Series: Four Lives, One Last Chance - A Year In Drug Court: Part 11 Of 41

ACT II: VERNON: 'YEAH, I WANTED HELP'

Sitting in a cell during his last stint in an Illinois prison, Vernon
thought about fleeing Chicago and the drug life. Just living a normal life
- -- like his parents did -- with a job, a house and a mortgage didn't sound
so bad.

Then the other side of him, the tough streetwise side, would come roaring
back to make him feel weak for even thinking about running away. He
couldn't let the streets get the better of him, his alter ego said. He
could take it.

He knew well the streets of his close-knit, blue-collar Chicago
neighborhood, and he knew what he would face there. Vernon had been a
fixture on its drug corners since he wandered out of the house at the age
of 12 and earned the street name "Little Man."

Out there, he sold drugs through his teen years and played the
cat-and-mouse game with the Chicago police in his raucous style.

Out there, he first tasted "sherm" - cigarettes dipped in PCP. The powerful
psychedelic drug became the "neighborhood high" for him and his friends.

And out there, he found his true drug of choice - heroin.

There was a lot of pain on those streets, a lot to escape. But it was all
he had ever known.

After he got out of prison, Vernon told one of his brothers that he had
thought about leaving Chicago. Nothing definite, just that he'd thought
about it. The Army was set to transfer his brother, Andre, to the Peninsula.

Andre eventually persuaded Vernon to come with him to Newport News, a move
that he hoped would save his troubled brother. On the 17-hour drive to
Virginia, Vernon laid on the floor of the car, sweating and shaking from
heroin withdrawal.

Vernon knew nothing about Newport News - he just wanted out of Chicago, and
he didn't care where he went. But the change in scenery didn't have any
effect on his attitude or his taste for heroin. Soon after arriving here,
Vernon found himself scamming money for his next blast of smack and bumming
rides to drug markets all over Hampton Roads.

Before long, some Newport News officers stopped Vernon on the street in
midtown, patted him down and found a stash of heroin. That arrest dogged
him for three years until he landed in Drug Court for violating his probation.

By then, his brother had long since left the area - transferred again, this
time to Maryland.

When Vernon was offered Drug Court, he knew he would have to battle
addiction and his own deep-seated issues with no one to lean on. With
little support, he thought that taking the program would be a "setup for
failure."

Most Drug Court clients are Peninsula natives who live rent-free with their
parents and sleep in their childhood bedrooms. They have lifelong friends
to give them support, a ride to work, an ear to bend.

As Vernon predicted, his solitary nature has made his fight against
addiction even harder.

When he needs to make an NA meeting, he often calls a half-dozen people
before he finds a ride. When the $375 rent comes due, he has to work extra
days at the restaurant, hustling for tips and counting every dollar. Most
holidays and birthdays go by virtually uncelebrated, with Vernon stewing in
his apartment.

Taking the program also has meant digging into his past and dealing with
issues he would just as well keep buried under a mountain of jokes and
dismissals. Vernon would rather write off his drug addiction as "a phase"
that he has overcome. Now he constantly brags to his Drug Court peers that
abstinence is easy for him.

With his stubborn reluctance to open up about his past, many of his peers
frequently ask him why he even bothered to take the program.

"To stay out of jail," he always says.

The truth is a little different. The judge in his original case first
offered Vernon a year in a work-release program at the city farm. After a
couple of months there, Vernon would have been free.

He was leaning toward the city farm when the judge asked him whether he was
serious about cleaning up his life. Vernon said he was.

If you're serious, the judge told him, take the program. The city farm is
the easy way out.

The judge, Vernon says, talked him into it.

But there was something more to Vernon's motivation. Although he spends
months in the program before he acknowledges it, eventually he can no
longer kid himself.

"I didn't want to mess with drugs no more, I just didn't know how," he
says. "Yeah, I wanted help."