Addiction treatment program struggles to rehab its finances.
In this city, the road to recovery starts as a dirt path just off Airport Road, winding, rough and rocky-much like the troubled lives of the locals who travel it.
***image1***About a quarter mile down the path-called Lucia Lane according to the wisp of a signpost which quietly announces its existence to the cars that hurtle past-sits the Santa Fe Recovery Center. It is here, in a stucco, one-level rectangle of a building, where many of Santa Fe's drug addicts and alcoholics come to stay for one month in the hopes that the isolated setting and intense treatment will provide the peace of mind no needle or bottle ever could.
Soon, however, that all could change. According to the center's executive director, Yolanda Briscoe, the Recovery Center is saddled with such substantial money problems it is at risk of closing its doors.
"We're having to pay off an extreme amount of debt here. It's been hard to get out from under it," Briscoe says.
Even more frustrating, the debt is not because of anything the Recovery Center has done but because of the overwhelming financial problems of its predecessor, the Recovery of Alcoholics Program (RAP).
RAP, which operated on state and county money, for 30 years provided inpatient and outpatient services to mostly indigent New Mexicans struggling with addiction.
But, in 2004, it became clear there had been massive mismanagement of RAP's finances. The organization owed approximately $890,000 to everyone from PNM to Santa Fe County to the IRS and its records were in shambles.
This past January the state terminated its contract with RAP. The following month, at the orders of State District Judge James Hall, RAP was placed under the management of local non-profit Life Link, and the group's five-acre property was sold to investors for just over $1 million. Subsequently a new non-profit formed with almost an entirely new board and a reconstructed staff with the promise that RAP's debt would be repaid.
The nascent Santa Fe Recovery Center also shifted the treatment focus to a more comprehensive inpatient treatment program dealing with all types of addiction, and opened its doors beginning last May.
Typically patients are either referred to the program by a judge or a doctor or come of their own volition. Most are Hispanic males and are dealing with a variety of different addictions, often congruently. Once they arrive at the Recovery Center patients spend time in detox before they are placed on a tight daily schedule that includes classes on addiction and anger management, treatment sessions and optional spiritual groups.
"Everything we do comes from empirical data and is research-based," Briscoe, a clinical psychologist, says.
Now, however, because the Recovery Center is still dealing with RAP's debtors, it ends up some $10,000 in the hole every month, a substantial chunk out of the $110,000 monthly budget, Briscoe says.
Specifically, the Recovery Center still owes $12,000 in monthly rent payments to the investors who bought the building as part of the court order, as well as $5,600 in monthly back payments to Santa Fe County. That the state and county have both cut annual funding to the Recovery Center by $228,000 and $95,000 respectively has only made things more difficult.
Still, according to Board of Trustees Chairwoman Bernadette Trujillo-Vadurro, Recovery Center officials are hopeful it can right itself before the year is out.
"Everyone we speak with, politicians, community members, everyone, has been incredibly supportive," she says.
Recently, the Recovery Center requested emergency funding from the state and board members are slated to meet with Gov. Bill Richardson in the coming weeks.
And, according to Trujillo-Vadurro, administrators from the Recovery Center were scheduled to meet with Santa Fe County Commissioners Nov. 29 to discuss the rate of back payments it's currently paying. The Recovery Center also wants the county to increase its funding of the group so it can better afford the important care it provides, she says.
Last month the Recovery Center held an open house in an effort to raise community awareness about it's mission and need for quick cash.
Some board members, Trujillo-Vadurro says, have even reached into their own pockets and contributed thousands to keep the Recovery Center open.
"You can't imagine how much time and energy this has taken," Trujillo-Vadurro says tearfully. "The governor says he'll help and we're banking on it. Northern New Mexico needs this."
For one patient, a 25-year-old woman who checked in nearly two weeks ago at the behest of friends and family because of her drinking problem, the prospect of the Recovery Center shuttering its doors it almost too much to bare.
"The staff here is knowledgeable and positive and has helped so many of us," she says. "It would be terrible, really tragic for the community if this place had to close."
