A 2ND CHANCE MIGHT GRACE A LIFE WITH HOPE

You can't put a price tag on hope. Or can you?

If state budget cuts abolish Mecklenburg's drug-treatment court,
people like Sherrill Barnette could easily drift into and out of our
vast system without anyone ever looking straight into their eyes and
down into their souls.

Sherrill, who's 38, remembers the day. On April 30, 1999, she stood
with her case manager Don Moore and her public defender Robert Ward
and stared up at District Judge Phil Howerton, who, four years
earlier had launched the first drug-treatment court with zip from the
state.

Sherrill despaired of ever having a life.

Howerton looked at her with "eyes of compassion and understanding."
Then, he called her by name and delivered the sentence that can still
make her weep.

"Now, Sherrill," he said, "we're going to give you another chance."

Walking Tall

Howerton didn't stop there.He told her that if she failed, she
wouldn't be letting him down. She wouldn't be letting down the court
system. Or even her family.

"You'll only be letting yourself down," he said. "This is your time
now to get your life together."

For 10 years, Sherrill says, she'd been battling cocaine. Even the
loyalty of her family and a degree from UNC Greensboro couldn't make
her believe she'd ever have a future.

But the day Howerton called her by name and offered her another
chance, she walked tall from the courtroom.

"Judge Howerton and Don Moore believed in me before I could believe
in myself," she says. "I had a point of clarity that day. I knew
there was no turning back. No matter what. I was doing it for me this
time."

Dealing With Life

Each week for two years, Sherrill met with Moore, laying out a daily
plan of action. And every two weeks, she reported to Howerton, who
also worked with Sherrill's family.

Her first priority was attending meetings of a 12-step program to
learn how to begin her recovery.

"Meetings are the medicine that help people like me," Sherrill says.
"They show me how to live life on life's terms."

If you don't know what that means, Sherrill can explain.

"Before I came to drug court," she says, "I thought life had dealt me
a bad hand. I began to see that life is going to be what it is, and I
had to learn to deal with it rather than react to it."

Sherrill graduated from drug-treatment court in February 2000 and
moved to Asheville. But she wanted to come home, to give back to the
place that had given her another chance.

Now she's executive assistant to the director of the drug-court
program, a job Sherrill calls "a personal mission," one which she
knows is only possible through God's grace and mercy.

If budget cuts abolish the program, we're in danger of abolishing the
futures of men and women like Sherrill -- men and women without hope
until someone calls them by name and offers a second chance.

At life.