THE CHOICE: GO STRAIGHT OR GO TO JAIL

Part 2: Many Hands Reach Out to Ex-Offenders

RALEIGH - They made their choice. For most it was easy: Faced with
arrest for street-level drug dealing, they chose rehab over jail. Now
came the hard part, letting the choice they made remake them. The 16
men and women selected for a police project known as CHOICE had been
dealing drugs in Southeast Raleigh's South Park community. Now they
had to enter a program within The CHOICE Project called My Brother's
Keeper. It promised a way to end their drug dealing and addictions. In
less than two weeks, two were arrested in connection with selling
drugs. The remaining 14 were skeptical.

"I don't think they really felt they were going to get the help we
said they would," said Jeanne Tedrow, executive director of Passage
Home, the nonprofit organization chosen to oversee My Brother's
Keeper. But after the counselors identified several services --
including housing assistance and skilled trade programs -- for some
participants, members began to believe their lives could change.

The program's requirements were daunting for Braderick Peak, 31, who
had been a part of the drug trade since he was 9. "They told me I had
to have three clean [drug] tests, and I had to attend some classes to
get housing assistance," he said.

He'd have to work at least 30 hours a week to get help with housing.
He struggled with the idea of working full time and taking classes. He
was determined to make it work.

Geraldine Alshamy, the community liaison for Passage Home, drove Peak
to job interviews. They stopped wherever they saw a sign for an
opening. After several weeks and more than 50 applications and
interviews, nothing produced a job. Discouraged, Peak disappeared for
a week. He missed his counseling sessions. All he wanted to do was get
high. That way, the disappointments wouldn't be on his mind.

When Peak resurfaced, Alshamy immediately enrolled him in drug
rehabilitation. When he finished, the two resumed job-hunting. By
November, he was handing out hot dogs at Snoopy's. It wasn't much, but
it was legal. And the people at Passage Home promised it would lead to
more. Workers had to scramble early to cover all the needs of the
ex-offenders in My Brother's Keeper.

"It was so much more complex than any of us thought it would be," said
Kristen Rosselli, then the strategic initiatives manager at the
Raleigh Police Department, and the department's liaison for CHOICE,
which stands for Creating Hope and Opportunities In Communities
Everywhere. "There were so many needs represented in this group of 14
people. Only three of them had a high school education. They have
transportation issues, substance abuse issues, health-care and mental
health issues. Some of them have records, so they have employability
issues.

"It really tested all the social service systems." It also tested the
workers charged with helping to execute the program. Turnover left
many participants without a person to talk to about their struggles.
Doing what's needed Alshamy decided she'd need to wear more than one
hat to help participants succeed. The bus pass offered to them through
Passage Home wasn't going to cut it, she concluded. She packed
participants into her car to get them where they needed to go. That
included doctor's appointments, job interviews, even grocery runs.

It was a clear breach of procedure, but she knew it was needed. For a
time several years ago, she had needed it, too.

A person she trusted had gotten her into smoking marijuana. Before
long, she started experimenting with heavier drugs. It took the
actions and words of another person to help her realize what she was
doing was wrong. She wanted to be that person for the My Brother's
Keeper participants. "I can relate to them," she said, "and I'm not
making them feel bad for their sickness."

Mending old rifts Several times each year, Burlee Kersey's family
would gather for a big holiday celebration. And several times a year,
Kersey would make sure he wasn't there.

"All my kids were grown up, living in nice big houses and driving
fancy cars," he said. "And I was living in the streets. I didn't want
them to see me like that."

Shortly after Kersey began his sessions with My Brother's Keeper, his
landlord called police. The landlord said he'd found a plastic bag
with crack residue in the house. Kersey, who admits that crack was his
"drug of choice," vehemently denied the accusations.

Passage Home officials had already set in motion a plan to get Kersey
his own housing. The landlord was stunting Kersey's progress, Alshamy
said. Kersey needed his own space to work toward recovery. Working
with Vision of Hope, a nonprofit group offering assistance to people
in Raleigh with various afflictions, Kersey was placed in an apartment
off Lake Wheeler Road, away from his enablers, the drug dealers and
old friends in the South Park neighborhood.

"There's nothing out here for me to get into," Kersey said. "Here,
I've got a refrigerator full of food, and my bills are paid. I even
don't have to worry about ducking bullets, or getting busted coming
out of a crack house, or getting caught with a stem in my pocket."

At the transitional housing, counselors make random visits to
residents, checking for drug paraphernalia and administering drug
tests as they see fit. In recovery, and finally proud of himself,
Kersey began dialing family members. He reconnected with his son on a
trip to Baltimore. In Oklahoma, he stayed with a daughter who had cut
him out of her life for 20 years because she couldn't tolerate his
drug habit. He was introduced to three great-grandchildren he had never met.

Neighbors buy in, too The success of CHOICE wasn't just on the
shoulders of the 14 in the My Brother's Keeper program.

The entire neighborhood was asked to be an active participant.
Neighbors served mostly as watchdogs. They reported prostitutes and
drug dealers, hoping to eliminate the crime that had taken up
residence in their community. A greater police presence in the area
resulted in more arrests. Immediately, officials saw the rate of South
Park crime -- homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary,
larceny, motor vehicle theft, arson -- slow down.

"Their part of this was to make sure everything they didn't want to
see happening wasn't," Rosselli said.

Success stories At the December graduation for My Brother's Keeper
participants, Braderick Peak sat quietly.

Graduating meant the end of the constant contact that had been keeping
participants on the right path. He wasn't ready for that. He knew it
was the encouragement from others that allowed him to finally find --
and keep -- a decent job.

With so much learned over those past 10 months, it was time to take
the training wheels off.

As part of graduation, participants shared their stories. Everyone had
experienced setbacks as well as successes. They had come to understand
that no person's path would look the same as another's.

Progress would continue to follow a zigzag line drawn by will and
weakness.