April 21, 2008
Dear Mr. Libbey,
My name is David Kilgore and I’m writing to share with you a success story regarding one of your agency’s former clients, my friend Paul, and to thank you for everything Walden House has done for him. Walden House brought about changes in Paul that I would never have believed possible and probably saved his life. I realize that dealing with the substance abuse population can be disheartening at times but didn’t want your organization’s work in this case to go unacknowledged because I realize now how important it is to keep hope alive. I know because I almost lost hope for Paul.
Two years ago Paul was living in Las Vegas and working full time for FedEx when he developed AIDS after living with HIV for 15 years. He lost his job as a result of being incapacitated by AIDS and called me to ask if he could stay with me temporarily as he wanted to move back to the city and find a job and place to live here. After he moved back he looked for work for months but couldn’t find a job he could do as he had developed large abscesses on his legs and back from his illness. He became depressed, turned to drugs for solace and eventually became psychotic. He heard voices instructing him to do bizarre things and he became violent enough that he was arrested and taken to jail and to the psychiatric ward on more than one occasion.
At this point he became homeless and disappeared and we thought he would probably be found dead since his friends and family had lost all contact with him. Prior to this he was in complete denial of any drug use and there was no reasoning with him. We later discovered that he had taken the money his Mother and I gave him to live on and sent it ($2,000) to Nigeria believing he would received millions of dollars in inheritance and I can’t count the number of other things he did that finally resulted in his alienating everyone in his life.
Then in early September of last year he appeared on my doorstep late one Friday night and after about ten minutes of soul searching I opened the door and he asked if he could stay indoors one night and have a hot meal. He had been living in a park in Marin for the previous 6-7 months and had walked all the way to my place in Noe Valley that day. He was missing his front teeth, was almost blind as he had kept the only contact lens he had left in one eye for the entire time, and had several large infected abscesses on his back that he had wrapped over with an ace bandage months ago. He said he had been eating from garbage cans the leftovers that restaurants threw out or whatever he could find in the park and I wouldn’t have recognized him if I’d passed him on the street. He said he’d been waiting for a day when his back didn’t hurt as much to make the walk from Marin.
The next week was spent getting his health problems cared for, starting the process of getting him on disability, bankruptcy, etc. and looking for housing since he had burned all his bridges and his family and friends were unwilling to let him in their homes again. The social worker at Ward 86 mentioned Walden House as a possibility since his drug use was mostly the reason he had wound up in this condition, however, Paul still denied almost completely (“I only did it once”) and use of drugs at this point. A friend of mine spoke to him and advised him to just say he had been using (even if he didn’t want to admit that he had) as a way to get temporary housing and he agreed to go along with this when it was framed that way for him.
Knowing that he had never acknowledged his drug use I wasn’t hopeful that he would stay at Walden House more than a few days and his phone calls to me that first week weren’t reassuring. He would say “They want me to call them family in these meetings – it’s just weird”. But then something started to change in him as a result of his meetings there. During that first week he would say he didn’t think he could stay more than a week then he began to say he could stay longer and before long he said he wanted to complete the program and go to a transitional housing sober living environment afterwards because they drug tested the residents there and that’s where he wanted to be!!
At the same time he started to take responsibility for his actions, acknowledged his dependence on drugs, and seemed to grow up emotionally in ways I would never have thought possible for him.
Paul got his one year chip last month and he attends meetings most nights of the week. He’s very proud to be the treasurer at one meeting and the key person (who picks up the key to the church) for another meeting. He maintained contact with Walden House for several months after he graduated by volunteering in the kitchen and has made numerous friends at the meetings he attends.
He now says it doesn’t feel weird to call them family anymore because he no longer feels alone with his problems and knows there’s a group of people who will understand.
So thank you for bringing my friend Paul back to us his family and friends when we had almost given up on him. I wish everyone at Walden House all the best for the work you do – each and every one. For Paul you not only changed his life, you saved it.
Sincerely,
David Kilgore