Donny Irmen
Sabrina Chavez* was born and raised in California and struggled with substance misuse and her mental health as a teenager. After multiple attempts at recovery, Sabrina was ready to begin her recovery journey at 23 and has been sober ever since. Sabrina now works at a community nonprofit and enjoys spending time with her family and children.
*Due to the sensitive nature of her interview, Sabrina has elected to remain anonymous.
We’re All One Decision Away
INTERVIEW BY JOHANA MARTINEZ, NICOLLE PEDRAZA, AND PENELOPE SALOMON
Can you please start with your name, your age, and where you were born?
My name is Donny Christopher Irmen Jr. I am now 33 years old, and I was born in Palmdale, California.
How do you identify? That can be by genera-tion, race, ethnicity, gender, or preferred pronouns.
I don’t know my generation, but I’m in the 1990-born- to-2008-high-school-graduation generation. I am white. Caucasian — I don’t really know my roots. I’m a male, and I prefer he/him.
Where is your hometown?
My hometown is Palmdale, California, but I grew up in a little city called Little Rock, which is in the middle of the desert, off to the side of Palmdale, in the Antelope Valley.
What was your childhood like?
Well, I grew up poor. We were on a dirt road; it wasn’t a city like this, you know? Growing up, I knew something was missing from my life. I was shy. I couldn’t connect with other kids. I had some friends, and I’d hang out with them sometimes, but growing into my early childhood, I just didn’t feel like I fit in. I started skateboarding, riding dirt bikes, and doing all those things that [the] cool kids did. But even then, even when I was really good at skateboard-ing and good at doing all this stuff, I didn’t fit in. I felt like I just couldn’t connect.
One day, when I was around 13 or 14, I took my first hit of marijuana, and I instantly felt free. I started hysterically laughing. I felt like I could be myself, and from that day on, I had to smoke weed every day. My mom — she’s very broken and just didn’t know how to be a parent. When my dad would go to work, my mom would allow us to smoke ciga-rettes in front of her. I started out at 15 years old, smoking almost a pack a day. She allowed us to smoke weed at the house. She would buy alcohol if we stayed home so that she could be the cool parent. But when my dad got home, she would put everything away.
But as I was growing up, as a 13-year-old, 14-year-old, 15-year-old kid, I started becoming a man. I started fighting. I started getting very angry and knew something was still missing. I just kept masking it with tons of weed. As soon as I got up, I had to smoke weed; I had to have it. I’d steal money. I’d do whatever I could to have weed because some- thing was still missing. Going into high school, I started getting crazy. When I was going into high school, all my friends had just graduated. I started ditching, stealing, doing crazy crimes, and experimenting with other drugs. The police were at my house almost every day. My mom was going through her own addiction struggles, and my little sister was full blast with me as well, but it was like this weird thing where it was like us three, and then my dad didn’t know anything about it.
In my junior year of high school — I was already a pothead, and my whole life revolved around weed — I got kicked out of school. I got sent to jail — Sylmar Juvenile Hall — and I ended up getting sentenced to six months in camp. When you get sentenced to camp as a juvenile, you have to go live in a camp. After getting out of camp, all my friends were graduating and moving on with their lives, and I was just this guy who had just left jail. I didn’t want to go back to jail, and it was very scary. I didn’t want to use drugs any- more. I had been sober for six months. It was kind of a wake-up call. I didn’t have a foundation, so I stayed home and played video games for a whole year. During that time, I just stayed home. I played video games all night, didn’t mess with anybody, and had no life. Until one day, I decided to smoke weed again and picked up right where
I left off. I went straight back to all my friends running around the streets and getting into trouble at 18. So that was kind of my childhood. I eventually became homeless because my family put a restraining order against me. My mom was now full blast on [using] meth. My dad was really sick, and it was just a chaotic house. That’s when I became homeless at the Palmdale skate park.
That’s a lot that you went through. How is your relationship with your family now?
Well, I was homeless for a long time. I was living at a skate park. I was boosting [stealing] candy and soda and just surviving at the skate park. I was estranged from my family. My mom was on drugs. My dad talked to me, and he tried to reach out to me, but he was very sick. In 2014, he passed away when I was already on the streets of L.A., and I was kind of getting help. A year before that, my mom was sentenced to jail and was in a program for a year, and my dad passed away at the same time she got out.
The relationship with my family now is … The crazy thing is that today has been a long day because my mom, [who] is still very broken and has been on drugs — she was living in her truck with 15 animals in the middle of the desert — actually came into the recovery program today. We’ve been praying for her, and we’ve been believing that she’s going to get some help, and she came to the program today. It’s been a long day, you know, getting my mom into the program — a one-year recovery program for free at the Dream Center. Because now I have staff underneath me, one of my drivers has taken my mom’s truck to Compton to store it because she can’t leave a truck in a program parking lot. I think God’s building on the relationship with my family again, and I’m now a light in my family instead of the darkness. But yeah, today, what is my rela- tionship with [my] family? God’s working on it.
That’s really intense, and on the same day as our interview. It’s beautiful that you’ve be-come a light in your family. You mentioned your little sister; how are things between you now?
The last time I saw my sister was about four years ago at my mom’s last house before she lost it. I was in my second year of the Dream Center program. I eventually came into the Dream Center in 2017 and gave my life to Christ — that’s when my life changed. But in my second year of the program, I visited my mom on a pass, and my sister came when she was struggling. She was like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re so buff now,’ because I had gained 100 pounds since I got off the streets. That was the last time I saw her. I know she’s living in the middle of the desert, slamming fentanyl with an 80-year-old guy. That’s the last I’ve heard from her. She’s never gotten help the whole time since we’ve been kids. I’ve been to over 15 rehabs, been through a program, and transformed my life, but she’s never been to one. I’m still praying for her. I don’t know how to get a hold of her, but where I’m from, she’s there somewhere.
What were your dreams and aspirations as a child?
As a child, I was never confident enough to know I could do anything. I always wanted to do the easiest thing I thought could make money. I’ve never really had any dreams. All I cared about was wanting to get high. I never really thought I could ever work a regular job. I could never believe farther than my mind let me.
I skated a lot. I was really good. I was a street skater. L.A. was huge to me as a kid because it was all over the [skating] videos. I planned to join the military when I was 18 because that was a job where they would just tell me what to do, and I would do it. It was like an easy way out. But they rejected me because I had five juvenile felonies. Then, after that, I was like, I’m going to go to HVAC school, which is like heat and air conditioning. I went to school for eight or nine months during that sobriety period. I wasn’t learning anything. I couldn’t get schematics. I just didn’t care about it. I’m still $20,000 in debt because I never even graduated. I had no aspirations. But I knew that one day, I would get my life together somehow.
You mentioned that you first used marijuana. Can you describe what that experience was like?
Everybody was using drugs where I grew up, and weed was like an everyday thing. When I first started using mari- juana, right when I took the first hit, I felt free. I felt like I could be myself. A lot of people would say that weed is not addictive, but I believe that it is addictive, like I needed to have it. And I honestly loved it. It was my life. You know, I loved the whole thing, even growing it 10 years later. I’ve been to every weed shop in L.A. I [had] so many connections in the downtown district buying my weed, and I loved the lifestyle. But I was very, very depressed
[while] using it. It was like, on one hand, I smoke, right? But on the realistic side, when I was at home, I [was] super depressed. All I did was wake up, smoke weed, sleep, wake up [again], smoke weed, and I never went further, you know?
You mentioned how you felt like there was an empty space in your life. Do you think that using marijuana was trying to fill that space for you?
Yeah, I feel like it did. But it was just a deceptive lie. All my friends could smoke weed, and if they didn’t have it, they were okay. But that wasn’t the case for me. Something was empty and missing, and [weed] was filling it. But when the high wears off, you’re back to square one.
Did you use any other type of drug other than marijuana?
Yeah, growing up as youngsters, some of my friends had older brothers, and some of my friends were gang members, and their brothers were gang members and were in and out of prison. I had a friend whose mom didn’t care. We were picking up meth for her. I tried crystal meth, tried cocaine, and tried mushrooms, and those are just things that we tried. If I had more money when I was growing up, I would have tried a lot more, but $20 was like a lot of money. Now, my wife and I have a six-figure income to- gether, but I used to think $20 was so much, like 20 bucks should have lasted me two weeks. So I tried a bunch of drugs, and nothing stuck; weed was always my number one drug, even on the streets when I was homeless in L.A. for years. But meth use picked up when I came out here and started using it a lot. It’s a common street drug around here. Being homeless sucked, but when I was on meth, I didn’t care because I didn’t feel anything. I could run the streets for five days. I could steal from every store. I could break into everybody’s cars. I ran the streets.
I was homeless in Palmdale, and I had an encounter with the Lord, but I was very jacked up, so a year later, I decided to come to L.A. The first place I stopped when I came to L.A. was Lafayette Skate Park, and that’s like right here. That’s like MacArthur Park. But I showed up there because I had a friend from that skate park who was like, ‘Yo, my stepdad lives in L.A. You could just roll out here with me,’ and I came out here. I was doing the same things I was doing out there, like stealing. And they’re very hip to all the crimes, and all the drugs are pretty much free out here. That’s when the real drug addiction started happening.
Why did you feel the need to use stronger substances when you were okay with marijuana?
I was okay with it but didn’t have the money to do it. And I was just very broken. At the time, if you had asked me what was wrong with my life, I would have said my family did this to me. That was my answer. My family did this to me My mom did this to me. I’m homeless because of this, this, and this, not because I was terrorizing everybody in my life. But meth was an awesome drug because I just felt [like I was] on top of the world. I’d never been to a city, so I explored the whole city, and meth was just that drug that made you feel on top of the world in the beginning. But it always ends up with mental health issues — psycho-sis — the lowest point you can ever be in life. Doing things you’d never thought you would do for money. When you get high on meth, you’re a different person. There’s another part of you, and when you come off it, you’re like, Oh my God, what was I doing?
When you smoke weed, you’re stoned, kind of lazy, [have] no ambition, you’re hungry, and laugh at stupid things. But on meth, you open yourself up to a very dark part of the world. There’s daytime L.A., and then there’s night-time L.A., and that’s the same thing in our lives. There’s a darkness you open yourself to — so much sin and all this crazy dark stuff. There’s a lot of crazy stuff out there in L.A., and when you use meth, you’re pretty much fasting for the devil, per se. You know all the crazy spirits saying, ‘Yes, come on into me.’ That’s what I did. And everything came into me, and it just ruined my life.
Would things have turned out differently if you grew up in a safer environment?
Yes and no. I started using drugs, not just because of my environment. My household wasn’t that bad growing up; I had a mom, and the people I know nowadays have way worse households. I started getting high because something was missing in me, and I felt like I didn’t have my parents to connect with me fully. Even to this day, I still have prob-lems connecting with people. Even though I oversee over 50 to 60 people and staff members and all these things at the Dream Center, I still have a problem connecting.
When did you realize your substance use was an issue?
I knew something was wrong with me right when I started smoking because I had to have it. I knew instantly. I was like, Oh, this is going to be a problem I loved it, and instead of being myself sober, I could only be myself high. Did other people in your life notice substances becoming an issue for you?
My family knew that something had changed. I was starting to be rebellious. I was getting high, and my dad used to ask me, ‘You’re using this marijuana, but what
are you using it for? What do you medicate yourself for?’ At the time, I didn’t know. When you’re lost, you just don’t know the answer. They wanted to support me, but you know …
You said you were sober for six months, and then you went back to smoking weed. Did you feel like you were still missing something and had nothing else to do and resorted to smoking?
Yeah, pretty much. That’s happened to me five or six times in my life. I’ve been to jail a lot in L.A. I’ve been sent to jail, and I’ve had my own Section 8 apartment two times, and I would get sober. But whenever you give up a lifestyle, you need to replace it with another one. I was just a sober version of myself, smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, having no life and no friends. I just think you’ll always go back unless you change your life. When I came to the Dream Center, I gave my life to the Lord and put myself in a new community. In that new community, I was able to thrive because I left the old life behind and stepped into a new one, but I didn’t do that every time I got sober. I just tried to hide from the world and avoid everybody, and I had all my issues still, so I never talked to anybody. I was always just like, “You what? Let’s go smoke some weed.” That’s what always happened.
Did you have faith in recovery and that you could do it?
Yeah. I knew that I could recover. I knew that there was hope. I always knew that deep down, even though it was very bad. The last couple of years of getting high were terrible. I wasn’t homeless. I had my own apartment — a beautiful apartment in the Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw area. But I was doing things that I never thought I would do, living a lifestyle I never thought I would live, and very broken. But I always knew deep down that I would change one day. I knew something was going to happen, which kind of led me to do more drugs. I was like, Maybe if I use so many drugs, eventually I’ll land somewhere I had lost my mind. I was [experiencing] severe psychosis for so long [that I thought] the cartels were after me. If I were sitting here
[in that state], I would have thought you guys were all planning on trying to kill me. But I knew deep down that I had hope and would change. I just didn’t know what that was going to look like. I prayed some pretty powerful prayers a couple of times, and eventually, God answered, and I’m living a life today that I never thought I would live.
When did you realize you needed help?
I knew I needed help. I’d been on that. I’d known that years ago. But when you’re alone for so long and homeless for so long, and, as a street kid, you go through so much. And there’s so much shame. I was living crazy, and once you do that for a long time, you become used to it. You see people on Skid Row, and you’re like, Oh my gosh, how could you live like that? But they’re like, ‘I’ve been living like this.’ I was just very broken, and I knew that. I wanted to change, [but] I just didn’t know how. That’s why I continued to pray to God so that he could make a way for me to change, and eventually, it happened. I can’t explain it. I was like a schizophrenic man guided by all these different voices in my head, but God was actually leading me to the Dream Center. It’s crazy how it worked out.
What motivated you to seek recovery?
Well, I would have never come to the Dream Center will- ingly. I was 27 years old. I’d lost all my teeth. I’d been talking to myself for years [due to psychosis]. My whole apartment was full of gang members. I had all these people in my life but not one friend. It was just all drugs. I was living in a Bloods [an L.A. street gang] neighbor-hood. I was the only white guy. I’m running around the street, jumping people’s fences, doing all this crazy stuff.
I just didn’t care anymore. But I cared at the same time. You know, I just did whatever I had to do for drugs. I’d lost my mind. I wasn’t willing. I could never give up ciga- rettes. That was the biggest thing. I could smoke meth and quit that. The weed, I can quit that. But cigarettes — I had smoked a pack a day since I was a kid. But once you lose your mind and are terrified, everything becomes so real. I understand mental illness. Mental illness is super real. And when you believe everybody’s trying to kill you, it’s pretty terrifying. When you’ve accepted your death, and you’re just waiting until someone kills you, that is very scary. You’re just blinking your eyes and thinking, Is this real? And that’s where I was at. So I came to the Dream Center seeking refuge but would have never come willingly.
What were some obstacles you faced during recovery?
I was at my bottom, and that’s the only way I can explain it. Now that I’m doing good, the bottom doesn’t seem real at the level I was at, mentally and spiritually. I can’t explain it; my spirit was broken at the end, and I can’t explain how that feels. But it is very dark when your spirit’s broken. It had to do with some traumatic stuff that’s happened to me, and I went through a breakup, and all of that just led me to this dark place.
Once I was ready, as soon as I hit the Dream Center, it was crazy because God was telling me to go to the Dream Center. I had been there once for 10 days when I was in severe psychosis, but as soon as I hit the corner by the Dream Center, I just started hysterically laughing. I hadn’t laughed in years. When you’re on meth, everything is super serious. I ground my teeth down to where I lost all my back teeth; they were gone and breaking apart, and my front teeth were all broken and dark yellow and chipped. As soon as I hit the corner of the Dream Center, I started laughing, and right when I got there, I knew I was ready. God had to bring me to a level so low that I was down. It was a beautiful time in the Dream Center. I had a lot of issues because I hadn’t been happy or had any joy in years, so when I came to the Dream Center, I started messing around, throwing stuff, and playing around like a kid again. I had a lot of joy but a lot of anger and a lot of hurt, and I didn’t know how to deal with people. I didn’t know how to deal with anybody telling me some- thing — I liked to mess around all the time until someone called me a kid, and then I wanted to fight. I had a bad character. I had no fruit of the Spirit — no love, joy, peace, patience, kindness — I had none of that. I ran into some trouble like that with a lot of corrections in the program. It’s a one-year discipleship program. So if you talk in line, you get 10 hours, and you can’t speak anymore or have any privileges for those 10 hours. It may take a week to work those off. It’s a discipline program. I had some issues for my first six or seven months, but I eventually learned, and things started getting better there.
So, God and the new emotions evoked in the Dream Center motivated you?
Yeah, I knew I was ready to change. I knew that I wasn’t leaving because I was homeless. I came because I wanted to change my life and find a new community. It was motivat-ing because I knew I had no confidence in myself, but I knew I could work hard and do my best. I started working out a lot. I just took it one day at a time. I took it one day at a time and started connecting with the Lord and fully surrender-ing myself to God. I was saying, I’m ready to give, to do it your way, God I’ve been doing it my way my whole life, but it’s time to do it your way I just trusted [him] day by day.
What was the most difficult part of recovery?
The most difficult part, honestly, was just the surrender in the beginning, but I was ready, so it wasn’t that hard. When you’re going through the program [at the Dream Center], you don’t have to worry about your food or clothes. They take care of you. It’s free, and you just do what they tell you. But when you graduate, you get your phone back, you’re able to get an EBT card, you’re now in a leadership position, you can go out, and now you have to make your own decisions. It was scary because I had been through so much my whole life, and it took me 17 months to graduate from a one-year program because I was messing up and getting in trouble. But it was terrifying once I was ready to go into the second-year program because I didn’t even want to walk around the streets. I didn’t want to smell a cigarette. I didn’t want to relapse. But every time I conquered a temptation, I grew. I was like, Okay, I can do this, and that was my motivation to continue to go forward.
What introduced you to God? Did you know [God] before recovery or just during and after?
I got to know God when I was homeless at a skate park in 2012. I prayed in this abandoned house — I used to sleep in abandoned houses the whole time in Palmdale. I had six or seven abandoned houses; they would have signs on the front [of the] garage. I was kind of at the end of just what I was doing. Riding the streets, stealing, and being homeless takes a lot out of you. I [said] a prayer to God. I said, “God, if you’re real, would you please get me out of this situation?” What happened was that I broke my skateboard the next week, and I was walking through the desert when I ended up meeting this guy. He was just standing in the desert. He saw I had a broken board and ran up to me — he was on a prayer walk and just said, ‘Hey, I got an extra skate- board at the house if you want it.’ I went to his house. He brought me the skateboard, and I was like, “All right, cool. Thank you so much.” And he started telling me about Jesus.
When he started telling me about Jesus, I started feeling like I was about to cry inside because I’d just been through so much, and I was so tired. And he’s like, ‘Man, I’ve been watching you. You’re a great skateboarder. Everybody comes to the skate park to watch you guys skate.’ He’s like, ‘I’ve seen the influence you have on other kids’ — I had a whole candy-selling operation. They were selling my candy for me and all the stuff I was boosting from Walmart. He’s like, ‘Man, you have a lot of leadership. All these people are
surrounding you, and you’re homeless.’
He just started telling me about Jesus and asking me if I’d like to go to church with him one time. He’s like, ‘Come over. I’ll give you a haircut. We can go.’ And I eventually did. I went there. It was a Monday. He gave me a haircut. I had a bad sunburn and long hair. I looked better and then went to the pastor’s house. It was a Salvadoran church; every- body was in suits. It was a Pentecostal church, and right away, they told me they only knew Spanish. I was the only white person, and they welcomed me in and asked if anybody wanted to give their life to Christ. I said, “Sure, yeah.” I raised my hand, went in there, and they prayed for me. After, I was like, All right, nothing happened Well, that family ended up taking me into their house.
I quit smoking weed. My life started changing. I started going to church; it was a Spanish-speaking Pentecostal Salvadoran church, and I felt the Holy Spirit for the first time. I remember thinking, Well, I was praying inside the abandoned house, and now I’m in a church, and I have a family that says I can stay as long as I want, and I just raised my hands, and I started crying. It was the first time I cried in years, and that was my first realization that God is real and that he came to my rescue when I needed it most. That is the foundation of my faith today. You can never tell me God’s not real. I’ve experienced God. There’s no other way it could be but God. Those are foundational things in my faith today.
But soon after that, I started smoking weed again and dating the pastor’s daughter. The pastor’s daughter was the trans- lator and lead singer of the church. And they didn’t like that. Salvadoran families do not like no one dating their daughter, let alone the white guy on drugs they took in. And I was just mad. I got a job, thought I was cool again, started smoking weed, and was like, I’m going to LA That’s actually how I came to L.A. That was my first exper- ience with God.
Did your substance use affect your relationships?
Oh, yeah, I mean, every relationship was broken [when I was] on drugs. I didn’t even know what a relationship was. I had a couple of relationships when I was homeless in the streets, and they were just — we’d fight in public over weed. All my relationships were broken when I was on drugs.
Is there anything you would have wanted to tell your family or friends who knew you were suffering at the time, or anything you would have liked them to know?
I always want to say I’m sorry for the things I’ve done, but at the end of the day, they truly cared about me. It’s a testimony of what God can do because I was so far gone, and now that I’ve seen that, I’m completely changed. But I would say, “Sorry, I apologize,” but I also try to live my life without apology.
If you knew someone who was struggling in a recovery program or just starting recovery, what would you tell them? Do you have any words of advice?
I would tell them that God will always open that door when they’re ready to change. When you’re truly ready, you’ll do anything to change. And just have hope because there’s always hope. I would tell them my testimony about Jesus and what he could do in your life.
Do you have an inspiring message about substance use and recovery?
I mean, for me, I’m in the craziest place today. Now, I live on a recovery floor; me and my wife are the houseparents for one of the hardest programs in California, and my whole life is recovery. I’ve been to so many rehabs where all we do is talk about drugs all day. N.A., C.A., I’ve been to a million meetings. In this program [at the Dream Center], we don’t talk about any kind of drug stuff. We just let our past go and step into the new thing God’s calling us to. But if it weren’t for drugs, I wouldn’t be at the place I am today, so I am grateful for my experience. God knew that I would do all these things and then come to a place in my life where I would say yes to him.
Now, I’m a director for five or six ministries at the Dream Center. I manage over a million dollars a year. I live in the recovery program, and I have a life group at the church where we barbecue for 300 people every Friday. There are 50 guys living on my floor at the Dream Center, and they all look up to me in the sense of, ‘He was here, and now he’s there,’ in a very short time. They all watched me get all my new teeth. I was able to afford $60,000 to fix all my teeth, which I never thought I would ever fix. I never thought I would have teeth again, and that was a huge thing in my life. Now look at my life. Now it’s like that was so small to God. [He] will use the experiences of your past to propel you in the future.
[Be] around good people. Find a group that fits you. I see you guys are here on a Wednesday night to interview someone. I was not doing that when I was a kid, and when you find people, you can start a new culture. You’re able to attract people, and you don’t have to use drugs. You don’t have to go buy weed at the weed shop and run around the streets and smoke weed; your life will only end in even more brokenness. But come together and be leaders for the future! That’s why I love the church. Churches have seen a lot of crazy stuff happen to broken people, but the church, like the Dream Center, is just there to serve people. We serve 500 people lunch every day in the diner — homeless people and families with kids. We have a food bank, and we’re able to go out to their houses. There are so many things that the culture is doing for the good, you know. There’s a lot of good out there. It’s cool to see young people be part of the good.
What do you think could help shift the narrative about individuals who are struggling with opioid use and stimulants?I would just tell them there’s hope because now there’s not a lot of hope out there. I mean, the times are different in the drug world. When I was using drugs, there wasn’t fentanyl, and we [just used Narcan] on two people the other day — they were both dead in the bathroom at the Dream Center diner. I have Narcan in my house, on the shelf in my office. People go to use $20 worth of meth and die. It’s not a game anymore, and it’s serious. There’s always hope; whenever someone’s ready to change, there’s help out there.
Is there anything that you wish people knew about people who are using opioids and stimulants, or anything you think is misrep-resented?
I feel like a lot of people look at people like they’re so far gone and don’t believe in hope for them. Even with my mom, she’s just so far gone that I was like, I pray for her, but I don’t believe she’s going to change, and that’s my stronghold in my mind. You see so many people who are so jacked up and broken and doing so many crazy things and are in prison for all the crazy stuff that they’ve done. But they’re just one decision away from becoming like us in this room, from saying, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’ But I think we put them in a category as unfixable, unhous-able, like, “Even if they got housing, they would just blow it.” We all put these people into this one category. But we’re all one decision away. I’m one decision away from going back. I could walk outside, find someone who’s hitting the pipe, and say, “Here’s 20 bucks. Let me get that pipe,” and go get high and never come back home. We’re always one decision away from either ruining our lives or one decision away from changing. So that’s what I think the stigma out there for people on drugs is that they’re not fixable. But I believe that when we try to help people like that, they see the love in us and say, ‘You know what? I’m going to do this.’
Is there anything on a legislative level or any program that would help people?
Our pastor, Pastor Matthew, was just on the news recently, talking about how the Dream Center is the answer to the homeless problem because we’re taking people in free of charge and giving them a new life. Whether they choose to relapse, that’s on them. But the Dream Center really gives people that new life; you’re not just leaving the drugs and going into rehab and going into sober living. You’re coming to the Dream Center for one year; you can stay for two years and go from that to getting a job in transitions. A lot of my friends work at all these spots, and they’re leaving with $40,000. I’m like, Oh my gosh, it’s so much money. They don’t charge you. I’ve been there [the Dream Center] for seven years. I ended up getting a job there and becoming a director over a bunch of stuff. The Dream Center is the answer to a lot of these issues. You know, getting people out and putting them in a safer environment for not just three months, six months, nine months, not even a year, but two or three years. And like I said, the success rate is not very high, but the people who make it are life-changing people who became pastors or huge leaders. The people who graduated 10 years ago are now running massive churches or lawyers and doing all these great things with families. I think that people need to know and see what the Dream Center is doing, and it’s free of charge, all based on donations, so it’s pretty awesome.
I’m familiar with the Dream Center because I volunteered at a Christmas festival where they were raffling away free TVs and giving free prizes to kids or parents who needed them. I know how great the Dream Center is, and it’s really cool to see that they go beyond helping the community money-wise with drugs and mental health.
That’s awesome. The Christmas thing is pretty crazy. I used to work in the food bank, and we gave out 10,000 presents every year. We’re starting to wrap presents now! We start wrapping in January, and at the end of the year, we will have pallets and pallets of toys. They got some rich dudes passing thousands of dollars. There are kids doing dance-offs. Everybody gets a raffle. There are hundreds of people. We bus people in from all the projects because we have sites in every project in South L.A. — Nickerson Gardens, Pueblos — all the crazy projects. We bus all the kids in and pick them up for church every Thursday. Yeah, the Christmas thing is really crazy. I serve 2,500 hot chocolates and cookies, and it’s cool to see all the kids come and [go on] rides and leave with a stack of toys. So it’s cool that you’re able to see that from a kid’s point of view.
I’ve also had the opportunity to work with Ms. Irmen, and I’ve seen her passion for working in the substance abuse and treatment fields and her work on the curriculum she created. I wanted to know about your relationship with Ms. Irmen because you work together at the Dream Center.
I was in my second year [at the Dream Center], just about to get hired in the kitchen and serving a lot. I didn’t know what to do when I graduated. I was very anti-social. I couldn’t talk to leadership. So I started a life group where we went to skate parks with other youth every Tuesday. I used to sit in the front row at church, and Meredith
(Ms. Irmen), from Washington, wanted to develop a heart for inner-city youth. So she signed up for the immersion program, where you come to the Dream Center for a mis- sionary job. She worked on the family floor. My best friend was a youth pastor; he was one of our skaters, and his wife hung out with her.
I didn’t talk to her at all. I just started working and doing my own thing, and I was like, Meredith seems really nice I’m going to ask her out to coffee, and I did. I’d never had a Christian relationship. All my relationships were very broken, all about sex; it wasn’t ever authentic. So, seeing and meeting a Christian woman where we just hung out at coffee shops and just talked, I got to know her — actually, I got to know her before I started dating her. We started dating when COVID hit, and we spent a lot of time together. During COVID, it might have been shut down here, but the Dream Center was not shut down. We served 1.8 million meals out of that diner in a drive- thru. You could drive to the Dream Center and get 10 meals if you wanted. It was like a blur, but I started dating Meredith and realized that I’d never met a good person, like I was a bad person, right? I felt in my head like it was all about me, but she was very nice.
She went to school to become a teacher, and during that time, she got her first teaching job teaching ELD (English Language Development), but she didn’t know Spanish. So she was going to teach a bunch of kids who only know Spanish, but she only knows English. She had her first job at Miguel Contreras [Learning Complex] teaching ELD. Me and her just got married. I decided this was the right person, and it was different from anybody else. We got married, and she was a teacher, and I just continued to grow where I was. I had doubled my salary in a year just from people falling off and absorbing their positions. We were the family floor house parents for homeless families. So we were like the spiritual parents; we’d do Bible study and take you to a local barbecue — I love to barbecue. About eight months ago, the program directors for the disciple-ship program felt that me and my wife were the ones who could take over the pastoral job of the discipleship program, so we moved up to the 12th floor, and we were living there. She ended up getting [a job teaching] ninth grade English since one teacher left.
We live in recovery. Where I live, it’s like a whole city. I could walk on the blacktop, and I know 40 people. I’m a kind of high-level director at the Dream Center, and I work on the sixth floor, so I see everybody. I know every- body. I’ve worked with everybody. I’ve been everybody’s boss. If you’ve been to the program, I’ve been your boss. After years, you just get to know everybody, and my wife got to know all these people, and she’s just wanted to do a substance abuse thing. Everybody she brings [to her program] are all my friends because we all have these crazy stories. It was cool that she wanted to share that because drugs are getting bad outside right now. You don’t just use drugs and get strung out and go to rehab — you use drugs and usually die. She wanted to share with the kids because kids are overdosing at school and need to be Narcanned at school. That’s really bad. She just wanted to share with the students what was going on and have a little project. I was actually part of that project. I had a bunch of different kids interview me. It was fun. It was cool. I liked doing it and hope someone was impacted by it.