A Posh Place to End Addictions

A few ceiling tiles were missing and the stained-glass windows hadn’t arrived. But the sight of the almost-finished Women’s Rehabilitation Center in Anaheim still overwhelmed one recovering drug addict.

“I can’t believe they have this here in Orange County,” Lori said Sunday as she sat on a couch in the $2-million facility that is to have its formal dedication today. “I’m sorry, but a lot of us don’t come from beautiful things.”

The Salvation Army’s Women’s Rehabilitation Center hopes to give women like Lori, a center volunteer who asked that her last name not be used, a chance to learn to live without drugs in a relatively posh environment. The 28-bed facility has been decorated by a local interior designer and has carpet and upholstered furniture instead of the more cost-effective vinyl floors and folding metal chairs.

While backers of the facility don’t know if the comfortable furniture and soothing tones will necessarily help women recover, they figure it can’t hurt.

“Most women that [will] come here have hit rock bottom. . . . Anything that helps boost their self-esteem is worth it,” said Maj. Mary Doss, who will administer the center when it opens the first week of June.

The center, built with money raised by the Salvation Army and other public and private groups, will provide women at least six months of free counseling and drug rehabilitation, if they pass a preliminary drug test. Once they enter the program, the women will have counseling, a job, meetings and mandatory chapel.

Judges often order enrollment in such programs for repeat drug offenders like Lori, 36, whom Anaheim police arrested twice in one week in 1996 for possession of drugs. She was given the choice of jail time or entering rehabilitation, and ended up spending seven months at the Salvation Army’s rehab center in San Diego. “It turned my life around,” she said.

Salvation Army officials hope to repeat Lori’s experience at the new Anaheim facility, its first live-in center for women in Orange County.

The center has the feel of a high-end hotel. The rooms have pastel colors instead of sterile white. Pictures are framed, and there’s a beauty parlor. The extra touches, which cost about $250,000, were funded by donations and designed by John Garcia, a Santa Ana interior designer.

“It’s meant to be restful,” Garcia said. “This should be a place where they can come after a stressful day and feel at home.”

Even as volunteers and Salvation Army employees scramble to put the finishing touches on the center, they’re already planning other projects. Next door to the new women’s center is the Salvation Army’s 140-bed rehabilitation center for men, built 15 years ago.

“It looked pretty good until the women’s center was built,” Doss said with a sigh. “Sprucing that place up will have to be our next project, I guess.”