MAKE IT WORK

Editor's note: This is the second in a series of stories on addicts
recovering from meth use. The stories run on the first Sunday of each
month on the Local section front.

Once he decided to get clean, staying off methamphetamine was a test
Manny Pacheco passed easily.

Getting an education after a lifetime spent in and out of jail caused
him the most trepidation.

"It was scary for me in an anxious way, but it was also scary in a
good way," Pacheco said of his first day at Rogue Community College.

"It had been a lifelong dream for me to attend college."

Since moving on to Southern Oregon University, Pacheco, 43, relives
his battles with addiction and crime to inspire others. His essays on
surmounting these obstacles have secured scholarships toward his
pursuit of a degree in human services.

"Because of my past, I have to establish some sense of credibility,"
he said.

"I've found a way to make it work for me."

Trying drugs for the first time at age 13, Pacheco said he just
desperately wanted to belong somewhere. At age 14, he went to juvenile
detention for a gang-related assault. Over the next 25 years, Pacheco
lived for drug-induced highs and weathered the lows in prison and
jail. He figures he's spent more than half his life locked up.

"It wasn't even a life, it was an existence," he said.

Throughout his teens in San Diego and a stint in the Marine Corps,
Pacheco dabbled in marijuana, LSD, cocaine, amphetamines and anything
else he could get his hands on.

"I was kind of what is referred to as a garbage-can-type
junkie."

But meth always made him feel "bullet-proof and 10 feet tall." The
last decade of his addiction -- "the beginning of the end" -- Pacheco
used meth intravenously. The final three years he used the illegal
stimulant exclusive of all other drugs, dependent on it to function.

Amid such heavy use of a drug known to rapidly erode addicts' physical
and mental health, Pacheco's frequent trips to jail probably saved his
life, he said. Medford police could always count on booking the
long-haired, tattooed, towering Yaqui Indian, who invariably was
carrying drugs or had violated his probation.

"I didn't fear the justice system here at all," he
said.

But the precarious nature of his lifestyle struck Pacheco the evening
of his last arrest nearly five years ago in the Jackson Street parking
lot of Taco Bell. Looking down the barrel of a police handgun, Pacheco
could see the younger officer trembling.

"I saw the look in their eyes, and I had this flash."

Frequently armed himself, Pacheco realized that one move could have
touched off a shooting -- of him or the police. He promptly sent his
probation officer a plea from jail for a spot in residential
treatment. He was adamant about going directly from county custody to
avoid a minute spent back on the streets.

Pacheco spent four months in OnTrack's Dads Program, where fathers can
live with their children throughout the treatment process. Although
Pacheco didn't have custody of his 9-year-old daughter, he said he
benefitted from the home-like environment, where for the first time,
he felt like he belonged.

"It was the first thing I had ever completed in my life ... besides
many jail sentences."

After amassing a lifetime of street smarts, Pacheco said he realized
he "really didn't know anything." As an addict living in Ashland, he'd
gaze up the hill at SOU, little thinking he would ever set foot on the
campus. So after working as a night-shift janitor at Tinseltown, he
was surprised when his job coach wanted him to spend time in another
institution -- but, this time, one of higher learning.

"I was like, 'Wow, I know all about institutions.'"

Pacheco soon found himself enrolled in RCC's Bright Futures Program
with other nervous non-traditional students facing barriers to
education. He decided to study sociology in hopes of working with
agencies who had helped him. Since then, he's refined his goal to
assisting others seeking an education. He figures if he can do it,
anyone can.

"Rehabilitation does work," he said.

In addition to attending school full-time, working on campus and
raising his daughter, now 13, Pacheco speaks to classrooms of his
fellow students and even his former peers at the Jackson County
Community Justice Work Center.

"Their goals and their dreams are realistic," he said. "I'm one of the
biggest resources for all the unwritten rules in college ... and I
just want to give back."