My Background

Well, this is a little about me. Phoenix House has been part of my life since I was 15 years old. I entered treatment at the Orange County Adolescent Program in 1983. I was 15 at the time and worked my program for 18 months. I was one of those residents who really wasn't committed to the process until close to the end of my program. After leaving, it took a lot of learning experiences and support from others for me to stay the course. I have been clean and sober, at this time, for 18 years.

In 1986, I interviewed with the Foundation in New York. I was hired as a counselor but due to my age, 18 years old, I wasn't sure what area I wanted to concentrate on. It was suggested to me that I spend a few months in different departments to help make that decision. I was fortunate enough to work at: Drug Education and Prevention, giving seminars to schools and others; Admission Dept, intake interviews and pre-intake seminars to prospective residents on the waiting list; Adult Re-Entry House; exposure to IMPACT , Step-One, and Riverside Program. I then went to Yorktown Academy in Shrub Oak, NY and thoroughly enjoyed dealing with adolescents.

After all of this exposure, I made the decision to go back to California in order to get my college degree and become educated in the field of Psychology to be a good clinician. Upon returning to California, the next week I met my future wife. For the next 6 years, I went to college at California State University, Fullerton while working in the human services field part-time at other programs. Some of those experiences include: facilitating discussion groups in a retirement community, counselor in a group home for developmentally disabled adults, teachers aid in an elementary school for severally handicapped 2nd-3rd graders; counseling in a detox and 12 step program; while giving speaking engagements for Phoenix House occasionally. I received by B.A. in Psychology in 1992, one year after our daughter was born.

Immediately upon college graduation I began working at the Orange County Adolescent Program, my alma mater, as a primary counselor. I learned quite a bit about adolescent treatment during this experience. I was fortunate enough to wear a few hats during this tour of duty: Clan Leader, Re-Entry/Live-out Counselor, Vocation-Education Counselor, and helped the admissions department when needed. I began the Explorer Post #95 to expose the residents to scouting experiences and pre-vocational opportunities. We have taken many trips together and had a lot of fun. (You can see some of those things on the scouting links on my home page.) I have served as a Mentor counselor for new staff members, training them in the areas of encounters, tutorials, procedures, and the therapeutic community concept and structure of treatment.

In 1995, I began to take an interest in field of education and changed career focus to teaching special education students. I taught for five years in private schools with high school and middle school students who have severe emotional disturbance and other learning disabilities. I then transferred to Century High School in Santa Ana to teach in a Special Day Class of Language Arts and continued to work at the Orange County Adolescent Program part-time, supporting other staff members in the therapeutic community concept, and enjoyed still being part of the treatment process.

At the beginning of 2000, I was offered the position of Director of the Orange County Adult Program. I learned quite a bit about the differences of adult and teenage recovery processes. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to share my story of continued recovery to the adult population.  During the summer of 2000, I was asked to transfer to the Lake View Terrace facility. LVT is home to the Regional Offices and a 150 bed adolescent program. I became a Unit Director and worked closely with many Regional departments. The experience at LVT helped me grow personally and professionally in many ways. Due to the sheer size of the facility and the complexity of organization, it opened my eyes to many exciting methods of management. Unfortunately, the facility was a 2 hour drive, each direction. My family was not getting to see much of me anymore and I have a ten year old daughter, who needs a father to be active in her life :-> So, I made an extremely difficult decision to leave the facility and pursue other work locations. 

Currently, January of 2002, I am teaching again, but this time at the college level. I'm instructing and coordinating the Human Services Program at Riverside Community College. I'm teaching courses like Case Management, Counseling/Evaluation, Group Processes, Psychosocial Rehabilitation, and others. Also I'm working as a Case Manager for families that have children with severe behavioral challenges. I get to go into many families homes and assess the difficulties that they are having and design an intervention plan for behavioral support. I finally finished the Master's of Science degree in Special Education!! It's been a total of 12 long years of college. I plan to take a little break from school and then start looking at Ph.D. programs. Whew! Meanwhile, I get to really dig into work and family life. Take a moment to check out my wife, Chris's web site [Gamepower.org]. She's really enjoying her work as Lead Technical Support at Gamespy Industries!! 

As you can see, I'm constantly running around working on projects, so you may ask: why is he spending time doing this? Well, I see this site as potentially becoming an important factor in bringing different components of the program together. I believe in the Phoenix House concept and treatment objectives and have seen the way different facilities operate. We could learn valuable information from each other if there was a common information forum. I hope that this site can play a part in the concept. I hope to meet all of the visitors to this site at some point and value everyone's input. Please feel free to share your thoughts, materials, or 'hellos' by posting on the "Discussion Forum" or just e-mail me. Thanks for letting me share.