Like most who come to the Mission, Rob has deep trauma in his past. Sadly, his trauma was born out of his desire to serve others and make a difference in this world. “I spent a long time in the Marine Corps, and I was a combat veteran,” he says. After Rob got out, he built a good life for himself — he found a job, got married, and had a daughter. But there was this hurt inside from all he had experienced that he couldn’t shake. “I didn’t realize that I was suffering from PTSD at that time.”

Rob began drinking, then turned to drugs to try to silence the pain and emptiness he felt. “I was trying to fill that God-sized hole with something,” he says. Nothing but God can truly heal that kind of trauma, that kind of pain. He lost everything. His house. His family. His job. Very quickly, things escalated, and he ended up on the streets with nothing but a backpack.

“I basically became homeless, and very quickly,” Rob says. “On about the fifth day, I just had to get something to eat. I was basically dying out there, and so I came to the Rescue Mission. I stayed on the line for two nights. I got some good sleep. I got to eat good food. I heard about the program.” Rob quickly regained his strength. When he was given the opportunity to join our 12-month Residential Recovery Program, he jumped at the chance. “It has given me a shot at life again, without the use of drugs and alcohol,” he says. “This is the happiest I’ve been in 30 years. It’s really ironic, isn’t it? It takes a rescue mission to rescue me.”

Heroin addiction had torn Mike’s entire life apart. He had lost his job. His home. His family.
Custody of his son. Everything. Relationships were so shattered he had no one to turn to for help.

“This was the last house on the block for me,” he says. “If it wasn’t for the Rescue Mission, I do not know where I’d be right now.”

Mike is living a new life—and it’s better than he imagined. He graduated from our 12-month Residential Recovery Program last summer and now works here at the Mission with our homeless guests and finds a great deal of joy and purpose in giving back and serving others.

“You guys helped me get my life back.”

Addie was raped for the first time when she was only 12 years old. To cope with that immense pain, she turned to alcohol. By the time she got to high school, she was partying every chance she got.

Then she got into a bad snowboarding accident. “I was prescribed narcotic painkillers which was my first taste of being completely numb, and I loved it,” Addie says. “I’m not quite sure how but I managed to graduate from high school. I continued to party and continued to get arrested.” Her parents tried over and over to help her get off drugs, but she was still missing the biggest piece—a relationship with Jesus.

Addie bounced between abusive boyfriends, the streets, and jail. The years went on and her life got messier and darker. She became a young mom and things got so bad that her parents adopted her children just to keep them in the family. “I didn’t care about anything but getting high to numb the pain of my life. I hated who I was. I didn’t want to live anymore,” Addie remembers.

The last time Addie was arrested, she spent a year in jail. When she was released, she came straight to the Mission. “That was a year ago. The best year of my life. I participated in weekly Bible studies, attended church, and began a relationship with the Lord. I learned to turn my will over to Him. I learned anger management skills and tools to communicate in a healthy manner,” she says.

Today, Addie is clean and sober, healthy, happy, and has a restored relationship with her parents and children. She has a bright future ahead. “All of these blessings wouldn’t be possible without this program, and this program wouldn’t be possible without all of you donors out there,” Addie says.