GRADUATE RECALLS DRUGS' HARD LESSON

Caps and gowns make the row upon row of people being honored at university
graduation ceremonies this month look much the same.

But they didn't all follow the same path to get there. Some encountered
potholes or roadblocks or took wrong turns onto detours that led to dead ends.

Meet Ira Mozee Jr., 39, graduating today from the University of Houston
with an MBA. It wasn't so many years ago that he was spending his paychecks
on crack and spending some nights at the bus station.

He grew up in New York state, he said, but shortly after high school he
moved with his mom and four sisters to Houston. He said his mother wanted
to get him away from the gang and drug influences in their New York
neighborhood.

Mozee said he worked in landscaping at Greenway Plaza for the first three
or four years after moving here, helping to support the family. But then he
found a job that paid big bucks for a young fellow with his limited
training, experience and education.

He became a telephone solicitor, proved to be quite good at it, and it
wasn't an unusual week back in the early '80s when he made $1,000. He could
get someone on the other end of that phone line and sell a vacation,
long-distance service or luggage -- whatever his bosses had contracted to
market.

It was a co-worker who first made crack available to him, Mozee said. He
figured he was making enough money so that he could afford to party. At
first, he limited his drug use to small amounts on weekends. But gradually,
he used more and more.

A dangerous routine He said it became a pattern to get paid on Friday, give
some money to his wife and kids, blow the rest on crack, and go back to
work on Monday flat broke.

How he wound up sleeping at the bus station was he failed to pay the rent,
and they got evicted. His wife and kids stayed with friends. One of Mozee's
sisters found out where he was and took him in until he could get another
apartment.

Many were the Monday mornings he asked his boss for advances on his Friday
paychecks. He said he could get advances because even though his personal
life was messed up with crack, he still was conscientious about doing his job.

Mozee said he managed to hang on to some of the basic values his mother had
taught him. He never robbed anyone or stole anything, he said, and he
didn't deal drugs.

"It's one thing to hurt yourself, it's another to contribute to the illness
or addiction of another person," he said.

Finally, one morning about 10 years ago, Mozee realized there had to be a
better way to live, a better path he could take to a more purposeful and
meaningful life.

Willing to volunteer He said he looked into a rehab facility he had heard
about and was accepted on a voluntary commitment basis. People in charge
predicted he would never make it through the entire 2 1/2-year program.
They said it was difficult enough for those who were there on the orders of
a judge. They figured a volunteer would get tired, or discouraged, or maybe
yield to pressures from a family trying to scrape by on too little money,
and just walk away.

But Mozee said he managed to make the distance. He changed his life, beat
his addiction. Soon he was enrolled in college. He was lucky that he had
never been busted for using or possessing drugs. An arrest record could
have been a major roadblock for the rest of his life.

We were talking about his path to graduation in the meeting room at a
downtown banking facility where Mozee works as a security guard. He said he
has been putting in seven days a week to support his family, while going to
school from 7 to 10 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays.

A few days ago, after he advised his bosses he soon would be exploring the
employment options that his new MBA will open up for him, Mozee said the
company responded by offering him a position as a project manager.

Land of hope and glory ...