SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — Men who walk in the front door at First Step House of North County all have one thing in common: Alcohol. Inside, they find new hope. Volunteers who are recovering alcoholics themselves show them a different path — one that leads to sobriety.
"This house opened in April of 2017," Beky Pine tells ABC 10News.
Pine is the president of the board for First Step House of North County, a house that operates from donations and helps alcoholic men get sober over a period of 10 days.
"We have been able to serve 1,685 men thus far," says Pine.
That works out to more than 200 men every year for the past eight years.
The only paid staff members in the house are the cooks. Volunteers lead daily 12-step meetings on the back patio and provide guidance from their own experiences at the bottom of a bottle.
Volunteer Don Swedo paints a bleak picture of the struggles many residents face when they first enter the house.
"You get a guy in here the first couple of days, they've got homer buckets they are dry heaving into. We've had guys 10 years in the bushes. We've had CEOs. You never know who's going to come through that door," Swedo says.
Soon, however, volunteers start to see a change.
Swedo says "it's a very emotional thing to watch. Watch them turn their lives around."
During their 10-day stay, residents also get a dose of personal responsibility. Another volunteer says one person is assigned the role of "house mouse."
"The house mouse is responsible for organizing the cleaning, and the house gets a deep cleaning once a week, and that house mouse will assign the other residents to other tasks," the volunteer told ABC 10News.
Not every resident stays sober after their 10 days. Those who fall off the wagon are encouraged to return to the house because there's just too much at stake to stop trying.
"Think about all the lives we're saving out on the street," Swedo says. "Drop a rock in the pond and the ripples go out. It's absolutely amazing all the lives that are affected."
For their dedication to helping so many men recover from alcohol addiction, the volunteers of First Step House of North County and board president Beky Pine received the ABC 10News Leadership Award for the month of April.
If you know of a deserving individual or organization that makes a difference in your community, you can make a nomination here.
