CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — In 2022, a record number of people in Cook County died from opioid overdoses. This week's Difference Maker highlights A Hand Up Recovery Homes, which works to support those in recovery in Chicago’s West Side.
“It's a family disease,” said Wilbert Cook. “It starts with an individual, but it affects a family and, as you see, it's helped destroy a community.”
Cook said the idea for A Hand Up Recovery Homes was born 33 years ago from his own experience recovering from a cocaine addiction.
He originally wanted to start an organization for teenagers experiencing addiction.
“I had seen up close, for five years, how bad that crisis is and addiction among youth, but I couldn't get it going,” Cook said. “I knew I could start with adults, which had been my idea for my first 10 years to launch as a nonprofit.”
In 2005, A Hand Up Recovery Homes opened its doors to provide recovery and apartment services to people experiencing addiction around the West Garfield Park neighborhood.
Toni Drisdell, the operations director at A Hand Up, said the goal of the nonprofit is to listen and be there for people.
“Our motto is ‘saving lives and helping families,’” Drisdell said. “I really believe it's been either a crisis or some situation … that caused them to have that spiral down to, you know, get on drugs or whatever. So, just being able to support them and walk with them through their journey.”
That approach is what outreach worker Dennis Gary said makes A Hand Up and so successful.
“We have to be careful,” Gary said. “We have to come lovingly. We have to be really empathetic and want to help the people who are in this — not … because I don't want them in my face — you want to help them because these are God's children who actually need help.”
Gary is one of roughly 15 staff members and volunteers who are regularly out in the community at all hours of the day seeking people in crisis who might need help.
Eric Stith, another outreach worker, used to live in one of A Hand Up’s facilities when he was recovering from addiction. He said his own experience has helped him help others.
“The people we talk to when we're doing outreach, our peers, some of them come in and ask for help,” Stith said. “They need jobs. They need a positive role model. They need, you know, somebody just to talk to, and thanks to this program, we're here to help.”
Their work has not gone unnoticed by the community.
Cook said A Hand Up has become the place where people in crisis go when there’s nobody else to turn to.
“Sometimes with us, it’s people saying that place over there helped them: ‘If we need help, we know you’re there,’” Cook said.
A Hand Up is continuing to provide temporary housing, he said, while also looking for more funding to eventually provide permanent housing and enhance its gun violence prevention program.
In the future, Cook hopes to involve other communities in his work and increase awareness and education of the dangers of drugs.
A Hand Up Recovery Homes is located at 4030–32 W. Van Buren St. Walk-in hours are Tuesday through Friday, 5 – 9 p.m.
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