[caption id="attachment_1523" align="aligncenter" width="819"] Photograph by Timothy P. Riethmiller[/caption]
By Kyla Martin, Features Editor
Tom Ballard leaned back into his chair, his loafers resting on the desk surrounding his hefty figure. His office door tells visitors he's the CEO of Grant County Rescue Mission in downtown Marion.
He supervises a men's shelter, women's shelter, family shelter, three thrift stores (Mission Mart, Rescue Treasures and Construction Corner) and a men's apartment complex for graduates of the 10-step program called "Mountain Movers."
The program starts with recognition, Ballard said. Recognition that there is a problem. It ends with pursuit.
"When you look at an individual that has been living this way all of their life, and they don't know nothing else . . . . They need to go through it a couple, two, three times," Ballard said.
He believes in the program because it changes lives.
Before Steven Treest, nickamed "Yogi," graduated the program, he was alone, bound to his drugs and alcoholism.
"In 1976, I quit school, went to work, and I worked hard, and I played hard, and I started dabbling around in marijuana and LSD, and by 1982, I was deep into cocaine and LSD and marijuana," Treest said.
That year, his first wife and son died.
"I stepped off into the party scene and didn't look back," Treest said. "And I never got back out of it until 2008."
He went to jail, was in fist fights, hustled drugs for money. His selfishness, he admits, pulled him into three other marriages.
This lifestyle lasted for exactly 30 years. He got out in 2008 because his life depended on it. His never-treated diabetes brought him to the edge of death.
"So close, I could see the gates of hell, literally," Treest said.
His blood sugar was 511.
"I don't know if you know what that means, but . . . anything over 460 is deadly," Treest said.
His apartment for the past six years was a crack house, sitting just behind the tavern.
"That was my life," Treest said. "I would go to the bar, hustle enough bags to get high for that night, and that was my existence . . . And after about the fourth day, I would hear actual voices saying, 'What's wrong with you? You're a drug addict. That's all you're gonna be. Just go to the bar. Get a few bags. You'll feel better.'" Treest leaned in. "I didn't know where the voices were coming from. I thought I was losing my mind."
Treest didn't know the voices were demonic.
"I just thought I was a drug addict, and that was how I was gonna end." Treest paused. "And I kept praying, 'Dear Lord, if you're real, take me out of here. Please, take me out of here.'"
His prayers were answered one night when a band of police kicked in his door and dragged him out. After 90 days of his nine-month prison stay, he started feeling the haze of the drugs and alcohol slowly lift.
"What I didn't realize was I was already in prison," Treest said. "It was a prison that I built - every brick, every bar made myself."
"My mind is still straightening out," Treest said.
Treest knows he lived wrong, but his acceptance propels him to pursue a better life.
He remembers his past and God's promise to give him strength with a silver cross that hangs from his neck on a twisted, white shoelace.
"That's what I had to put it on when I was in prison, so I keep it on there to remind me to stay humble," Treest held the cross in his hand. "I'm not gonna put it on a gold chain. It doesn't belong on one cause of where I got it."
The mission's chaplain, Monte Brubaker, graduated the program and married Ballard's oldest daughter, Cassandra. Brubaker came less than three years ago, a homeless alcoholic.
"Someone asked me, 'What qualifications does (Brubaker) have to serve as a chaplain?'"
Ballard's deep voice was almost a whisper.
"Well, he's been an alcoholic, he's been to prison four times, he's been to more boys' schools than you can shake a stick at, lived on the street, has had many addictions, yet found the power of Jesus Christ to save his life and totally on fire for God and wants to see other peoples' lives changed. I can't get a better degree than that."
In Brubaker's office, a diploma-style frame surrounds the "Certificate of Completion" hanging at eye-level on the wall across from the door, "Monte J. Brubaker" as the recipient.
"I can sit down with them and talk to them, be on their level and tell them, 'Man, I know what you feel' and mean it," Brubaker said with a smirk. "'I know where you are, and let me tell you about somebody, get you back on track.'"
But his life was dark for a long time. He was adopted at three months, something that rocked his spirits. He needed to forget.
"The drinking was an escape for me." Brubaker's smirk slowly faded. "It just became who I was."
Trying to get money for alcohol landed Brubaker on probation, locked up. His longest stint in prison was almost three and a half years.
"You get put on probation, and you have to do certain things to stay out of trouble, and I just couldn't with the drinking and the alcohol. I just couldn't," he said, then paused. "Couldn't stay out of trouble. The consequence was back in jail, and just back and forth, just a revolving door, and you just stay in that cycle. It just keeps you there."
Brubaker grew up in a Christian home with parents who are still married, and he finally recognized that was the life he needed back.
"It was up to me," Brubaker said. "I wanted it to stick. It had to. In my eyes, it had to stick, or I was probably gonna die, or end up in prison for the rest of my life or hurtin' somebody seriously with all that stuff that comes with the drinking. It was time to change."
So he completed "Mountain Movers," and Ballard hired him as chaplain. Pouring into the men who come through the mission, through chapel services or leading 10-step classes, is what helps Brubaker grow.
"No matter what, no matter what you do or whatever you think or how much of a loner that you think you want to be or that you are, it's impossible to do it by yourself," Brubaker said. "That's what I instill in them. It's impossible."
Outside his office, the dinner line forms. A group of friends huddles together. Sha-Wanda Anderson specified she doesn't come here often, her words flowing past her bright red lips.
Besides, she only comes here to socialize just like Daniel Anderson, standing next to her. She lists off a couple other places that help "those less fortunate," not including herself.
The first step is recognition.
