Published: May 31, 2008 08:29 pm      

Built to rebuild lives

Appalachian Teen Challenge center casts lifeline of hope to women drowning in despair

Editor’s note: Appalachian Teen Challenge’s Mercer County campus opened it’s women’s treatment center for the first residents Wednesday, May 21. Two of its first five enrollees shared their stories this week, but out of respect for their families’ privacy and concerns about releasing their location, they requested their full names not be published.



PRINCETON — Catherine would be dead if the board hadn’t broke.

After 14 years amid the vicious cycle of addiction, she took six nails, a board, a rope and a hammer out into the woods to end the destructive journey that had become her life.

“I had lost everything once again to drugs and alcohol. Everybody was at the end of their rope with me,” Catherine recalled. “I was at the end. I didn’t even know what to do.”

She hammered the board into the tree, secured the rope, put it around her neck and let her body go limp.

But, it wasn’t her time to go.

She woke up on the forest floor, with the remains of a broken board beside her and a bump she can still feel on the back of her head, where it hit her when it fell.

“I remember waking up and going, ‘God, why am I still here?’” she said Tuesday, sitting inside an office at the brand new Appalachian Teen Challenge facility where she intends to find the answer.

Catherine started the path to addiction at the age of 12. The daughter of an alcoholic and a drug addict, she had been exposed to the poisons of drugs her entire life and had battled depression daily as long as she could recall.

“I was just always depressed — always wanting what other kids had,” she said.

She started using illegal drugs at 12, and by 15, she said she’d done every drug she could get her hands on. By 16, she had done time in three juvenile facilities, and the lifestyle that goes along with drugs had taken its toll on her body and spirit. She had already been raped and undergone abortions.

Nothing stopped her need for more drugs.

“By 19, I was pregnant. By 21, I had a full-blown crack addiction,” Catherine said. “For the next six years, I maintained this crack lifestyle — slowly losing everything over and over again,” she said.

When she couldn’t see a way out, she decided to make one with the board, rope and nails. But, when the board didn’t hold, she finally tried to face the drug demons, and the ones inside that told her she couldn’t expect any better. Her father, who swore God whispered the name of Teen Challenge to him the night she tried to take her life, attempted to show her otherwise.

“I remember, three days after I tried to hang myself, sitting in Dad’s kitchen, and he said something I’ll never forget. He said. ‘Yesterday would’ve been your wake. Today would’ve been your funeral, and your daughter would’ve been standing at a casket, looking at her mother,’” Catherine said.

That image was all it took to get Catherine to Staci Yontz’s office at Appalachian Teen Challenge in May 2006, where Yontz outlined the faith-based rehab services available and the expectations of a student entering one of its centers.

At the time, Teen Challenge didn’t have a female facility locally, but Catherine’s dad hoped talking to Yontz would turn his daughter’s life around.

It did, briefly. She spent a few months in a Teen Challenge training center in Michigan, but crack’s hold won out. She left the program.

“Two years later, I’m back again,” she said, with tears in her eyes and conviction in her voice. “I know I’m going to do it this time. God told me, ‘All I want is a year. Just give me a year, and you’ll have everything you’ve ever wanted.’”

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Like Catherine, April spent much of her young life addicted to one substance or another. She’s spent time in mental health hospitals, served six years in custody and watched one of her babies be adopted by another family.

She, too, attempted to put a stop to the addictions that drove her by taking her own life.

“I was in a drug addiction, and I really didn’t see a way out ... I tried to kill myself because I didn’t want to have to smoke crack anymore,” she said. “When I woke up and saw my family praying for me, I knew I needed to reach out to God.”

She had heard about Teen Challenge during an outreach service Director Jim Nickels and some of his male students held in a Virginia church. During the presentation, the Teen Challenge students shared their stories and sang some of the hymns that focused on their newfound faith.

“They planted that little seed,” April said, but she didn’t realize how much the idea would grow.

After surviving the attempt at suicide, April didn’t have a place to stay, and her father told her she couldn’t stay at the home with her son until she found a way to stay sober. She started packing her bags, intending to seek help with the Salvation Army.

Soon, her dad knocked on the door and asked if she’d consider Teen Challenge.

She entered the Teen Challenge program in Georgia but always hoped to get closer to home if possible. When the Athens branch of the rehabilitation service opened last week, she was one of the first students to arrive at the facility that can handle up to 24 female participants.

Leaving her family has been hard, but April said she can handle it by looking at the hope for something better.

“It’s time for me to get it together and do what I’m supposed to do,” she said. “God’s going to use me.”

Besides the faith that Teen Challenge relies on, April said her son, who lives with her parents now, is one of the driving forces propelling her toward recovery. He was only 8 months old when she went to prison for the first time, and she looks forward to being a real mom to him in the future.

“I watched him grow up in jail. I look at him, and I know he’s a good kid. He goes to church, and he loves Jesus. But, I didn’t do that. My dad did it ...” she said. “Yes, sometimes I can’t even remember his laugh, but it’s OK, because I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.”

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“Stories like that are why we built this center,” Nickels said Tuesday.

The $450,000 facility includes a residence hall, offices, a commercial kitchen, a laundry area and more on the Unity Road campus, but it’s what will go on inside the building Nickels and Yontz, now the dean of students for the women’s program, are the most excited about.

“I am elated that we do not have to watch another girl die because there’s no center in this area,” Nickels said. “Now, when a girl calls, we can respond.”

That’s a statement that hits particularly close to home. One of the women on the center’s waiting list died before the center was functional, and Nickels said he firmly believed at least three of its first five students would have met the same fate within a year.

“Our goal is to save as many lives as we possibly can. We’ve helped the boys for 23 years now, and the girls are saying, ‘It’s our turn now,’” he said.

It’s a new focus for the drug rehabilitation program that uses faith in God, close supervision, tough love and vocational training to help its students find the spirits that were lost amid addiction.

“It’s been described like being in the Marines at Grandma’s house,” Nickels said, obviously proud of the comparison. “We do have to use tough love, and sometimes we have to come down hard on the students, because they have to realize they can’t always have things their way. Their way didn’t work.”

Students at both the men’s and women’s Teen Challenge center will spend their days learning the Bible and completing any high school education they haven’t in the past. College courses are also available online, and work skills classes aim to prepare all students to function independently once their training is complete at the residential facility.

In addition, they will work to maintain the campus surrounded by wooded, rolling hills in the remote area near Gardner.

Right now, the men are still preparing the women’s food and transporting it to the female center, but Nickels expected the women’s kitchen to be complete within a couple of weeks. At that time, food preparation will also serve as a vocational training option.

With the exception of Nickels, who directs both programs, the staff that serves the women’s center consists entirely of women, and Nickels emphasized that the students in the men’s and women’s programs will be kept completely separated.

Yontz, who will primarily lead the women’s program, said the realization of the center was “awesome.”

“It’s a prayer that’s been answered,” she said.

Although she has worked at Teen Challenge for years and made a family of her own, Yontz knows what it’s like to walk in the shoes of a person addicted to drugs. She’s traveled that road too, and she completed her own year as a Teen Challenge student.

At the time she sought help, the closest center she could get into was in Michigan, and she couldn’t be happier to be providing the services that saved her life in her hometown.

“I know their frustration, and I know what they’re going through. It just reminds me of the importance of what we do here,” she said. “Challenge is in our name, and it’s what we do. The only way change can happen is through challenge.”

Although Teen Challenge’s campus is usually kept primarily private, Nickels and Yontz invited anyone who would like to tour the facility to stop by for a tour and see the work that happens inside its walls.

“We try to give back to the community in every way we can. We teach our students to give back to the community,” he said. “We have always considered Teen Challenge to be a community center. It’s not mine.”

For visitors who would like to see the center with other community members, the women’s center will host an open house Aug. 23 and 24, and everyone is invited.

In the meantime, for more information, call 384-9074 or visit www.teenchallengecares.com.

— Contact Tammie Toler at ttoler@ptonline.net