TROUBLED PAST, BRIGHT FUTURE

New Court Program Offers Chance For Clean Record

INDIAN RIVER COUNTY -- Christi Hart stood before the judge Tuesday in
her blue-flowered graduation dress, her nervousness and excitement
clear.

Behind the 33-year-old single mother was a courtroom filled with
lawyers, law-enforcement officers, government officials, mental-health
counselors and a collection of family, friends and other
well-wishers.

The occasion was the first-ever Indian River County Drug Court
graduation.

And Hart was the first graduate.

Hart, of Vero Beach, was arrested May 25, 2002, after buying cocaine
from an undercover police officer in the 1000 block of 10th Court
Southwest. When she got out of jail June 19, 2002, she was homeless
and confused, she said.

The drug-court program, newly launched in late May 2002 by Circuit
Judge Cynthia L. Cox, turned out to be her salvation.

Mandated by the state Legislature in 2001, drug court is available
only to first-time, nonviolent drug offenders. Participants must
complete a rigorous three-phase program of group and individual
counseling, weekly drug testing, almost daily Alcoholics Anonymous
meetings and frequent court appearances.

The reward for those who succeed is a clean record; the criminal
charges against them dropped.

Tuesday, Cox signed a court order dismissing a cocaine possession
charge against Hart and presented her with a certification of completion.

"You have come a long way," Cox said, handing her pictures of how
badly she looked the day she was arrested and how much better she looks now.

Outside the courtroom before the ceremony, Hart explained how she was
overwhelmed at first by all she was being asked to do in the program.
Her drug-abuse counselor, Cathie Ganey, of New Horizons, told her "to
calm down and take one step at a time and eventually she would see a
routine develop," Hart said.

And she did see it.

"Life became more and more simple ... and easier," said Hart, who
within two months had found a job and a place to live with her three
children ages 13, 10 and 8.

Ganey taught her to be organized, "to live life on life's terms ...
and to focus on the solution, not the problem," she said.

Her full-time employer, Winn-Dixie, saw her through, giving her
Tuesdays off to go to court, she said.

And her co-workers in the grocery chain's deli department helped get
her to her drug court appointments regularly.

"They made sure I was a success," she said.

Likewise, the support of her mother, sister, boyfriend and children
strengthened her resolve.

"My whole family has been restored through this," she
said.

"I'm not proud of how I got here (in court), but I am proud of how I'm
leaving here," she said.

Two other drug-court participants were set to graduate with Hart, but
have relapsed in the five weeks since graduation was scheduled, Ganey
said. They remain in the program.