HELPING OUT THE NEIGHBORS: SBHS alumna returns a favor.

Volunteer work helps woman get her life back on track.

By: Hank Kalet
   One former South Brunswick resident knows the benefit of getting a little help.
   Sue, a 1986 graduate of South Brunswick High School who asked that her last name be withheld, had been in a downward spiral, her life dissolving in a haze of alcohol when she walked into Elijah’s Promise soup kitchen in New Brunswick about four years ago.
   "I was living in my car and then it broke down," she said. "I scrapped the car and stayed at the train station and sometimes I stayed in the park."
   The soup kitchen, located on Nielsen Street in New Brunswick, fed her and helped her find an addiction program. She gave up drinking and now volunteers at the kitchen doing whatever needs to be done. She’s been sober for the last three months.
   "Whatever they need me for, I do," she said. "I stay late, I stuff envelopes, I run to Perth Amboy with food packages, I sort clothes. I walk in and they tell me what they need. Basically, they know I won’t say no and that’s cool with me. If I walk in and say I’m struggling, they give me anything I need. I don’t ask for much, but this way I can give back."
   Sue’s story is not unusual, she said. She graduated from high school, did some construction work and moved in with her boyfriend in Kendall Park. They started a landscaping business and were bringing in between $250 and $300 a day.
   She said she would drink beer with her crew during the day during breaks, though she would not get drunk on the job. Eventually, she said, the drinking became more and more important, squeezing out everything else.
   "We were drinking while working, the whole crew did," she said. "At some point the drinking became necessary."
   She said she started drinking when she was 11 or 12 at weekend dances at Crossroads School and at what she called "field parties." She grew up in Deans, east of Route 130 in "the rural part of town" and spent a lot of time with friends from East Brunswick. She said they would find an open field and party there.
   The drinking was a constant in her life for about 23 years, she said, until it became the most important thing in her life.
   At that point, she was spending all of her spare money on beer.
   She had been renting a room in a trailer in a South Brunswick trailer park, she said. The owner started drinking and she moved out. She ended up living on the streets for a while in 2002, spent some time in a shelter and then was back out on the streets. She slept in her car until it broke down, stayed in the train station on Albany Street when the weather was bad and also spent some time in Boyd Park on Route 18.
   "I worked pretty much all the way through, but at the end I became miserable," she said. "I’d had enough, went away to a program."
   That was in August of 2002. She completed the program in March of 2003, started volunteering at the soup kitchen and stayed sober for the next five months, before falling off the wagon, she said.
   On Aug. 19, 2004, she entered a 28-day program and has been clean since coming out.
   She’s also been volunteering at Elijah’s Promise regularly since then and is planning to start school soon, hoping to become an alcohol and drug-abuse counselor.
   She views her volunteering as a way of giving back to an organization that helped her get her own life back on track. She said they didn’t ask questions when she started taking meals at the kitchen a few years ago and they provided guidance and counseling that has her heading in the right direction.
   "I have my own place now, a cell phone, money, a new coat," she said. "I have things I didn’t have. Now, I can take care of some of my wants and not just my needs. Before I wouldn’t part with money for anything other than alcohol."
   Because of the help she received, she feels it is important that she help others. When she sees someone in the same position she had been in, she reaches out. She tries to point them toward programs that may help.
   "I’m like a walking information source," she said. "It’s sometimes easier to seek help from someone who has been in the same position. I can do that.
   "I’m not just walking in here for a free meal," she says. "I’m staying sober. If I was walking around with nothing to do, I don’t know if I would. And I’m helping."