I am a father to two stepchildren. I’m a husband. I’m a friend. I am an Assistant Social Worker for Shasta County Health & Human Services.

The person that I am today is completely different than the person that I was five years ago.

I grew up in an abusive household. One of my core memories as a child was my mom putting my hands in a fireplace. I remembered the color of the carpet and couches. How many washcloths were put over my hands. It was a traumatizing experience.

When I was 13, my mom gave me my first line of cocaine. She was also smoking weed with my brother and me. It went from being something fun, like a family-type thing, to, ‘You’re going to sell drugs at school or you’re going to live on the street.’ So, I sold drugs through my senior year.

When I turned 18, I moved out of my mom’s house. I stopped drinking as much. I met my first wife. She was six months pregnant with someone else’s kid. Her grandparents had kicked her out during the winter. So, I did what I thought was the right thing and let her move in. I ended up raising her child as my own. Then we got pregnant.

During that time, I was also taking care of my sick mother. Regardless of our past, she was still my mother and I cared about her. She passed away and it was a pretty violent death. About a month later, things were going better. My son was born. I wasn’t drinking or using. I was working and saving up to buy a house. Then, two months later, my son unexpectedly passed away.

I went back to work, trying to be the strong one for the family. A few months later my wife said, ‘Here, try some meth. It’ll make you feel better,’ and it went downhill from there. We split up. After all the loss, I locked myself in a room and didn’t come out for a month and a half.

After that, I spent some time in Oregon, trying to pick up the pieces. I did odd jobs and slipped back into selling drugs. Eventually, I wanted to get away again and came down to Redding.