TREATMENT CENTER BEING SUED BY RECOVERING DRUG ADDICTS

Two Say They Were Forced To Work For No Pay

They came to Seattle Drug and Narcotic Center Inc. looking for help
kicking heroin addictions, and were put to work.

Six days a week, they moved and sorted paper at SeaDruNar Recycling
LLC, a for-profit recycling plant owned by the treatment center. They
exhausted themselves week after week without a wage, keeping the
multimillion-dollar operation going one pallet of paper at a time.

SeaDruNar managers called the program "work therapy" aimed at
teaching ex-addicts how to work in the sober world. Some former
clients take a different view.

"It's like slavery," said David Schodron, who has joined another
former SeaDruNar patient in a lawsuit against the treatment center.
"You either worked or you went back to where you came from."

Schodron, 52, and co-plaintiff Leann Lafley said they were forced to
work either at the plant or cleaning the treatment center where both
lived, or risk prison time for drug offenses. They say they're
entitled to back wages that were denied to them and other patients
forced to work at the plant. They are waiting to hear if the state
Supreme Court will take the case.

Their suit has received a frosty reception in the state courts; it
was tossed out by a King County Superior Court judge, then by an
Appeals Court three-judge panel. The judges agreed with SeaDruNar's
founder that patients volunteer their labor at the plant by choosing
the treatment center.

In court documents, Nan Busby, a 73-year-old former addict, said she
was just three years out of prison in 1968 when she founded SeaDruNar
in a Capitol Hill boarding house. She'd started the house with
$18,000 from The Boeing Co. and the help of community leaders
interested in fighting the growing heroin problem in the city.

"The only training any of us had was we were ex-addicts," said Busby
during a 2004 deposition. Busby said the program was based on
"addict-to-addict" mentoring, a system the center continues to use
while employing licensed counselors.

Supporters see Busby as a tireless advocate who has helped thousands
of addicts and devoted her life to treatment. Her program has
received the backing of several influential Seattle-area leaders,
including former King County Superior Court Judge John Darrah and
Superior Court Judge Michael Spearman, both of whom serve on the
SeaDruNar board.

Busby's enterprise grew steadily until the late 1970s, when state and
federal drug treatment dollars grew scarce. She and the SeaDruNar
board were looking for solutions to the center's money woes when they
decided to get into the recycling business.

The new three-man operation was headed by Richard Busby, a former
SeaDruNar patient who married Nan after completing the program. In
statements to the court, Richard Busby said he and the other men
would drive around Seattle in a van, stopping to dig through trash
bins in search of scrap paper to resell.

The business grew and brought in money for SeaDruNar's expansion. The
clinic began acquiring properties around the city and, in 1995 bought
the plot of land in the Georgetown neighborhood where SeaDruNar
Recycling's 46,000-square-foot plant now stands.

Nan Busby incorporated the recycling center as a for-profit company
in 2000, listing herself as executive director of both the recycling
business and treatment center in tax documents. Richard Busby
directs the recycling plant, where the couple's daughter, Sheri
Healey, is employed as a manager.

About two dozen of the treatment center's roughly 100 clients work at
the plant alongside 15 paid workers, most of whom are former
SeaDruNar clients, Richard Busby said in a 2004 deposition. A paid
crew also works an evening shift at the plant.

Those working at the recycling center are bused from the SeaDruNar
in-patient treatment center, where they undergo therapy or have free
time when not at work. They're allowed limited contact with the
outside world in the later phases of treatment, but are otherwise
isolated.

Though both were destitute when they became involved with SeaDruNar,
the treatment business brought wealth to the Busbys.

According to tax documents filed for the non-profit treatment
program, Nan Busby is paid $112,000 a year while her husband earns
$100,000 annually managing the recycling business. The couple now own
a $767,000 waterfront home in Des Moines.

The recycling plant brought in $3.3 million in 2006, covering about
74 percent of the program's $4.5 million cost. The rest of the money
came from state and federal sources, primarily a program designed to
support drug addicts who are unable to work. Most of the clients are
also registered to receive food stamps after arriving at the center;
according to court documents. SeaDruNar pools food assistance to feed
its clients.

While other paper recyclers use expensive optical scanning to sort
paper, SeaDruNar continue to sort paper by hand. That savings
combined with access to a large pool of unpaid labor has allowed
SeaDruNar to actually buy waste from companies when its competitors
demand payment for pickup.

The labor-intensive operation has seen its share of accidents,
including two deaths in the past decade.

In 2000, paper sorter Brandi LaValla was pulled into an exposed
conveyor belt while doing maintenance on the machine. Schodron, who'd
grown close to LaValla while both were in treatment, watched the
31-year-old woman as she was crushed to death.

SeaDruNar lost another worker last June, when longtime paid employee
John Colombini was crushed to death under a lift. The state
Department of Labor and Industries fined SeaDruNar $900 for safety
problems found in inspections following the 46-year-old's death.

Another client was seriously injured two months later when she fell
15 feet after stepping into a hole at the recycling plant. She filed
a lawsuit last year demanding damages.

Schodron said he had been doing well in treatment until the October
day that LaValla died. He'd come to SeaDruNar in an effort to avoid a
prison sentence after being arrested in a heroin sting in Montana,
and had been using the drug regularly.

Any progress he'd made was erased by LaValla's death. Schodron fell
apart, landed in Harborview Medical Center's psychiatric wing, then
refused to return to SeaDruNar after being released.

He expected to face jail after leaving the program. Instead, he found
the charges against him had been dropped two months earlier and, he
said, the SeaDruNar staff never told him he was out of legal jeopardy.

A former union carpenter and shop steward, Schodron said he's now
unable to hold down a job because of the psychological damage done to
him by seeing LaValla die. He's currently sober and living in New
York City, but believes he's owed payment for the work he did at
SeaDruNar.

"People deserve something coming out," he said. "We got absolutely
nada from it. ... What kind of job training do you get out of sorting
paper?"

Joseph Lawrence, Jr., the Seattle attorney representing the Busbys
and SeaDruNar, said the program is designed to help addicts learn to
work again while filling the time.

"All of those things are designed as part of a treatment plan,
basically to get them back in work shape," Lawrence said. "A lot of
these people aren't used to getting up every morning and going to
work."

Lawrence said the work program's "ultimate goal is to get these
people better," not provide funding for the program, which is
provided free of charge to most clients.

Gene Bolin, the attorney representing Lafley and Schodron, disputes
SeaDruNar's claim and has argued that his clients should have been
paid in accordance with the state minimum-wage rules. The sole
purpose of the recycling program, Bolin contends, is to provide
revenue for the treatment program.

Lafley, the former construction worker and recovering heroin addict,
said she found nothing therapeutic about paper sorting.

Like Schodron, Lafley left the program early after breaking her wrist
on the job in 2002. Unlike him, her legal trouble hadn't
disappeared.

Lafley ended up in a federal prison for three years on drug charges,
and has since returned to the Flathead Reservation in Montana where
she was raised. She said she's now clean, sober and employed.

In an interview, Lafley said SeaDruNar clients deserve to be paid for
their labor.

"You're working for free, and it doesn't seem right," she said. "We
had to give 100 percent when we're in there. They could give a little."