Making His Way Up Hill
Former Drug User Gets Chance To Prove Himself in Senate Job

By Janina de Guzman
Washington Post Staff Writer

Each weekday, James Washington delivers the law of the land, riding gilded
elevators and walking marble halls past plush Senate offices as he drops off
bills, reports and legislation.

At day's end, he takes the Metro to the Gallery Place station and walks to
the Gospel Rescue Ministries shelter at 810 Fifth St. NW, where he lives with
former drug users and convicted criminals like himself.

Washington, 37, has straddled the world of the Hill and the world of the
homeless since spring, when he was hired as a documents clerk for Printing
and Document Services formerly known as the Senate Document Room under
the patronage of Sen. Dan Coats (RInd.).

Washington arrived on the doorstep of the Gospel Rescue Ministries last
October, strung out on crack cocaine, unemployed and estranged from his wife
and children.

The ministries, a private, nonprofit organization providing food, shelter,
educational programs, drug rehabilitation and spiritual counseling, gave
Washington refuge but demanded accountability.

Residents pay $3 a night or work at the ministries to earn their keep. If
they stay long term, they must enroll in a rehabilitation program, either the
oneyear program at the Haven Drug Treatment Center or the spiritual growth
program, which varies in length.

"It's not your typical, `Come on in, we'll dry you out and give you a hot
meal and a bed for a night and send you back out in the street,' " said
Coats, who met Washington through the ministries. "It's about how to look
inside yourself and rise above those conditions."

Edward J. Eyring, president and executive director of the ministries, said
transformation is the cornerstone of the center's programs.

"The basic premise is we encourage people to come here and change their
lives," Eyring said. Twothirds of men graduating from the Haven drug program
are clean and sober 15 months later, according to a 1995 study by the
ministries, he said. The study was done to track the first two years of the
program, which opened in 1993.

For Washington, rehabilitation at the rescue mission caps a road to recovery
that began with a spiritual experience in a Southeast Washington apartment in
1986. Washington said that, high on crack, he suddenly cried out to God "to
take this Satan high away from me."

That was the beginning of salvation for a man who said he had started selling
marijuana at age 15 and committed his first armed robbery shortly after that,
and who, according to court records, served his first jail term for
possession of cocaine at 19.

But Washington's transformation took another decade as he slipped in and out
of the criminal world. Drug use was the demon, he said, that pulled him away
from jobs and his wife and left him sleeping in abandoned cars and empty
warehouses with other crack users.

"That was a wild time in my life," Washington said. "Three years good, one
year of craziness, four years good, 90 days of craziness. Me fighting myself.
The battle I know now is not a natural fight, but spiritual warfare."

The paranoiafilled highs are over now, Washington says, thanks to
rehabilitation at the mission, but the struggle to stay on track and mend
family ties is ongoing.

Back at the shelter, life is geared to reinforcing faith. In the staircase to
the living quarters, signs posted on the walls remind Washington that "The
Lord is the Ever Lasting God" and "He Gives Strength to the Weary." Residents
are encouraged to play religious music but to wear headsets when listening to
secular music.

"I know the power of negative words," Washington said. "Your whole being is
new, and you need to read the word of God, meditate, pray and listen to
positive music . . . to be attentive to the new man in you."

When Coats approached the ministries seeking a candidate for the documents
clerk position, Eyring recommended Washington despite his criminal history.

"We don't feel like it makes a difference where a person has been if they
want to change their lives," Eyring said. "If he's done his time and is being
a good guy, you evaluate him for who he is." Coats said he knew of
Washington's background but was "convinced James was a transformed person."

Donald Melvin, director of the spiritual growth program at the Gospel Rescue
Ministries, said Washington has grown tremendously since his arrival at the
mission. Still, sending Washington and other men from a structured
environment to an "anything goes" kind of society is not without risk, Melvin
said.

"It's a test of their faith," he said. "I feel a little like it's sheep among
the wolves, sending them out. There is that apprehension, but the only way to
do it is to let them go. I feel James was ready to make that transition."

_ Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company