JUDGE LEADS CLIENTS IN ALTERNATIVE DRUG PROGRAM

In just 24 hours, 24 young men and women living in Washington County went
from the dim lights of District Court to the blue brilliance of Cape Cove
on Great Wass Island in Beals

They took a hike.

And it was mandatory, one more court-imposed requirement on the never-easy
path to sobriety and turning around lives.

The hikers were participants in the Washington County Adult Treatment Drug
Court, a yearlong alternative to jail time for crimes stemming from their
drug addictions and related problems.

On Friday they attended the weekly courtroom session in Machias in which
they face Judge John Romei and his standard but serious drill: How are
things going? he asks from the bench. Have you found work yet? What did you
learn last week at the [Alcoholics Anonymous] meetings? How long have you
been clean and sober?

On Saturday they traipsed after the jeans-wearing judge as he led them on a
challenging 5.5-mile hike around the Great Wass Island Preserve.

The highlight was reaching a cool, grassy knoll at Little Cape Point on the
far side of the island. There, the members of "Drug Court" - what
participants call the program for short - held an AA meeting before
returning to the rocky coastal trail.

It allowed the participants a moment in the sun on the rocks, complete with
breezes off the water, seals spotted through binoculars, a distant
lighthouse and a bay dotted with lobster buoys. In getting there, they
joked and bonded, asking each other how much trail remained to the next
resting place.

They were living out the lesson that it is possible to enjoy planned
leisure activities that do not involve drugs or drinking.

For the judge, it was a chance to help others see how close they are to
discovering and experiencing Washington County's beauty.

"It's a long, tough hike," Romei said in justifying his choice of circuit
trails. "But I just think it's a spectacular place. We want every graduate
of Drug Court to have the experience of this hike."

For a few of the clients, it was the first time they had been on a hike, ever.

Jamie Campbell, 28, was one of those.

Technically she is no longer part of the Washington County Drug Court
program, although she belonged until last summer. But just before the judge
announced the annual hike at Great Wass last year, Campbell fell afoul of
the program.

"I wanted to be clean, but I didn't know how to do it," she said. "I was
lying, scamming and not being honest."

She was given one final chance to succeed, or else finish out her five-year
sentence for burglary. She was directed to seek substance abuse treatment
at the Wellspring Women's Program, a residential facility in Bangor.

She stayed there six months where, she said, she finally "got it."

Then she asked for permission to be admitted to Justice Andrew Mead's Drug
Court in Bangor. The switch involved getting special support from Judge Romei.

She reasoned that she didn't want to return to her home in Machiasport,
where her life had involved drugs and bad relationships. She was better off
carving out a fresh start in Bangor, she felt.

She has been clean and sober 15 months. If all goes well, she said, she
will graduate from the Bangor Drug Court in January.

Campbell had been alerted to the hike around Great Wass Island by a letter
from Vanessa Cassidy, the program's case manager. She was eager to
reconnect with the Washington County team of professionals that support the
Drug Court clients.

"I feel really good that they asked me to come on this hike," she said. "I
have a lot of gratitude today that I can be recognized for how much
progress I have made."

"So far," the judge added only half in jest, knowing that as many clients
fail to finish the program as those who make it to the end.

Drug Court, which the state Legislature started funding in six counties in
2001, is demanding. Clients commit to sobriety and focus on their recovery.
They are required to attend 90 12-step program meetings in their first 90
days, either AA or Narcotics Anonymous.

They must attend at least five similar meetings each week for the rest of
the year. They must keep daily journals, live with curfews, submit to
random testing and meet with counselors. They must appear before the judge
once a week.

Twice a year, Judge Romei makes them meet him outdoors. In January he
organized an ice-fishing outing at Round Pond in Charlotte, also mandatory.

He has led at least one hike each year on Washington County trails. The
hike at the Great Wass Island Preserve remains his favorite.

As participants gathered Saturday at the parking lot near the trail head,
he told them how the Maine chapter of the Nature Conservancy had acquired
the 1,579-acre tract in 1978 to keep it open and accessible to everyone.

He made sure all the hikers had water, then set out. While Dennis Perry, a
court officer with the Washington County Sheriff's Department, set the pace
up front, the judge stayed back with the slower hikers.

They covered roots, rocks and crevasses.

Everyone made it in the end. Which, not too coincidentally, is just what
the judge would like to see happen in his Drug Court.