After a heroin binge left Angel Luterzo in the hospital, barely breathing, she knew she needed help. She faced a tough decision: Do I go to rehab, even if it means leaving my kids behind?
Luterzo (pictured0 was blessed with family members who would take care of her four small children while she got back on her feet. Some other moms aren’t so lucky: With no safe place for their kids, they must give them up for adoption or forgo rehab.
A new facility underway at Crossroads, Inc. open doors wider to those moms.
Seated in a quiet pocket of West Hills beside the West River, Crossroads has helped over 6,000 people recover from addiction since it opened in 1972. Most of the clients are ex-cons or are facing pending criminal charges. They spend four to six months on the campus, learning to stay sober, manage their lives, and get back on their feet with a G.E.D. or job.
Luterzo is one of 15 women staying at Amethyst House, a Crossroads program just for moms, housed at the Howe Street YMCA. Amethyst has been a haven for struggling moms — it is one of the few residential rehab facilities in the state that allow women to bring in more than one child under five.
Luterzo brought one kid, well a kid-to-be — she’s due to have a baby in September. The 24-year-old came to Amethyst all the way from Newark, N.J.
Sitting on a couch at Amethyst one recent afternoon, she wore a hospital bracelet and a pink shirt that read: “I’m the girl your mother warned you about.” She spoke shyly, her face quick to light up in a smile, as she told of how she ended up in that room.
“I was homeless, living in abandoned houses,” said Luterzo. She became homeless after an ex-boyfriend kicked her out. She fell in with a man who was shooting heroin and cocaine. Soon, she started using, too. Spiraling downward, she had to give up her kids to family members as she served a month in jail. One week in the spring, she hit bottom — she was ill, having trouble breathing.
“I didn’t want to go to the hospital,” she said, “I just wanted to get high.”
Luterzo finally went to the ER. A nurse told her she could have died if she hadn’t sought help. She found out she had a staph infection and Hepatitis C — and she was pregnant. She moved back in with her mom in April, and looked up residential rehab facilities. In May, she packed her bags for Crossroads.
“I needed to get out of New Jersey,” she said.
Getting out of Jersey — or whatever the familiar environment may be — is key to recovery, said Miguel Caldera, executive director of Crossroads. Addicts with children face an extra challenge.
“Folks who are looking for treatment just need one little item to stand in their way,” Caldera explained. “When they make that final decision of going into treatment, it is a very fragile decision. If they can’t bring the kids in, they actually decide not to come into treatment.”
Caldera was proud to report that expansion plans will remove more obstacles between mothers and recovery.
Opening Doors
A $6 million expansion plan, 10 years in the making, became a reality this month with approval from city zoning powers.
The new facility will accept more mothers, and let them take more children with them. The Amethyst House program now accepts women withone child. The program will move to a new 26,400-square-foot building being built in a rear parking lot on the Crossroads campus at 54 East Ramsdell St. The two-story building will house female clients, with one floor for single women and another for women with kids.
The new digs will have room for 20 moms and up to 25 children, said Caldera (pictured). There will be a licensed daycare facility there and rooms for parenting classes and group therapy.
The expansion will also free up Crossroads to take on more male clients and employees to stretch out after being cooped-up in basement quarters. Right now, the West Hills facility has one wing for male clients, housing 66 men, and another wing for female clients.
The program comes thanks to a $2.5 million grant from the state, according to Bill Donohue, who teaches a G.E.D. class at Crossroads and works as a development consultant there. As head of the city Redevelopment Agency in the ’70s, Donohue helped get the facility, one of the first to offer Spanish-language services, off the ground. Expansion plans have been in the works for a decade, he said.
The group came close to snagging funding for the program in April 2004, when former Gov. John Rowland trotted down to New Haven for a press conference and trumpeted a $10 million grant for Crossroads. The hopes were short-lived, however: A week after making that promise, Rowland came crashing down in a corruption scandal and left office. The state funds languished for four years.
With funding and approvals in place, the organization hopes to start construction in August, and finish in 2009.
Luterzo won’t be there then, she said. After six months in rehab, she plans to be back home, off drugs, nursing her newest child.
“I want to have a healthy baby,” she said. “For this one, I want to be clean.”