man With a Mission

As Joseph Appler crosses the alley that separates the Los Angeles Mission complex from its medical facility, he greets those he meets by name, reaching out his hand to make the warm, personal contact for which he is known.

The onetime junkie, who now serves as chaplain and administrator of skid row’s Joshua House Free Clinic, views downtown’s homeless denizens as “precious men and women” who are worthy of special care. This conviction has driven Appler to help the needy here and around the globe for more than 20 years.

“My goal is to bring healing to the body, spirit and soul of the people who come here,” said Appler, 46, pointing out the meager living quarters of the clinic’s HIV patients. “One way I try to achieve that is by offering unconditional love. It often works.”

Love is not the only gift the tall, blue-eyed administrator offers to drug addicts and homeless people. He also helps run the Fresh Start program, which provides medical care, schooling, job training and counseling. After completing the yearlong program, participants receive first and last months’ rent, along with furniture and kitchen utensils.

Appler walks Fresh Start enrollees through the myriad steps of recovery that has sent hundreds of mission graduates into the workplace.

“Joseph has stepped in and gone way beyond the call of duty here,” said Mike Edwards, president and chief executive officer of the Los Angeles Mission. “He serves folks with [tuberculosis], HIV and all sorts of health and relationship problems. He has real heart.”

Appler’s constituents credit the chaplain’s counseling skills with helping to bring some order to their chaotic lives.

“Joseph inspired me to improve my family relationships,” said mission resident Cuthbert James, 47. “He helped with my medical and personal problems. I owe him a lot.”

Appler knows firsthand about the human toll of drug addiction. In the late ‘60s, the Arkansas native dropped out of Hot Springs High School--President Clinton’s alma mater--a half-credit shy of graduation.

Rejected by the Marines and not interested in a job offer from the FBI, he turned to drugs, a world he was introduced to before he became a teenager.

By 1971, at age 20, Appler ended up in the hospital, where “my veins were burning and I suffered from hepatitis. I had tracks from my wrists to my shoulders and I just wanted to die.”

He recovered, however, and soon found himself in a local church, where the preacher challenged him to turn his life around. Believing he had hit rock bottom, Appler says he gave his life to God. He hasn’t looked back since.

Appler joined Youth With a Mission, an international missionary society, which in 1972 sent him to Afghanistan, Europe and India. He landed in Hollywood in 1982 with his wife and their three daughters, where for eight years he worked to get young prostitutes and drug addicts off the streets.

Seeking a more wholesome environment for his family, Appler moved to Lake View Terrace in June 1994, several months after he took the chaplain’s post at the mission. The challenges of his work continue to energize him.

“I’m one of the most successful men I’ve met. Every day I’m doing what I love. I help turn people around, and I love the people I work with. It doesn’t get better than that.”