Series: Four Lives, One Last Chance - A Year In Drug Court: Part 10 Of 41

ACT II. LINWOOD: 'LISTENING TO GOD'

Linwood likes to walk.

He walks to Narcotics Anonymous meetings. He walks to Drug Court. He walks
home from his part-time gig stapling and filing papers at the Newport News
Circuit Court Clerk's office, where he works to whittle away at thousands
of dollars of court fines he accumulated over years of getting arrested.

Most of Linwood's shoe leather is worn off in the East End, the
predominantly black neighborhood that has been ravaged by drugs and
drug-related violence for more than a decade. Linwood grew up there in
Lassiter Courts, one of the city's hardest housing projects, on Taylor Avenue.

In some places, the East End embodies the modern definition of a ghetto:
rows and rows of dilapidated homes and housing projects, open drug sales
and open displays of human cruelty and poverty. But in other places, the
East End could be any other neighborhood, with well-kept homes, manicured
lawns and churches that teem with worshippers every Sunday.

For most of his life, Linwood washed through the drug culture there,
eventually riding a wave of crack cocaine that flooded the neighborhood in
the 1990s and nearly drowned an entire generation. Left in its wake were
the addicted, the imprisoned and the dead.

Within that mix, Linwood was considered one of the baddest dudes out there.
Drug Court clients who knew him from the streets shake their heads at the
recollection.

"I thought I was shady," says one woman. "But he was too shady even for me
to get with."

By the time his addiction reached its depth, Linwood's mother had long
since kicked him out of the house, and he took to sleeping in abandoned
buildings, parked cars or simply on the sidewalk. He stole and robbed and
ran up a towering reputation and a thick rap sheet. He even tried to rob
his own mother's house until his step-father shot at him with a .30-.30 rifle.

In many ways, Linwood epitomized the evils of drug abuse. He was the kind
of addict that politicians use to justify harsher drug laws and longer
prison terms.

But he is also the type of addict for whom Drug Court was designed. His
addiction was so strong, his situation so hopeless, that the path to
sobriety was obscured. Without help, without a guide through that
wilderness, the odds were long that Linwood would ever find his way off the
streets.

One popular theory about drug use says addicts must hit "rock bottom"
before they can quit. And few Drug Court clients can say they fell as far
or as fast as Linwood. While many of them battle through the program,
Linwood's struggle seemed to end when he reached Drug Court. Once he was
given some direction, he embraced the program and its teachings as he once
embraced the crack pipe.

The counselors and parole officers quickly promote him through the early
stages of the program. After six months, they can already see Linwood
becoming one of their star clients and proudest achievements.

In a way, he seems to have become addicted to his sobriety.

Since entering Drug Court, Linwood has moved back in with his mother, a
teacher's assistant, and his stepfather, a welder, in a neighborhood that
continues to have one of the city's most enduring drug and crime problems.
Nearly every day, he sees the dealers, the addicts and the angry teenagers
succumbing to the street culture that once swallowed him whole.

But like the Taylor Avenue apartments where he grew up, that part of his
past is just a memory.

The homes were demolished years ago, leaving a lonely grass field where
they once stood. Linwood and his family now live on a sunnier working-class
block, in a home with a yard, a porch and a deck.

Since he turned his fate around, Linwood walks with a new spirit, guided by
different, greater forces than the physical temptations around him. The
dealers and the addicts have gone on without him, but Linwood barely slows
his pace long enough to notice them.

"I'm listening to God, that's all," he says.

"You just got to be vigilant when negativity comes. If it ain't right, I
got to be straight up with you: I can't share that space with you."