SHE'S BEEN THERE

Former Crack Addict Gets Inmates Believing They, Too, Can Make It Outside

When teacher Michelle Delk enters her classroom, 64 serious men are waiting.

``Who are we?'' she asks, setting off a vocal explosion: ``Men of Honor!''
they roar so loudly, the chamber throbs.

The students are inmates at Elmwood Correctional Facility in Milpitas. The
teacher is a self-described ``dope fiend'' with a unique qualification: She
is the only certified instructor at Elmwood who is a former county jail
inmate -- seven times.

Delk's remarkable journey from crack addict to respected teacher began with
a bold but prophetic promise.

As she walked out of Elmwood for the last time in 1997, she told two jail
guards she'd return someday, with the ability to come and go at will.

``They fell out laughing,'' Delk said. ``They said, `You'll probably be
back next week.' ''

While their timing was way off, she is very much back -- eight years clean
and sober -- a living tale of redemption for dubious guards and struggling
inmates alike.

``It's a privilege for me to be back as an instructor,'' said Delk, 45, a
big woman with a booming personality to match. ``Addicts are not bad people
trying to get good, they are sick people trying to get well.''

Delk's classroom is a locked hexagon where three hours a day she and her
students delve into their destructive addictions to drugs and alcohol. She
is a consummate role model.

``I've been 23 years on parole and hardly known any life except prison,''
said Adolph Moncabias, 49, such a heavy dope user that Delk calls him a
living miracle. ``But now I've connected with someone who can show me how
to live the rest of my life free.''

Gary Hanes, a guard who worked at Elmwood when Delk was an inmate, says she
has street credibility. ``She's an inspiration,'' said Hanes of the newest
instructor in the county's education program that offers inmates a better
shot at rehabilitation.

Nick Hinebaugh, principal of Milpitas Adult Education, which operates the
classes, said Delk teaches in two separate men's dorms, five days a week.
Hinebaugh describes her as, ``caring, straightforward and brutally honest.''

Often rookie teachers in the jails find the going tough, ``but from day one
,'' said Hinebaugh, `` Michelle just took over this whole environment.''

Embracing sobriety

For eight years -- one day at a time -- Delk has romped in her sobriety as
enthusiastically as she pursued countless volumes of pills, cocaine, crack,
crank and alcohol for 23 years. Starting at age 12 with marijuana, by age
21 Delk was a divorcee, a bad mother, a thief, a petty dealer and a
full-scale addict.

``I was getting high all the time and giving the dope man all my stuff,''
said Delk, a Christian, whose gift of gab is both salty and sanctified. ``I
was also cheating, lying, stealing and conniving. Cocaine was always my
anesthesia.''

That was back in Chicago, where she grew up poor and fast with an alcoholic
mother on one side of town and a violent stepmother on the other. Her young
life was laced in drugs, alcohol and precocious sexuality.

And when she discovered the blitzkrieg head-rush high of crack, ``I spent
20 more years trying to find that first high, which of course can never
happen.''

In 1981, Delk moved to San Jose and escalating drinking and drug use piled
up years of physical deterioration, failed employment, terrible parenting,
criminal activity and brutal relationships.

At 31 -- when daughter Erica was 4 and son Mianju was 11 -- Delk went to
county jail for the first time on charges of child endangerment. After five
more stints for everything from drug-dealing to possession of stolen
property, she landed in 1996 in Elmwood for a drug-addled burglary.

``I felt I was dying and I was also out of my mind,'' said Delk, who faced
a possible three years in prison. Her daughter was in foster care and her
son was at an Arizona boys' ranch, she said. She was desperately at bottom.

``I said, `God, take me out of this madness,' '' Delk recalled. ``I wanted
to know what it was like to have that sparkle I figured came with being
clean and sober. My whole life was: `I'm on crack, you got any?' ''

At Elmwood, Delk started taking substance abuse courses, and every other
class they had -- from art and gardening, to computers and literacy.

``They were my saving grace,'' said Delk, who also led prayer groups and
attended addiction program meetings for what turned out to be eight months.
``In Elmwood, just learning to think again, to form opinions, to speak in
complete sentences, was how my recovery got started.''

Released March 18, 1997, Delk knew herself well enough to ask that she be
placed first into strict San Jose halfway house programs. And the last five
years, she secured ever-improving jobs while pursuing her alcohol and drugs
teaching certification. Meanwhile she worked with church groups, wrote lots
of therapeutic poetry and raised Erica, now 18. She's also made peace with
her parents.

``My mother was my inspiration,'' said Delk, of her mom, now sober 20
years. ``The first poem I ever wrote I dedicated to my dad. Now I'm giving
back to the place where my real life began.''

Truth and art

Delk's teaching style blends performance art with heartbreaking truth.

``Where you been all night?'' she whines, falling into the role of
disillusioned wife so the inmates can play off her.

``Get outta my face,'' one grouses. ``You likes to get high too?'' accused
another. The mini-dramas lead to frank discussions all around.

Delk follows a 12-part syllabus that covers subjects such as the process of
addiction to psychopharmacology. But by wading into the midst of her
students, playing vindictive girlfriends, weeping children and angry cops
and employers, the inmates pry open troves of thorny issues from loss of
trust to financial ruin.

``My poor grandmother died six times when I was trying not to lose another
job,'' Delk said, causing laughter. ``Michelle, how many grandmothers you
got? And how many times she gonna die?''

When inmates hear Delk openly discuss her own ``underlying causes of
addiction,'' they recognize their own demons. While she has come a long
way, she tells them her life isn't perfect, that her son is an addict in a
Mississippi jail.

``We relate to her as an addict and a former inmate,'' said Eric McDaniel,
36. ``But now she's a teacher. If just one of us goes out and makes the
life Michelle has, then her work here will be a blessing.''

Even the class name, Men of Honor, was Delk's inspiration.

A 10-foot ``Honor'' banner hangs off a catwalk and symbolizes a powerful
connection. On a white background, the men's red and blue paper handprints
are each scrawled with a name and a date of sobriety.

Only one palm is pink. It sits at the center and reads: Michelle Delk: July
18, 1996.

``I was honored that they wanted me on there,'' Delk said. ``This work is
hard, but it's also why I love getting up in the morning.''