PAST MEETS PRESENT FOR STATE DRUG CHIEF

A Recovering Addict, Kathryn Jett Brings Compassion And Understanding To
Her Position.

Kathryn Jett hadn't planned to speak at the Sacramento drug treatment
conference -- much less admit that she had once been an addict herself.

But a cold forced the state Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs
director to cancel a planned flight to Los Angeles. So she decided to
speak at the Dec. 18 conference kicking off state planning for
Proposition 36, the initiative requiring treatment instead of prison for
non-violent drug offenders.

Jett told the crowd the day was significant for more than one reason: It
was the same date she'd "wandered" into a drug treatment program in
Bucks County, Pa., 29 years before.

She said nothing more at the time, and she hasn't spoken publicly about
it since.

"It was the first time I have ever made a public statement," the
director told The Bee in a recent interview. "People don't know me as a
recovering heroin addict but as a hard-working, tenacious public
servant."

That is exactly what the 48-year-old director looked like when she sat
down for the interview. Her blond hair is cut short. She wore a simple
blue suit, a white open-collared shirt, sensible shoes and an earnest
manner.

She didn't want to talk about her addiction or recovery because she
didn't want to be known as "Kathy Jett, recovering heroin addict."

But her past is one of the reasons treatment providers and county
officials heralded Jett's appointment as the leader of the agency
overseeing Proposition 36.

"We are delighted, just delighted," said Maureen Bauman, Placer County
alcohol and drug administrator. "There was no state leadership for a
very long period of time, and she's just been a breath of fresh air. Her
background has been particularly helpful."

Robert Kahn, president of the California Organization of Methadone
Providers, said Jett is "exactly what we need right now." But he
criticized Gov. Gray Davis for leaving the agency adrift for two years
without a director. Davis named Jett to the job two days after voters
approved Proposition 36 in November.

Douglas Anglin, director of the University of California, Los Angeles,
Drug Abuse Research Center, said he's worried that the governor, who
opposed Proposition 36 until voters approved it, will hobble Jett.

"She's playing the title role in 'Traffic' in California," Anglin said,
referring to the movie about the nation's drug war. "It's an almost
hopeless situation."

Jett insists the Governor's Office has supported her at every turn, and
she believes Davis waited to find "the right person for the job."

She has experience in law enforcement and drug treatment, the two fields
that must work together to make Proposition 36 work.

In her 24 years in California, Jett has been director of the state
attorney general's Crime and Violence Prevention Center, chief of the
state's first Office of Women's Health and an analyst at the department
she now leads.

It is much more than she ever envisioned when she was growing up in a
working-class family in Pennsylvania. The youngest of three children,
she recalls her parents struggling to achieve the "American dream" of
homeownership.

To achieve that dream, they had to move to Levittown, Penn., a community
caught in the tumult of the '60s. Fights frequently broke out at Jett's
new school. Police accompanied by German shepherds patrolled the
grounds, and illegal drugs were abundant.

"Although it was the American dream for my parents, it was the American
nightmare for me," Jett said.

Shortly after the move, Jett's father's leg was amputated because of
diabetic complications. It was the first time she saw her "big
steelworker" father cry.

"That took so much hope out of my life," she recalled. Her father's
health continued to decline, and her home life was in constant crisis.

She was angry, hurt and confused, and turned to alcohol and pills when
she was just 12, she said. As she got older, she discovered harder
narcotics, including heroin.

"My energy, which I had a lot of, went completely into sustaining an
addiction," Jett said. "I had to sell drugs. I had to buy drugs. That
was my lifestyle. I didn't know there was any other choice."

On Dec. 18, 1971, at the age of 18, she visited some friends who were
patients at a drug treatment center, and they confronted her about her
own addiction.

"I knew I was an addict, but that was my life goal at that point," she
said. "I had no hope there was anything else in my life."

Jett spent six months in the residential program. With the exception of
a few slips, she said she has been drug-free ever since.

And now, 24 years after she first came to California, the woman who once
had no hope for her future has great hope and confidence not only about
her future but about the future of the agency she took over just eight
months ago.

"I feel like I have been in training my entire life to do this job,"
Jett said. "I have an understanding of addiction, a compassion for
families and addicts that not many people have, and a firm belief that
treatment works."