VOLUNTEERS SPEAK FROM THE EDGE

PATERSON - Vinny Lombardi awoke in a daze, a rat gnawing at his chest. He
was living under a bridge, wearing blood-stained jeans. After 29 years of
shooting heroin, the veins in his arms had collapsed. He had started to
inject in his groin. The blood flowed freely.

At about the same time, Luther Frierson sunk deep into depression after the
death of his 19-year-old daughter. She had overdosed on cocaine in the
bedroom next to his. He had no idea she was using. He was blinded by his
own addiction.

The two men, from very different backgrounds - one from an Italian
immigrant family, the other the son of black South Carolinians - came
together when they had reached the ultimate low points in their lives. They
made it through and turned their lives around.

At Eva's Village, a center that provides a myriad of services for the
down-and-out, they now help others who are going through the same ordeal.
They know what it's like to lose everything. They know what it's like to
get back on their feet. They offer hope to the hopeless.

How they became friends went something like this:

Detox was a nightmare for Frierson. He was staying in the center's "Room
Zero," where addicts try to purge their bodies of drugs. Eight guys in a
room full of bunk beds. He couldn't sleep at night, couldn't get
comfortable. There was sweat coming out from his fingertips, a vile odor
that still makes him cringe when he talks about it. It was all the poison
coming out of his body from 17 years of drug abuse.

Lombardi had just completed his time in Room Zero. He saw a guy who was
about his age. The man's eyes were not only bloodshot, they were actually
bleeding.

He called out to him, "Damn bro, are you OK?"

"Of course I'm not!"

Right there. That was the moment.

"We became instant friends," said Frierson.

Lombardi grew up in Paterson above his family's Italian bakery on 21st
Avenue. He had a loving family and a mom who warned him about hanging out
with the wrong crowd. Everything she told him, he did the opposite.

He drank, dabbled with barbiturates, discovered heroin. It was a big party.
Along the way he lost his job, his family inheritance and two wives. He
sold his house to buy drugs.

"As long as I had heroin in me, I was OK," he said. "Heroin makes all the
bad go away."

Then he found himself under a bridge, overdosing with the rats. He was 118
pounds and had no teeth.

"I felt so badly about myself, I just wanted to die. I did not have enough
courage to kill myself," he said.

He came to Eva's Village to die.

As a teenager in South Carolina, Frierson was in a band. He played drums.
At 14, he left for New York City with dreams of becoming a musician.

He settled on 152nd Street in Manhattan. At 17, he was introduced to
sniffing heroin.

Five years later, married and living in Paterson with two daughters, he was
injecting it. Syringes weren't readily available back then. Users made
their own version: an eyedropper, a pacifier nipple and a recycled needle
they sharpened on the edge of a matchbook. The needles were always
communal. They were rinsed with water. That's it.

His usage went from shooting up just on the weekends to just on Mondays,
Wednesdays and Fridays. Soon, it was every day. "Nothing was before drugs.
Everybody I knew, I hung with, shot dope," he said. "I thought it was the
right thing. People who went to work every day, they was squares. They were
stupid."

He went from job to job, leaving his wife at home with his daughters. He
saw other women.

His marriage crumbled. He didn't care. All that mattered was getting high.

Years passed. Seventeen years of heroin use.

Then his daughter died.

"I would have just laid down and died," he said. "I was always feeling sad."

One day he was so depressed he bought 10 bags of heroin. He used eight in
three hours. He didn't feel a thing. He called his oldest daughter, who
took him to Sister Cathy's soup kitchen.

He straightened out at Eva's Village. And that's where he met Lombardi.

Both men are eight years clean.

Both escaped HIV.

They were lucky. They volunteer as AIDS counselors.

Lombardi, 54, works in the intake office at Eva's Village. People come in
off the streets, asking for help for things ranging from drug addiction to
money for bus fare. If they need drug counseling, he sends them to
Frierson, 48, the friend he made when they were both in very different
stages of their lives.

"He's my cousin Vinny," joked Frierson.

By looking at the two men - healthy, gregarious - no one would know they
once walked through the door of Eva's Village as clients. Until they tell
their stories. Which they do, when asked. It's not easy.

"These are our unsung heroes," said Sister Gloria Perez, executive director
of the center. "They do such wonderful things."

It's their way of giving back. Both almost lost their lives.