Vision House loses its first woman

~ A vision of recovery: Part 4 of 7

Melissa Mackey's escapade with Karen Daugherty's adult son was a hot topic around the Vision House for a couple of weeks. But there were a few bright moments as well.

A few of the women were emerging from dark shells, including a polite middle-aged woman known as "Miss Helen." The bashful alcoholic was beginning to flash smiles and signs of her true self.

Meanwhile, director Theresa Taylor was finding more and more sponsors, organizing things and generally running at a satisfying and exhausting pace.

And then there was Theresa's surgery.

It was on March 29, 2005, two days after Easter.

It went well. Her throat was sore for days. The doctors had removed a huge cyst, a blockage that caused Theresa to sound something like Cookie Monster. The immediate results were modest. The procedure had already taken some of the bark away. Her voice was still rough, but not as scratchy. And she felt better.

She also quit smoking. The Vision House, an eight-unit apartment complex, is a place for drug addicted and homeless women to stay to avoid having to go back out on the streets again. There, the women would be expected to give up alcohol and drugs. They could stay until relapse, as little as six months or as long as two years.

They would not have to give up cigarettes. That would be too much to ask.

But Theresa, a smoker for decades, knew that if she could abstain from the methamphetamine that once dominated her life, she could quit nicotine as well. And the doctors told her she needed to quit to let her throat heal.

Two weeks later, by mid-April, Theresa was frazzled.

The only thing stronger than her will was her faith.

And she had to lean on it.

She lost her first woman, Donna Bruce, Melissa's roommate.

According to Karen, the Vision House manager, Donna went to fill a prescription without telling her. When Karen counted the pills, some were missing.

According to Theresa and Karen, it was a bitter departure. Donna's attitude before and after the incident was all over the map. Anger. Sorrow. Bitterness. Resentment.

Donna said Theresa and Karen abused their authority, that they used the Vision House for financial reasons and that they didn't keep the grounds in good shape.

Theresa said she had to let Donna go, not because of her mood swings or accusations but because of Vision House rules. Certain rules had been known to bend, but this wasn't one of them. No drug abuse at the Vision House. Period. They told Donna she had 24 hours to pick up her belongings. Then they locked themselves behind the office door and cried for a while.

Another Vision House rule, one of the ones more vital to the organization, was that each woman who stayed there had to contribute 30 percent of what she earned for rent. The Vision House spent roughly $850 per month on utilities.

Therefore, it was also required that each woman maintain a job. This money paid the utilities at the Vision House. The building itself, paid for with a leftover grant from the Safe House for Women, was free, although in poor shape when Theresa and her gang of fix-up men took it over. The organization, through donations from churches and church organizations, spent $10,000 refurbishing the apartments.

But neither Theresa nor her friend Karen were getting paid for their work. Karen jokingly called herself a freeloader after reading an article in the paper explaining that the manager got to live at the facility for free.

The truth is both women worked long hours keeping the Vision House running. Karen was there 24/7 keeping track of the residents' whereabouts, their schedules, their prescriptions, their court hearings, their fights and anything you could imagine that would come up when eight drug-addicted women share the same apartment building.

Volunteers were fixing up the apartments, and a woman or two had to sleep in the office until the work was finished. Forty-five days into the Vision House experiment, the number of women had grown from eight to 12.

As for Theresa, she shared some of the same roles as Karen, but she was more the Vision House go-and-getter.

She'd go and get donations. She'd go and get grant applications. She'd go and get people to help remodel the trashed apartments. She'd go and get herself buried neck-deep in the organization's planning and paperwork. She also answered to a board of directors that voted on major decisions.

One of her neck-deep projects was the idea of a second-hand store. She already had a surplus of items that had been donated to the apartments. She had more lamps and tables and couches than she knew what to do with. If she could orchestrate a successful second-hand store, perhaps using some of the women as workers, then maybe she and Karen could finally start making an income.

Theresa's home finances were a disaster, or at least unpredictable. Her husband, David, was a self-employed salesman who sold souvenir and specialty advertising merchandise like pens and pencils, whoopee cushions, coffee mugs, rubber snakes and so on. The job paid well in the warmer months when sales were up, but with Theresa not "working" the Taylor house began a financial nosedive in 2005. The price of gas was going up, sales were going down and Theresa had her teenage son to provide for. She once borrowed money, without telling her husband, to buy materials to become a spa and cosmetic saleswoman on the side. She felt guilty for putting her family in a financial vise because of her divine-inspired dream to help drug-addicted women. But David supported his wife, and Justin, though mischievous and at times problematic, supported his mother.

Theresa wanted, needed, to earn a little money.

By April 22, Theresa had a contract for the Vision House's second-hand "Second Chance" store. A compassionate man cut the Vision House a stellar deal on a property on Sprigg Street, not far from the Vision House. She obtained a business license, got the correct permits. All of the women helped get the shop in order, and it wasn't long before the store held its grand opening.

While the store kept some of the women working, including Theresa's favorite girl, Melissa Mackey, who had quit her McDonald's job, the store didn't make Theresa's financial situation any better. The second-hand store didn't make much money, perhaps because of a lack of marketing, perhaps because of its location, which isn't exactly in a section of town most Cape Girardeau residents associate with shopping, or perhaps because the store's nature was to appeal to a poor demographic. The revenue covered the expenses. And maybe enough for a tank of gas every month, Theresa said.

If Theresa was some day going to be able to earn a respectable wage at the Vision House, she would have to get it through a government grant.

Grant writing: Theresa's next challenge.

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Perhaps it was the lectures from Karen Daugherty, the Vision House manager, or Theresa Taylor, the director.

Maybe it was the weekly sessions she was having with her psychiatrist or maybe it was the continuous Bible studies, church services or 12-step meetings she was attending, but Melissa Mackey's mood and attitude improved noticeably shortly after word got out that she had a casual sexual encounter with Karen's adult son.

The Vision House was a place for homeless, addicted women to stay after successfully completing a short-term detox program. While the manager kept track of the women's whereabouts and may even denied permission to go somewhere, the Vision House was not intended to be a prison. The women were required to work. They were allowed to shop for themselves, drive themselves (if they had cars) to meetings and so forth. Short trips out of town were allowed under certain circumstances. Each woman knew the consequences. The Vision House had a zero-tolerance policy. And Karen wasn't afraid to pull out a drug test and "drop" anyone at any time. At least that's what everyone thought.

Melissa said she made three trips to St. Louis without drinking. One was to attend her sister's wedding, where Melissa was the maid of honor. The next two were to spend time with her 3-year-old daughter, Olivia.

There were some periods of guilt where she reflected on the things she had said and done to her family. She was just starting to understand how she tore her family apart, how her crack addiction affected so many people surrounding her, most of all Olivia.

On one trip, Melissa picked Olivia up from school and took her to the park. While there, one of Melissa's best friends called and wanted to know if Melissa wanted to go to the boat and gamble.

Melissa's dad gave her $40, and she won $50. And she didn't have a drink, she said.

That same night, her youngest sister invited her to a bonfire party.

The sister warned Melissa that there would be drinking, reminding her that she had come so far.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," Melissa said. "If I get uncomfortable, I'll leave. I'm not going to throw it away when I've worked so hard for everything."

And so she went, and didn't drink, didn't use crack.

She stayed at the party. And watched the people drink.

Each time, she said, she passed the test. Each time, she said, she denied the temptation. Each time she returned to the Vision House sober.

March and April passed. Ten more months to a year. Ten more months of Vision House treatment and she'd be out on her own again, a fresh start for her and her daughter.

Melissa, it appeared, was beating her addiction.

Coming tomorrow: Melissa progresses; Theresa longs for book smarts.

ABOUT THIS SERIES: After 17 years of drug addiction and living in the streets, a Cape Girardeau County woman named Theresa Taylor was sent to prison. While incarcerated, she received treatment for her addiction and was clean for the first time in her adult life. She soon became a born-again Christian. A couple of years later, the judge who sentenced her became aware of how well Theresa's recovery was going and opened the door for Theresa to speak with youth and women at the Family Counseling Center. One day, while talking to a drug-addicted woman ready to leave the treatment facility, Theresa had a "vision." That vision was to provide a faith-based, long-term transitional living facility for homeless and addicted women. This series begins two years after the "vision" and on the opening day of the Vision House. It follows the progress of the facility as well as some of the women who tried the program. The reporter visited the Vision House more than 30 times over the past year, conducting scores of interviews. While some of the scenes were reported firsthand by the reporter, most of the story was re-created through interviews of the various sources mentioned in the story. When events could not be verified by other participating parties, those events have been attributed to the sources who gave the information.