Series: Four Lives, One Last Chance - A Year In Drug Court: Part 24 Of 41

ACT IV. THE DRUG COURT FAMILY

After court one brisk fall day, Robert, Darlena and a few other Drug Court
clients sit around the program's downtown offices, killing time before
their counseling session. Rod Charity, their parole officer, rests in a
chair across the room, gleefully following their lighthearted banter.

Robert is talking about eating at a Chinese restaurant the night before,
describing how perplexed he was by the menu. Someone kids with him, saying
he might have eaten some cat or dog meat.

"I ate dog once," says Robert, a man with hardly any teeth left in his
head, "from a vendor in Vietnam."

"What it taste like?" Darlena asks.

"Like meat," he deadpans.

"That's why you ain't got no teeth," Darlena says.

Everyone cackles at her remark -- and even Robert smiles his toothless grin.

"Family can make fun of family," says Charity, chuckling along with
everyone else.

This is an often-repeated theme among the counselors and clients - the
Newport News Drug Court is like a family. The people here come to love and
hate one another. They joke and cry and argue together, until they form
bonds cemented by their struggles with addiction.

The family most often meets at the Drug Court offices, where clients come
for drug screens and counseling. The small two-story building - a former
optometrist's office - sits on 30th Street between a parking lot, a parking
garage and a grass field where Charity chips golf balls in warm weather.

Charity, a veteran Army paratrooper who jumped out of airplanes just for
the extra $110 a month in hazard pay, is a universally feared and loved figure.

The clients fear him because, as their parole officer, he holds their
freedom in his hands. A stocky man who still carries himself with a certain
military demeanor, Charity can be strict and unforgiving with the addict
who breaks a rule.

But the clients also love him because he's a down-to-earth, persistent
joker whose humor blends in with the streetwise jive of the addicts. Like
them, Charity takes a healthy joy in the witty put-down and the snappy
comeback, and even the most ordinary events become fodder for his comic mind.

When one of the female clients wanders through the Drug Court lobby
sporting a wavy hairdo, the parole officer stops her for a moment.

"You got so many waves in that hair," he says, "you gonna get seasick."

Charity rarely misses a chance to have a little fun, and he even targets
his co-workers for some good-natured abuse. So when one of the counselors
bursts into an Ella Fitzgerald tune one afternoon, Charity sees the opening
he needs.

"You know why she sang that song?" he asks her.

"Why?" she asks, taking the bait.

"So you don't have to."

But Charity didn't always have a reason to joke around. At his previous
job, he worked with hardened criminals at the Greensville Correctional
Center, an industrial-looking prison of concrete and razor wire planted in
the southern Virginia countryside.

He grew a thick skin there as a defense against the brutality and
hopelessness of men who would spend most of their lives in prison. Charity
found little reward in working with such futile cases.

In Drug Court, however, he saw an opportunity to help those who could still
turn their lives around. But when he took the job his hard exterior was
mistaken for a lack of compassion. One counselor even dubbed him a "dead fish."

After several months on the job, though, Charity suggests that he's getting
soft.

Robert rolls his head at the thought.

"He ain't getting soft now," he says. "He's getting some understanding."

Despite Charity's growing awareness, many of the clients would rather ask a
favor of Gary Ford, one of the counselors. The consensus is that it's
easier to get something over on Ford, a former drug user himself who has
some empathy for the addicts.

With his diamond stud earring and his ying-yang tattoo, he looks the part
of the easy-going former hippie. But in reality, he was an Army helicopter
pilot in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, and he can be just as tough as
his law-enforcement colleagues.

Ford often rushes around the building with a sense of purpose. He is just
as likely to wisecrack with the addicts, but he rarely lingers with them
like Charity does. He knows the mocking routine that most of the clients
perform is a remnant of the street culture, a posture required to survive
on the corners and feed an insidious drug habit.

He knows that many of the clients - particularly in the early phases - are
still trying to con their way through life. In one case, the parole
officers uncovered a massive plot to forge the attendance records for
Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Addicts are expected to attend several of the
12-step meetings a week. The forgeries landed 10 people in jail.

Yet when the offices are empty of clients, the counselors and parole
officers sometimes huddle in the hallways, where they retell the clients'
jokes and stories with fondness. They laugh at how the clients play off the
counselors and parole officers for favors, like children pinballing back
and forth between parents for permission.

In the end, Ford, Charity and the others on the Drug Court staff genuinely
hope to cut through all the joking to make real connections and real
changes in the clients' lives. It can be a draining task, and they go home
many days exhausted.

The clients they reach are the ones who put aside the games and, in
Narcotics Anonymous parlance, become "honest, open-minded and willing."

But they also know that some clients will never give up their tough veneers
or reveal the pain and secrets they hide behind them. Those addicts will
only mimic the language of their counselors and peers as they fake their
way through the program.

"There is just some stuff we'll never uncover because of who we're dealing
with," Ford observes. "Some of them are so slick."