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DEL.ICIO.USOnce a homeless drug addict, man now has hope
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
He had $6 in quarters and a list of agencies that might help someone like him — a homeless man with a drug habit who’d just gotten out of jail.
Gus Voelkel got nothing but taped recordings when he called the organizations from a pay phone. He didn’t want to waste his quarters, so he decided to give one more agency a try.
He dialed the number for Meet the Need Ministry Inc., a husband-wife outfit in Lawrenceville that feeds the hungry and provides transitional housing for men in need.
An answering machine clicked on. Voelkel, who’d been released from the Gwinnett jail three days earlier, was about to walk away. The pay phone rang. He picked up.
Jane Alvarez of Meet the Need was on the line. Stay put, she told him. The Alvarezes picked him up from a phone booth off Rockbridge Road, and took him to Wal-Mart.
“They bought me socks, tennis shoes, a toothbrush, toothpaste, comb, everything,” said Voelkel, 48, who had been incarcerated for 15 months on a theft by taking charge.
Voelkel has told me this story twice. Both times he cried. Tears of gratitude, maybe. He knows the life he’d lived landed him at that phone booth last summer, that it was his own doing. Now he’s working to make the ministry’s return call his turn-around, a switch to a less destructive course.
He was released from jail on Aug. 8. He called acquaintances for a ride, but struck out. So he hit the road. He left the jail near Ga. 316 and headed toward Lawrenceville. He had three prescriptions that needed filling, so he headed to the Gwinnett Medical Center.
Or so he thought.
He walked in vain for two days and slept at night wherever he could. On the third day, he came across a church somewhere in the Lawrenceville/Snellville area. He doesn’t recall the name of the church, but he’ll never forget what the secretary gave him — $6 in quarters and a list of area agencies that help indigents. Voelkel called Meet the Need at 6 o’clock in the morning.
“I wish you could have seen him,’’ Jane Alvarez told me. “He had blisters on his feet. He was exhausted.”
The Alvarezes put Voelkel up in a house that they use for their ministry. The men who live there must work, attend a church of their choice, participate in Bible study and avoid vices.
Some buy into the program; others don’t.
Voelkel thrived in it.
“Gus wants to make a change in his life,” Rene’ Alvarez said. “You can see that.” So did executives at Hercules Inc., a Tucker-based aviation company that supplies airline parts and aviation services. They hired him to work as a traffic manager for their warehouse off Mountain Industrial Boulevard.
“He’s had some rough patches these past few years,” said Mac M. McCuen, the company vice president. “He’s somebody you want to see succeed.”
Step by step, he’s rising. He helps out at Rene’s Upholstery, the Alvarezes’ car refinishing business, in Stone Mountain. He’s drug-free. Two weeks ago, he moved out of the ministry house and into a Duluth apartment that he shares with a roommate.
And on Feb. 15 he starts work at Hercules.
“It’s going to be awesome,” he told me.
It already is.
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Comments
By annandale
January 22, 2007 08:25 AM | Link to this
This is awe-inspirng event ( I cannot call it story). I am at a loss for words. One cannot feel some measure of guilt or compassion for those who have either taken the wrong turn in life or becomed shipwrecked by the tragedies of living in a fallen world. I am currently reading the The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, that exposes the monstrosity of conscienceless men and the destitution that poverty, ignorance, tragedy and poor choices can do to a person. I applaud all those who serve to uplift the poor, the downtrodden, those who are hanging on to the final straw of hope, whose feet are dangling perilously above the abyss of utter despair. These are the stories we need more of, not the crime of greed that calcifies the heart, not continuous stories of murders that desensitize our consciences, not stories of fame and glory that stoke the flames of selfish ambition and the ego.
I commend you for locating such a story. Your articles continue to bring us face to face with the reality of living. We cannot look at another person and not see some of us in that person, good or bad. Thanks for being an agent of change.
Life does not consist in the abundance of our accolades or earthly positions. But rather of caring and loving those who are most undeserving.
Jesus commends those who attend to the sick, the imprisoned, the hungry and the downtrodden. If more churches would live this out, stories like this would indeed be the norm.
By Karen
January 22, 2007 10:19 AM | Link to this
AMEN Annadale.
Thanks Rick! Keep up the good work. My prayers are with you also.
By dee
January 22, 2007 10:41 AM | Link to this
Why just churches? We are all just a step away from tragedy and misfortune. Good people make a wrong turn and end up like this. But when they spend their time paying their debt to society and get out, no one will give them a chance. If we all helped just one person, this world would be a better place.
By annandale
January 22, 2007 11:57 AM | Link to this
You are right, I am looking in the mirror of that man at my own soul. My only point was that some churches do long distance loving on the less fortunate, whereas others do a splendid job. But your point is well taken, the responsibility for us to care belongs to all of us, regardless of who we are. I am indeed my brother’s keeper. The story of the Good Samaritan always brings me back to the reality of caring for others. Let us move on by doing our part.
By dee
January 22, 2007 12:10 PM | Link to this
Even if you have nothing, kinds words can help people. So many refuse to even adknowledge with their eyes or words.