A NEW SOBRIETY, A NEW BEGINNING

On the outside, Theodora Triggs is a woman transformed. Her eyes are clear
and her shiny dark hair is pulled back into a neat ponytail. Her jeans,
sky-blue shirt and white sneakers are spotless.

Now, she is cleansing the inside--the dark impulses that fueled her
obsessive pursuit of heroin, leaving her little daughter Tamika tossed in
the turbulent wake.

"Sobriety is the first thing in my life," Theodora said from an Anaheim
rehabilitation facility. "I don't have to wake up sick anymore. I don't
wonder where my next dollar comes from. I'm working for a total life
change--a change of everything inside of me."

Although her journey will last a lifetime, she already has taken some
encouraging first steps. Theodora and those around her have even allowed
themselves to harbor the thought of mother and daughter being together
again some day.

Only three months ago, such a prospect would have seemed criminal.

After Theodora and Tamika were featured in The Times' "Orphans of
Addiction" series, police and social workers found them living in the
garage of a filthy Long Beach home. Within easy reach of the girl were
crack pipes and hypodermic needles, some of them uncapped, one filled with
a brown liquid believed to be heroin. Human waste filled a broken toilet.

"My heart sunk," Theodora recalled of that November morning when the
authorities arrived. "I was scared. I was losing my daughter."

Theodora was permitted to put 3-year-old Tamika in the social worker's car.
She told her daughter she loved her and then pressed a cross into her tiny
hand.

"God is doing this for a reason," she told Tamika, who responded tearfully:
"Mommy! I want you!"

"It will be all right, sweetheart," Theodora said as the car drove away.

Theodora was arrested, and Tamika became one of 531,000 youngsters in the
nation's foster care system. She was placed in the loving home of a woman
in Bellflower, where Tamika is said to be on the mend--like the mother whom
she talks of missing so much.

The progress they have made since then was evident last month at the Oasis
Treatment Center, where Theodora now lives. A group therapy room was filled
with pink and white balloons, Barbie plates, piles of presents and dozens
of guests, most of them patients at the facility.

At the center of it all was Tamika and a big cake with four candles, the
only ones ever lit for the youngster on this, the first birthday party of
her life.

"I want another birthday party," she later told the center's founder. "I
want to have lots of parties."

As for Theodora, the affair was bittersweet, providing a glimpse of the
future while reminding her of what had led her to this place.

"What kind of mother was I? . . . I abused her," Theodora said of Tamika.
"It's hard for me to grasp and accept that." But, she said, "the more the
fog lifts, the more I accept."

A Stranger's Offer of Help Accepted

The process of recovery for Theodora began in jail, where she realized she
had lost something far more precious than her freedom: her daughter. "I
wanted help," she said.

Obtaining a list of drug treatment programs, she began dialing, seven of
them in all. Some wouldn't accept her collect calls. Others said they were
full or charged too much for the destitute woman to pay. Publicly funded
programs generally have long waiting lists.

Although an estimated 67% of parents with youngsters in the child welfare
system need substance abuse treatment, there are only enough publicly
funded treatment slots to accommodate less than a third of those requiring
such help.

In Theodora's case, however, help came to her.

A worker at the Oasis Treatment Center was infuriated after reading that
Theodora had been sentenced to serve 10 days behind county bars on
misdemeanor child endangerment charges rather than being provided with
treatment. She promptly beeped the program's founder, Jim Antonowitsch, 57.

"I want her," Antonowitsch responded.

A recovering alcoholic himself, Antonowitsch opened the Oasis Treatment
Center nine years ago with some of the substantial wealth he had amassed
through a landscaping business. Rich enough to retire in his early 40s,
Antonowitsch wanted to help others find the serenity he had achieved during
16 years of sobriety.

He and his wife, Kathy, sold a beach home they owned and plowed the money
into an Anaheim crack house that today has a swimming pool, a rose garden
and 12 flagstone steps leading to the front door, symbolizing the
facility's adherence to Alcoholics Anonymous' 12-step recovery program.
Oasis has treated more than 2,000 people from all walks of life.

Many people believe that only stiff penalties will straighten out addicted
parents who repeatedly neglect or abuse their children. But Antonowitsch,
like most substance abuse experts, argues that treatment is substantially
more effective and cost-efficient than incarceration.

"They talk about two things in prison," he said. "Getting laid and getting
loaded."

Convinced he could rescue Theodora, and ultimately Tamika, Antonowitsch
persuaded the judge to ask the mother whether she would be willing to
undergo rehabilitation at Oasis--for free. Theodora gratefully accepted the
stranger's offer. "I was stunned," she said.

The day before Thanksgiving, she walked out of Los Angeles County's Twin
Towers jail and into the recovery center's foyer, decorated with a
Christmas tree topped with a white angel. Antonowitsch greeted her with a
tight embrace. Theodora cried.

She then was ushered to her new quarters, a sparely decorated room with a
rose and blue carpet. One resident had placed a teddy bear on her bed. On
the night stand was the 23rd Psalm.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want . . .

For Tamika, Some Stability at Last

Like her mother, Tamika also has been welcomed into a home filled with
affection and concern. During her last year with Theodora, the youngster
lived in nine different places--depending on Theodora's latest boyfriend or
where she was getting high.

Given the high visibility of Tamika's plight, top child welfare officials
wanted to make sure the girl was placed with parents with impeccable
credentials and would not be bounced from home to home, as are many
children in the strained foster care system.

The couple picked for Tamika has two other young foster children in their
modest Bellflower house.

Five days a week, Tamika receives court-ordered "toy therapy" to help her
deal with the psychological trauma of being the child of a heroin addict.
Her meals no longer are dependent upon whether her mother has spent all
their money on drugs. Tamika's health also is good these days. Recent tests
show that she, unlike her mother, is not carrying the AIDS virus.

Every Sunday, Tamika and her new family go to church, another first for the
youngster.

"Tamika is bouncing right back," said Theodora's Oasis counselor, David
Warner. "Tamika has stability and peace. Children are very flexible,
forgiving and loyal."

At first--and to some extent now--Tamika did not understand why she could
not be with her mother, who had shared many tender moments with her between
drug runs. With no frame of reference, Tamika had no reason to think she
was being cheated out of childhood.

In her first telephone call with Theodora, Tamika asked simply, "Mommy,
where are you?"

"Mommy's getting help," Theodora replied. She said she was at the doctor's.

"Are you getting better? Did you get your teeth, Mommy?" Tamika asked,
knowing that Theodora had dreamed of replacing the two front teeth a man
had punched out years ago. Yes, she told Tamika, all her teeth were back.

As the conversation closed, Theodora repeatedly reassured Tamika that
"Mommy loves you." Her daughter listened quietly.

Their first face-to-face visit came two days before Christmas. Oasis
founder Antonowitsch drove Theodora to a McDonald's restaurant near
Tamika's new home. When Theodora saw her daughter running toward her, she
dropped to her knees on the parking lot pavement and then wrapped her arms
around the girl.

When it was time to leave, Tamika begged to go with her. No, Theodora said,
not yet, not until she was better.

These days, Theodora and Tamika chat on the phone three times a week.
Inevitably, Tamika comes around to the same wrenching question: "Are you
coming to get me?"

'I'm Learning My Character Defects'

Theodora knows that, although she has made progress, she has a long way to
go before realizing her hope of being reunited with Tamika by next
Christmas.

"I'm learning my character defects," said Theodora, who has replaced drugs
with a belief in the healing power of spirituality. "I'm not a bad person,"
she said. "I have an addiction."

Theodora said she is applying this same principle in accepting the fact
that she is HIV-positive. Since entering rehabilitation, her T-cell count
has tripled, dramatically fortifying her immune system.

Antonowitsch said Theodora's odds of staying drug-free are excellent if she
maintains the commitment she has shown thus far--no easy task. For, as time
passes, the exhilaration of early sobriety can often give way to
complacency and relapse.

Theodora has much to overcome. She used heroin on and off for 12 years. Her
constant scramble to obtain drugs turned her into a master manipulator,
especially of men, whom she mostly relied upon for her daily fixes.

"She is a total con," said Antonowitsch.

What's more, unlike patients who are relearning acceptable behaviors,
Theodora never learned them at all. She is starting from scratch.

Ultimately, addicts such as Theodora won't stay sober unless they work at
it every day for the rest of their days, attending 12-step meetings and
employing the survival tools they learn in treatment to transform their
character, not just to kick drugs or alcohol.

"Sometimes, we get the idea that if we are sober, life will be a bed of
roses, and it's not," said Oasis executive director Nancy Hamilton.

The first 30 days of rehabilitation at Oasis are focused on breaking
through the denial common to addicts in early recovery. During the next
months the search for work is introduced into the program. Most find jobs
at temp agencies, local hotels or restaurants.

Not everyone makes it that far.

Relapse rates are highest with long-term users like Theodora. One in four
Oasis residents leave within three months. But of those who stay, 87%
remain sober for two years, according to one study.

The strategy for Theodora is for her to undergo intensive treatment for one
or two years and ultimately to bring mother and daughter together in one of
Oasis' 25 sober-living homes. Already, Theodora is earning pocket money by
performing cleaning chores at Oasis--a job that, while humble, has given
her a sense of purpose. Eventually, Oasis hopes to employ her full time,
possibly as a counselor.

Theodora, for her part, says she eventually wants to volunteer in schools,
using herself as a textbook example of where drugs can lead.

Like many in recovery, Theodora has been forced to confront the painful
memories she has spent a lifetime trying to obliterate with heroin, cocaine
and liquor.

When she was 9, her father died in a car accident. At 10, her alcoholic
mother committed suicide. Some relatives took her, while others took her
brothers. Theodora never accepted the separation, and began to act out. She
ended up in a procession of foster homes, finally heading out on her own.

In one group therapy session, she recalled how, when she was 11 or 12, one
of her father's friends got her drunk and raped her.

Theodora has consistently hooked up with men who, in addition to being
addicts, are physically abusive. She has hearing problems in both ears
because of blows to the head.

Sitting by a marble fountain in the center's palm-studded backyard,
Theodora talks with her counselor, David Warner, about her past, about
regrets and guilt.

"I killed a child," she confesses, referring to a baby that was stillborn
because she was on cocaine during the entire pregnancy. Tears streak her
cheeks.

"What are you going to do differently?" Warner asks.

"I'm going to stay sober," Theodora vows, adding forcefully, "I do have
morals."

Theodora and Warner climb the steps to the rooftop of the center, within
sight of Disneyland's Matterhorn. To the string of a helium-filled balloon,
Theodora attaches a "grief letter" she has written to her deceased
mother--one of many she has been writing to people in her past.

"I'm proud of you Mom. I love you Mom. I'm sorry," Theodora writes.

She and Warner pray together. As he puts his arm around Theodora, she
releases the balloon. The two quietly watch it disappear into the blue.

The exercise, Warner explained later, helps people let go of their past, to
focus more squarely on today, to release their grief to a higher power.

Warner said that Theodora's desire to adopt this new way of life--coupled
with her parental instincts--should serve her well.

Oasis executive director Hamilton agrees: "I do think she can be a good
mother."

Small Tokens of Triumph

Every Tuesday evening, an inspiring ritual takes place at Oasis. About 150
recovering alcoholics and addicts, their friends and family members gather
around a huge bonfire in the packed backyard patio. There, Antonowitsch
hands out "sobriety chips"--coins commemorating the number of months
recipients have strung together without drug or drink.

On one December night, Antonowitsch asks those new to the program to speak
first.

"I hope to find peace of mind and sobriety," says one.

"I want to be clean and get my family back," says another, a
third-generation heroin user, the fourth member of her family to find help
at Oasis.

Laura, a counselor at the facility, rises to claim a chip for 18 months of
continuous sobriety. "This is a really big miracle for me," she says. Her
parents found her passed out, her blood-alcohol level at more than seven
times California's legal driving limit. When she arrived at Oasis, she
weighed 85 pounds.

"I don't have that empty spot in me that I have to fill anymore," Laura
says, her voice trembling. "I get on my knees every day. I want to be a
productive member of society. I'm just really, really happy.
"Thank you," she mouths to Antonowitsch.

Now it's Theodora's turn.

"All right T!" the crowd cheers.

Antonowitsch lovingly places a chip for 30 days into Theodora's hand, a
hand more accustomed to the feel of a syringe than a symbol of recovery.

Flashing an infectious smile, she holds the token above her head, clearly
overcome with emotion.

"You just focus on your No. 1 problem," Antonowitsch tells her, "and
everything else will come together."

ABOUT THIS STORY: In November, The Times chronicled the secret suffering of
countless children living in substance-abusing homes. As adults, these
youngsters often replay the abuse they endured, perpetuating many of our
gravest social ills. Writer Sonia Nazario and photographer Clarence
Williams recently revisited two families profiled in the "Orphans of
Addiction" series, including Theodora Triggs, 34, pictured above with her
daughter, Tamika, after shooting heroin last summer. Today, hope has
supplanted despair in their lives.

On The Web
To read the original series and join others in an online discussion, go to
the Times' Web site at: http://www.latimes.com/orphans

Copyright Los Angeles Times