Angeline Borchers lives behind high fences and barbed wire at Las Colinas Detention Facility. And, given that she is in jail ---- Borchers was arrested for drug offenses ---- she feels "blessed" to be here, in this particular dorm.
The Escondido woman can count herself among the first 100 or so inmates in San Diego County who were allowed to take part in a rather unique program in which the participants spend their entire time behind bars focused on addiction recovery, as well as working through the past traumas and abuses that very likely led them to drugs.
Borchers, 23, was serving time in the Vista jail when she heard about the program, which comes with high expectations and rigid rules.
"I asked specially to come down to Las Colinas ---- just to be in this dorm," Borchers said Wednesday, a sob choking her as she spoke. "The day after I got here, I talked with Donna at the fence. I just told her I wanted my life, I wanted a life ---- and she took me in the next day.
"Donna" is Donna Cleveland, a long recovering drug addict and one-time repeat inmate in the county's jails. It was Cleveland ---- who was Nickel until her wedding on New Year's Eve ---- who brainstormed and pitched the program to the county jails.
And ---- as cliched as this sounds ---- one-time inmate Cleveland now literally has the keys to certain parts of the same jail she was once housed in. She comes by nearly daily to meet with and mentor the women she recruited for the program she dubbed FAiR, for Future Achievers in Re-entry.
Cleveland credits her recovery from her 23-year addiction to the Oceanside-based group Welcome Home Ministries, which works with female jail and prison inmates. The Oceanside group is the official organization behind the jail program.
You are invited to a Fundraiser Concert to support StandUp for Kids and Welcome Home Ministries starring Rene Bondi and Tyson!
Where:
The Church of the Nativity
6309 El Apajo Road
Rancho Santa Fe, CA 92067
When: Saturday November 6, 2010 7:00 pm
If you would like to post the link to our web site it is:
Carmen Warner-Robbins likens herself to Joan of Arc: She didn't want to do what other people told her to do, but what God told her to do. This passion to follow God's call led her 12 years ago to found Welcome Home Ministries, a faith-based ministry ...
Welcome Home is a nondenominational ministry that keeps hundreds of women from returning to prison says it is running out of money. Staffers have been laid off and prison visits have stopped.
Still, officials from Oceanside-based Welcome Home Ministries said closing their doors is not an option.
Welcome Home Ministries was asked to be part of a new nonprofit coalition aims to help parolees avoid returning to prison. Rev. Carmen Warner Robbins our Executive Director and peer coordinators: Deborah Vorgang and Donna Nickel were part of the ad hoc committee which formulated this new coalition.
