For many years, Ailene Farkac used drugs to cope with the pain of abuse. She served time in prison, then chose to get her life back on track with the assistance of Sponsors, Inc.

Story by David Moody

Photos by Emilee Booher

Four years ago, Ailene Farkac was dealing pot, heroin, and crack cocaine in Eugene, Oregon and was on a collision course with her own addiction. Now, after serving time in prison, she has started a new job, maintained her sobriety, and is strengthening connections with her three children. For most ex-offenders, the chances of slipping back into criminal behavior remain high, but Farkac is confident and happy in her new life—and she isn’t fighting alone.

After her release, Farkac found support and compassion in a local non-profit agency called Sponsors, Inc. It’s an agency with one purpose: to help ex-offenders— like Farkac beat the odds of recidivism and begin their lives anew. Farkac knows the odds, but with the help of friends, the support of Sponsors, and the love of her children, she has decided to beat those odds.

Farkac (pronounced far-catch) grew up in a middle class, Orthodox Jewish family in Long Island, New York. Her parents worked full-time—her mother as a teacher and her father as an insurance salesman. Her parents were the first to divorce in their community and synagogue and Farkac says the split was traumatic. “We were in private Jewish school,” she explains, “and divorce was unheard of.” But long before the divorce, at age nine, Farkac had already begun self-medicating to deal with a far worse trauma.

Her father was abusive—sexually, physically and emotionally. She protected her younger sister, so she took the brunt of it. At a young age, when Farkac sought help from her rabbi, telling him about her drug use, his response surprised and deflated her. “Oh, no,” he said, “Jews don’t have problems with drugs.” Farkac’s wide eyes narrow as she recalls the moment. “That’s abusive.” she says. “When you seek help and they tell you we don’t have problems like that—suppressing feelings—denying—it’s abusive.” At age twelve, she stopped talking to her father. She was finished with him.

After her parents divorced, her mother turned her back on Orthodox Judaism. Farkac recalls one Saturday when she was eleven. Her mother forced her and her sister into a car and told them they were going to McDonald’s, an act Farkac compares to piling Amish children into a car for the first time and taking them out for burgers. She remembers it as fun, but also terrifying.

Already a hardcore pot user, Farkac attended her first public school in ninth grade. “I was the bad-ass kid and I liked it,” she says. Her idols were heroin-addicted rock stars and she wanted to be a heroin addict too. She admired their lifestyles and understood that they had found the same escape she had.

Farkac would cut class, go to the city, buy dope, return to school, and sell it. She had money all the time, had dope all the time, and her mother was never around. “I was totally having fun,” she admits, “but I wasn’t connecting anything to my abuse at all. I found a way to make my life fun, because it was really miserable, and I rode that out.”

Farkac managed to graduate from high school, and while attending the State University of New York, her addiction and drug dealing continued. In 1989, as she prepared to enter her final semester of college, her father looked her up again. He drove to her school and got into an altercation with Farkac’s then-boyfriend, the drummer from a band. She has trouble recalling what happened, but she does remember deciding not to finish her last semester of school. Instead, she’d move to Eugene, Oregon with her boyfriend, putting herself as far from New York as possible.

In Oregon, her relationship with the drummer didn’t last long and he moved back to New York. Farkac eventually met her now ex-husband and they ended up living on a 200-acre farm between Corvallis and Salem. She wanted to have children and managed to stop using hard drugs during the pregnancies of her two daughters, Mollie and Anna. But, not long after, she began to feel bored. She hated living on the farm and became depressed—even suicidal.

She reached out to an old friend from New York. At one point, he’d been the love of her life, but he was also a heroin addict. Farkac asked him to come out to Oregon and he agreed. His arrival marked the beginning of the worst period of addiction of her life. She turned her back on her family and began shooting dope and using cocaine every day for years. She was in and out of the girls’ lives, and as she put it, dragged them through the mud of her addiction. “I was a hot mess and was selling drugs—spending all the money I made on cocaine and neglecting my kids.”

Farkac describes heroin as total euphoria—a big blanket around her, protection, and companionship. “I was married to heroin,” she explains. But eventually, it stopped working for her. No matter how much she used, she couldn’t get high—so she began using crack. “Crack goes right to your core,” she says, “giving immediate euphoria you can’t feel any other way.” She sweeps her short, brown hair out of her eyes with her fingers and sits forward on the couch as she continues. “Like yesterday—I bought a nice laptop for my daughter, Anna—a really nice laptop—and it felt good—the best. But you can’t compare it to a hit of crack. It’s two different types of feeling good.”

In 2000, Farkac became pregnant with her third child, Dylan. She’d met Dylan’s father, Christiaan Brown, at a methadone clinic a few years earlier. Again, she managed to stop using during the pregnancy, but on Dylan’s first birthday, she began using again daily. She also continued dealing—and in larger quantities.

After several years, Farkac was feeling the strain of her addiction and heard rumors from friends that the Eugene Police were watching her. In 2005, she decided to return to New York. While there, she visited her mother and remembers telling her that if she didn’t get help soon, she’d end up dead or in prison. While in New York, she managed to land a great job on Wall Street at a non-profit agency. She was making good money, but her addiction continued to worsen. She used all day, every day. After six months in New York, she received a call from her dealer in Eugene asking her to come back. She returned to Eugene and started selling drugs again.

Eventually, one of her customers got busted leaving her place and everything finally began to unravel. Incredibly, this was the first time she had had any notable contact with law enforcement. The police came into Farkac’s apartment, found drugs and arrested her on delivery charges, and that was only the beginning. Six weeks later, they came back, this time busting her door down. And because they found both drugs and money, she was charged with commercial delivery.

In November of 2006, Farkac was sentenced for both arrests. With no prior record, she was released on probation. But, far too addicted to seize this opportunity, Farkac bought and sold drugs almost immediately. The next day, less than twenty-four hours after her release, she walked into her house and was met by the entire vice narcotics team. She was arrested for the third time on delivery charges. On February 13, 2007, Farkac dropped Dylan off at school, drove to court, and was sentenced to three years in prison. She was dispatched immediately to Coffee Creek Correctional Facility with her family not even aware she was leaving.

Farkac found prison absolutely dehumanizing. There were times when she was treated like an animal and she had no personal space or privacy. The food was horrible and her drug addiction remained untreated. For a short time, Farkac continued to use in prison, but she doesn’t elaborate on how she obtained the drugs. She says only that she was surprised to discover she had a reputation there—that she was well-known among the inmates. She would meet people and they’d say, “I know you. You sold dope to my mom!”

The guards and staff made it clear that she wasn’t there to be rehabilitated; she was there to be punished. “Such a destructive mindset,” she explains, “especially for addicts.” But she is also aware that her time in prison served a purpose. “The root of my addiction was unaddressed trauma,” she explains, “and until I was able to be removed from society and have nothing but time to address it, I was not ready to get well—ever.”

In August 2007, Farkac was sent to a six-month boot camp in Coos Bay, Oregon. She was in the last group to enter the womens’ program because it was being shut down as a result of poor performance. Had Farkac completed the program successfully, she would have been released early. But “twenty-six days to the gate,” as she put it, she was thrown out of the program and sent back to prison. She describes the moment as another all-time low. “My girls were expecting to return from vacation and to pick me up, and here I am disappointing them again—from prison.”

In May 2008, she was given another chance, entering a new cognitive skills treatment program. This was her first experience with real treatment and she says the difference was incredible. The new program included the well-known twelve-step process, but also allowed her plenty of time to address past trauma—the root of her addiction. Upon completing the program, she was released from prison directly to Sponsors, Inc., a local non-profit agency specializing in the re-entry of ex-offenders into society. It was November 21, 2008. She’d served a total of twenty-two months and would now face a new set of challenges.

Like all ex-offenders, Farkac would learn how difficult it is to reenter society after serving time in prison, beginning with the basics—employment and housing. Without assistance, it can be impossible for former inmates to find work and housing, and as a result, over sixty percent of them enter the cycle of recidivism, returning to criminal behavior.

Adding to her list of challenges, just three weeks after her release, Farkac received an unexpected phone call. Dylan’s father was arrested for dealing and Farkac was told she was now Dylan’s legal guardian. Just like that, she was now the fit parent. She now had to care for herself, her daughter Anna, and Dylan. Her oldest daughter, Mollie, continued living with her father to finish high school, but Farkac’s hands were beyond full; they were overflowing. Fortunately, Farkac had help from Sponsors.

Founded in 1973 by a group of Catholic Nuns, Sponsors originally sent counselors into correctional institutions to work with inmates as they prepared for release. Now, while pre-release counseling still exists, Sponsors primarily focuses on helping inmates after release. Offering transitional housing, case management, school assistance and high, but achievable expectations, Sponsors gives former inmates vital support needed for successful transitions back into society.

Sponsors Case Manager, Cheryl MacGinitie, says Sponsors has turned many lives around, as evidenced by an eighty-seven percent success rate. She describes the agency as an accepting, loving place where people are not defined by past offenses. They help men and women learn to create resumes, prepare for interviews, and fill out applications. And for clients housed off-site, Sponsors pays rent from their own accounts so housing partners are assured they will be paid.

“I didn’t even have clothing when I got out,” says Farkac. “No underwear, no bras, no phone. Most people don’t think about that.” Sponsors moved Farkac, along with Anna and Dylan, into a single room with an outside door, and she began attending daily treatment meetings. Sponsors loaned her money for a cell phone so she could answer calls from prospective employers and helped her find her first job at Wendy’s by making it a requirement. Sponsors has a clothing room so former inmates can make themselves presentable for interviews, and as a program condition, residents have just thirty days to find work. But they are not on their own.

Sponsors helps former inmates overcome the employment hurdle by partnering with local businesses in the Eugene area. Put simply, Sponsors vouches for them. “Because Sponsors is well-known in the community,” MacGinitie explains, “partner businesses know our word is good.” Basically, Sponsors lets partner employers know who they’re interviewing and gives them a good reference. With her Sponsor’s reference, Farkac landed a job at Wendy’s . She worked there for eight months, but eventually left because it was an unhealthy environment. A lot of people there used and she didn’t want anything to do with them. But it was a good first job and demonstrated that Farkac was willing to show up on time and make an effort. While looking for a new job, Farkac attended meetings at Wellbriety, a Native American recovery group, and also applied and began volunteering at Buckley House, a local detox center. She eventually landed an interview at Buckley. After the interview on her way out the door, she noticed a familiar face in the executive director’s office. It was Bob, a man she’d been sitting next to every Saturday for six months at her Wellbriety meetings. He was also Buckley’s executive director. He stood up, inquired about her purpose there, and hired her on the spot.

While Farkac found vital logistical support at Sponsors, she also found something far greater—a caring family. Sponsors cared about her and wanted to see her succeed. They knew she was more than her past behavior—and they helped her learn to believe it. “Care and nurturing are vital to life,” McGinitie explains, “as well as caring enough to say hard things. But we see people as human beings who have value.”

Farkac becomes more excited as she continues describing her Sponsors experience. “The coolest thing about Sponsors is how supportive they were about me having my kids with me. If we missed the bus in the morning, someone from Sponsors would drive Dylan to school, and they’d even watch him for me if I wasn’t home from work yet.”

But even with all this support, Farkac wasn’t always convinced she could stay sober for life. Each day was a struggle and she wondered if she could do it. In September 2009, everything changed. Dylan’s father, forty-year-old Christiaan Brown, had come to their Eugene apartment for a visit. It had been almost a year since he’d seen them. During a break in conversation, he went into an upstairs bathroom and collapsed to the floor—dead.

As Farkac describes the moment, the bottoms of her eyes fill up with tears and reflect yellow lamp light in tiny crescents. Dylan sits quietly on the far end of the couch, focusing on a hand-held video game. He doesn’t look up—but he’s listening. “We’re not sure what happened,” she explains, “but he was a complete mess, you know. He had a whole lifetime of trauma and drug abuse.”

Sponsors was incredibly supportive through the tragedy. At Brown’s funeral, one side of the room was a group of old friends—half of them strung out and half in recovery. On the other side of the room was the entire Sponsors staff. “All of them were there supporting me,” she explains. In fact, the day after Brown’s death, it was McGinitie who came to her apartment and removed the laundry from the bathroom where he’d died. Farkac couldn’t go in there and she was amazed McGinitie did that for her.

After Brown’s death, Farkac attended a meeting every day for 120 days and it changed her life. She’s now the secretary at her home group and never misses a meeting. It took that tragedy for her to make the lifetime commitment—one day at time. And though Farkac is now graduated from Sponsors, she stops in two or three times a month just to say hello. “She stops in here just to get grounded,” says McGinitie, “to be cared about and loved.”

Farkac has also become involved with Wellbriety, a Native American recovery group operated by Stone River Community. She writes grants for them, works part-time and on call, and may eventually be hired on as a staffer. Farkac is also in the Associate of Arts Oregon Transfer (AAOT) degree program at Lane Community College working on the Bachelor’s degree she started over twenty years ago. She plans to transfer to the University of Oregon as an English major and wants to eventually teach G.E.D. classes to adults. More importantly, she and Dylan continue weekly family counseling and now have a parenting coach through St. Vincent de Paul. She’s learning how to live without using and is strengthening her relationships with her kids; she’s improving her parenting skills and earning their trust. One day at time, she’s rebuilding.

“It took Christiaan’s death for me to realize I can’t fuck around anymore,” she says. She becomes quiet for a moment and looks over at Dylan, still sitting quietly on the edge of the couch. “I’m all he has,” she says, “and he deserves a parent.” Dylan glances up from his video game—looks at his mother—and smiles.

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