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Back
on Track The Reunion When Lakotaka Fields saw her six-year-old daughter, Kiah, for the first time in two years, it was at an arranged meeting in the center of a shopping mall. "She ran straight to me and screamed my name," remembers Fields. "She couldn't quit touching me. She wanted to hold both hands. She wanted to touch my face. It was like it was really real for her." But nothing was more real for Kiah, or her mother, than the source of their two year separation. "Her biggest question was whether I was going to use drugs again."
Fields, 29, was released from the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in April of this year after serving 22 months on burglary and assault charges stemming from a long, messy battle with methamphetamine addiction. Her reunion with her daughter and her ongoing recovery have, to a large degree, been facilitated by Sponsors, a Eugene-based organization that offers transitional housing and other services to ex-offenders. Created in 1973 by a nun with an eye on prison abolition, Sponsors is now widely regarded as one of the most effective models in the country for introducing ex-prisoners back into society. Fields' success story through Sponsors may help shed some light on how our society responds to criminality and addiction, and what we have to offer those in need of redemption. The Fall On the morning of October 25, 2003, Wayne Hayner awoke with a start. "It was a Saturday morning," recalls Hayner. "I heard a horrible screeching noise, metal on metal. I jumped up out of bed and I grabbed my bathrobe. I went out the utility room door that leads to our garage and I saw my pickup being backed out of the garage." Behind the wheel of the truck sat Lakotaka Fields, deranged from the effects of meth-amphetamines and struggling to get the stolen vehicle into gear so she could make a clean getaway. The truck dragged along the garage door track before finally wrenching free and sending truck and driver careening out of control. Hayner chased Fields into the driveway, yelling frantically for her to stop. "She made kind of a loopy turn, and the front end of the pickup hit a retaining wall, and it tore the front wheel loose," Hayner said. "At that point I got knocked down, and the wheel on the driver's side went up my left leg and hip. I thought I was hurt really bad." The totaled vehicle eventually came to a stop about a foot from a gas meter in the neighbors yard. Fields fled the scene, but was apprehended within 20 minutes by police. "She was really under the control of the meth-amphetamines at the time and I don't think she had a clue what she was doing," Hayner said. At Fields' sentencing hearing, Hayner limped into the courtroom and addressed Fields directly, reminding her of the toll her choices were taking on society and imploring her to begin taking responsibility for her actions. "I basically spoke from my heart," he said. His speech elicited stoic remorse from Fields and praise from the judge, who handed down a relatively light sentence of 22 months in prison and an $18,000 restitution fine. She could have sentenced Fields to 10 or 15 years in prison. Hayner was pleased. "I just don't think lengthy prison time is doing anybody any good," he said.
Similar minds are at work at The Sentencing Project, a national non-profit group that advocates reduced incarceration rates in favor of more effective treatment strategies. According to their statistics, the number of women in prison has increased at nearly double the rate for men since 1980. "The war on drugs has been the primary factor in this dramatic growth, with a third of women prisoners incarcerated for a drug offense," reads the organization's website. Jean Daugherty, the Director of the women's program at Sponsors for the past 10 years, emphatically agrees. "The war on drugs is the war on women," she says. "We're locking women up for being addicts. We're in this huge shift right now that criminalizes addiction. And women are judged so much harsher than men." She too advocates a shift to early intervention and treatment, rather than just incarceration. As the release coordinator at Coffee Creek prison, Ken Hiller has witnessed the steady growth of the prison population first-hand. He attributes the trend to tougher legislation like 1994's Measure 11, which mandates minimum sentencing for certain crimes. To Hiller, the laws seem only to result in longer sentences, over-crowding and reduced treatment options. But Hiller is most concerned with the scores of prisoners who are inevitably released back to the streets each year. An Oregon law requires ex-prisoners to return to the county of their offense for at least six months immediately following their release. The lucky ones get transferred into programs like Sponsors, which are not only rare, but offer limited availability. Many of the rest are forced to return to situations as bad or worse than those they experienced before prison. "I deal with all 36 counties and there's pretty much no housing options in all 36 counties," Hiller said. "That's why I rate Lane County fairly high, because they've consistently been there through all the years I've been doing releases." While Daugherty coordinates the women's program, Sponsors Director Ron Chase works with the men. A large, deceptively imposing man, Chase, 59, takes a compassionate approach to Sponsors "clients," offering sternness and support where they're needed. When Chase inherited Sponsors in 1988, the program worked in partnership with the Oregon State Correction Association to house first-time offenders, with no direct, one-on-one supervision. Under Chase's leadership, the program began to shift toward its current profile as a well-supervised support system, with plenty of individual attention. "Everyone here wears two hats," said Chase. "It's a small agency, so people need to do more than one thing." It helps that all 15 of Chase's employees are also former Sponsors clients who understand the program. Arguably, the most vital job is that of case manager, which represents the heart and soul of Chase's vision for an individualized support network with the emphasis on personal accountability, not authoritarianism. Veteran case manager Sue Comfort, 45, has been with Sponsors since she completed the 90 day program herself, seven years ago. "Ninety days is not a long time when you've been locked up for years," said Comfort, who understands the challenges ex-prisoners face when they're suddenly confronted again with everyday circumstances most of us take for granted. "The bus system can be very confusing when you've been told when to go to bed, when to wake up, when you can shower, when you can eat. And all of a sudden now you have to just go." New arrivals at Sponsors get 30 days to find a job, a milestone Sue Comfort contends is almost always achieved by those who are willing to try. Sponsors also withholds fifty percent of each paycheck the clients receive while in the program, returning it to them in a lump sum at "graduation." "Everybody has to go grocery shopping at least one time," said Comfort. "We try not to do it in the first week or so here because it can be overwhelming. We've had women break down in tears trying to pick out toothpaste because there are too many choices." Another case manager, 36-year-old Dianne Bradley, agrees. When she was released from Coffee Creek in 2003, she was overwhelmed at having to make even simple choices again. "That first day, it was just ridiculous," she said. "I went up to the clothing room, took one look at it, turned around and walked out. I stayed in my prison clothes for two days." Bradley's life, like Fields, was devastated by drugs and alcohol. But Bradley's addiction robbed her of the possibility of a reunion with her daughter, who died in a car accident in which Bradley was driving intoxicated. Bradley was sent up to Coffee Creek on an involuntary manslaughter charge because of the incident. When she got out, Sponsors allowed her to finally begin dealing with her pain. "I've been able to take and process this stuff with [Sponsors]," she said. "And now I actually feel comfortable enough to open myself up to them, which is what's kept me from going backwards and getting sick and going back into what I used to know worked best." Bradley now uses her experience as an example to help others. "I go to different treatment places and tell my story," she said. "I figure if I can put that seed in one person's head, and keep one person from doing what I've done and put my family through, then everything I've been through has been worth it to some degree." The Sanctuary Bradley supports the 11 women who currently live on the top floor of Sponsors' Ferry St. quads in the West University neighborhood. The quads are the penultimate step toward complete independence for Sponsors clients. They are also the organization's newest, and perhaps most ambitious, acquisition. Last August, the Eugene City Council agreed to subsidize 85 percent of the Ferry St. property purchase. The decision was met with almost unanimous approval, barring an objection from one West University resident who expressed some general concerns about living among so many ex-prisoners. However, Ron Chase estimates that thousands of ex-prisoners currently live in Eugene with no supervision or support, a couple hundred of them in the West University neighborhood alone. "Most of the people at the Ferry St. property have been out for a long time," explains Chase. At the moment, the quads house no sex offenders, but Chase said they left that option open when they talked to the neighborhood group. Because of insurance reasons, however, convicted arsonists remain the only group unconditionally excluded from all Sponsors facilities. Fields moved in on October 23, almost two years to the day after the fateful incident in Wayne Hayner's garage. She makes the $300 monthly rent from a janitorial job she landed with help from Sponsors. The quads offer Fields and the others almost total freedom, with only some basic rules regarding house guests, curfews and, of course, a zero-tolerance policy on drugs or alcohol. But Sponsors can be strict. If someone cheats on a UA (urinalysis), fails to meet basic expectations, or even gets caught smoking cigarettes inside a Sponsors building, they're immediately kicked out, and may have an hour to pack all their things and leave. But even a major infraction doesn't result in total exclusion. "Even the ones that screw up, we tell them that this is not a burnt bridge," said Comfort. "They can always come home. We've had people through here three or four times." Such was the case with Lakotaka Fields. The Relapse The addictive power of meth is legendary, so much so that even a few years in prison aren't enough to break the cycle for many users. Fields was no exception. She ditched Sponsors for, as she put it, "one last hurrah," shortly after arriving the first time. Just two days after her release from Coffee Creek, Fields met up with another meth user, and it wasn't long before she was back to her old habits. "I went on a seven-week run," she said, "and at the end of those seven weeks, I woke up and said, 'I don't want to be doing this anymore.' So I walked into the Lane County Jail and turned myself in. It's pretty scary offering yourself up to be put in handcuffs." Debra Jonas remembers the day her daughter returned to Sponsors after that initial relapse. Jonas was there holding a box with Fields' belongings, talking to Comfort and Daugherty. To everyone's surprise – and considerable trepidation – up walked Fields. "It seemed to be a time that she broke," Jonas recalled. "She walked in, and I could see her stance. And Jean, the house manager – I'll just never forget this – said, 'you need to come here and you just need to give me a hug, because you broke my heart.' And she just melted, and you could tell she felt safe. You could tell she let go of some piece of anger that very minute." That anger may have been rooted in a tough childhood. Fields' mom, Jonas, was young when she had her, then married a meth addict. Jonas spent much of her young life bouncing around between foster homes. Her own father died of a heroine overdose. "No one was there for Lakotaka [Fields]," said Jonas. "This is a little girl who basically repeated history with her own daughter — the neglect, the abandonment." Fields now has a chance to break that cycle. "What I see a year from now is a strong, stable relationship with my daughter," she said. "That's really the most important thing right now is to be a good momma for her." The Graduation
Six months after her release, Fields sat cross-legged on the floor of the living room at the Sponsors women's facility, listening to her mother and Jean Daugherty tell the story of her relapse. It was her graduation ceremony, and about 15 other women have gathered in a large circle around the room, each at a different point in her own recovery. A framed certificate bearing testimony to Fields' accomplishment moved around the room. As it changed hands, the person holding it said a few words of encouragement to her before passing it down the line. When it reached Jonas, she grasped the certificate tightly with both hands and talked at length about her daughter's tremendous growth. "Lakotaka is gonna keep on going forward," she said later. "I believe she has the tools in place and the support system in place through so many contacts at Sponsors, that she will go on. I don't believe that she will ever decide that a needle in her neck is ever gonna be the answer for her again." And as for Field's victim, Wayne Hayner? His leg was back to normal in no time. "I believe one of the reasons I healed so quickly is that I didn't afford myself malice and bitterness and all that," he said. "I think that's the direction to go. We've got to be forgiving and helpful." Fields' mom has seen what that philosophy has done for her daughter. "The information that Sponsors gave her, and the unconditional love, along with the complete and total accountability, seemed to be a mixture that worked perfectly for Lakotaka," Jonas said. "And I believe it literally saved my daughter's life."
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