Imagine. You’re a young boy with a “beautiful” life. You live with your mother, father and older brother in Harlem. It’s the mid-1970s, before crack hits, when the neighborhood is still good. “It was the ghetto,” Leslie Perez, 39, clarifies, “but everyone knew each other. I loved school and was an A student.”
Then, when you’re 15 years old, your mother dies and with her your beautiful life. “My father started drinking heavily, met another woman and basically left us,” Leslie says. “He paid the rent for a while, but eventually that stopped. My brother moved out. I was in the apartment alone for three months. I left school and started hanging out with guys selling drugs. One night, I came home and found an eviction notice on my door.”
The super let Leslie live in the basement. By then, he was selling drugs himself. “I felt bad about it,” he says. “I was destroying other people’s lives so I could survive. I thought, ‘I’m not a bad person, but I’m committing crimes.’ I was confused and unhappy.”
The chaos ended predictably. At 22, Leslie was arrested and sentenced to five to ten years in prison. When his cell door slid shut the first night, he wept. Ultimately, he served eight years, getting his G.E.D. and completing two years of college. Most important, he says, “prison made me realize there’s a better way of doing things.” He found it in an RWA brochure given to him upon release in 2004. “I said, ‘If they accept me, I’m going to change my whole life and I will never come back to prison.’”
“Ready, Willing & Able is organized, clean and safe,” he continues. “In 30 days, they gave me a blue uniform and sent me to the Hudson River Park cleaning crew. I didn’t care where I went or what I had to do. All I wanted was a chance to work.”
What Leslie had to do might have daunted a less determined man. “My job was to clean the dog run,” he laughs. “I’d put the hose on full blast and then sweep.” After work, he got his drivers license, qualifying him to work for Pest@Rest, The Doe Fund’s pest management business, which currently services over 60 buildings throughout New York City and has placed more than 30 graduates in permanent pest control jobs.
“I’d change out of my blues and go to class,” Leslie says. “Once a week, I went to work with the Pest@Rest crew.” After 40 hours of on-the-job training, he passed the state licensing exam and was offered a job at a private exterminating company. But Ed Sheehan, Director of Pest@Rest, told him, ‘You’re not going anywhere. You’re going to work for us.’” Six weeks later, Leslie moved into his first apartment, using the $6,000 he had saved at Ready, Willing & Able.
“My dream is to have my own pest control company,” Leslie concludes, “but The Doe Fund will always be in my heart. I took it upon myself to make these things happen, but Ready, Willing & Able provided the opportunities and training. No one ever gave me a helping hand before. Now I’m doing it for guys behind me. I take them to the different job sites, teach them how to mix and apply chemicals. I also show them a lot of love. If they get down and are ready to give up or pick up drugs, I say, ‘We’ve already been there and done that. There’s a better way. I’m a proven example.’”
Darrell Lampley, 40, is a go-getter. He was captain of his New Jersey high school football team and a marine, joining “to serve, see the world and get my college tuition paid.” In 1983, he was stationed in South Korea when his captain called him in and said, “You’ve had a death in the family – your father.” “I felt all the wind come out of my sails,” Darrell says. “I’m like, ‘You sure you got the right guy? I’m Lampley.’ Next thing I know, I’m back in the States burying my father.”
Discharged, Darrell moved into an apartment with his girlfriend, near his mother. He had a good job and a daughter and son. Then, his mother died suddenly from an aneurysm. “All I could think of was, ‘This is so unfair. This is so unfair,’” he says. “I became angry and distant. The unfairness was eating at me like cancer. I started drinking and left my family. It’s spiraling. I’m going downhill.”
Alcohol led to cocaine, then to heroin. “Here’s how it went,” he says. “I didn’t have a place to stay because I lost my job and couldn’t pay rent. I moved to New York City and lived in abandoned buildings. The pain was so great I used to sniff heroin with tears in my eyes because I didn’t want to do it anymore. I had some decent parents and we come from a great stock of people who went through real adversity and I’m buckling under some powder in a bag. This went on for nine years.”
Finally, Darrell checked into a rehab. He kicked heroin, learned about the disease of addiction and, at last, grieved for his parents. After 30 days, he was released to the city shelter system, where a counselor asked him, “You ever heard of Ready, Willing & Able?”
“I walked into the Harlem facility and guys were like, ‘How you doing? You need any help?’” he recalls. “I said, ‘Is this a shelter? Is this Ready, Willing & Able?’ People kept walking by saying, ‘I hope you get in. This is a really good program.’ I thought something wacky was going on! Everybody had this pleasantness about them, yet, they were homeless. I told the intake counselor, ‘If you accept me, I guarantee you won’t have a problem. I need this shot.’” He got it.
“I went to work for 30 days cleaning the facility,” Darrell continues. “It was like, ‘I’m back in the game, baby. I fumbled the ball, but I’m back.’ I’d finish a task and tell my supervisor, ‘I’m done.’ He’d say, ‘Lampley, relax.’” He didn’t. After his street-sweeping shifts, he took computer and financial management classes and got his drivers license.
“I also picked up a Commercial Drivers License [CDL] manual,” he says. “I studied all summer, because I knew if you get your CDL permit, The Doe Fund will pay for you to go to school.” In December 2005, Darrell got his CDL. This March, he got a job driving a bus for Coach USA, a company located near his children in New Jersey.
“My starting salary is $13.50 an hour,” Darrell says. “I max out at $27 an hour, with full benefits.” Now that he has a permanent job, he can stay at Harlem for another 90 days, but, once again, he’s in a hurry. “I saved over $7,000 in Ready, Willing & Able,” he explains. “I’ll be in my own place within a month, because I know there’s a guy out there on the streets who needs my RWA bed.”
Leon Willis, 39, cooked his first meal for himself and his six sisters when he was so small he had to stand on a milk crate to reach the stove. He always loved cooking. Unfortunately, he started so young because his parents were alcoholic drug dealers who neglected and abused their children. “My mother called me ‘stupid’ and ‘retarded’ because I stutter,” Leon says. “My stepfather beat her and us kids. I caught a broken arm once when he threw me against a wall.”
Leon was a chronic runaway. He would climb down the fire escape to run the streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. He became a drug dealer at the age of ten. “I took some of my parents’ drugs to neighborhood dealers and asked how to sell them.”
Eventually, Leon was put in foster care “with a white upper-class couple,” he says. “I was the only black kid in school. They used to stare at me and ask questions like, ‘Do you bleed like us?’” At 18, he returned to Bed-Stuy and got the first break of his life: he was referred to a state-funded culinary arts course. He excelled, got a job as a cook and his own apartment. But the streets lured him back.
“You start hanging around with the same negative people and, pretty soon, you’re going to be negative, too,” he says. In the 1980s, he began selling crack. One night, two guys tried to rob him and he beat them up. He was charged with attempted murder and sentenced to seven to ten years in prison.
“At first, I hung out with the troublemakers,” he says. “But there were these old dudes that used to play pinochle all the time. They said, ‘Sit down, youngster. You don’t want to end up like us – old guys sitting in prison for life.’” Leon started going to school and working in the kitchen, eventually cooking for the guards. In 2005, released to his sister’s home, he arrived to find her selling drugs. “I packed my stuff and went to the Bellevue shelter,” he says. “A counselor sent me to RWA.”
"I had my problems at first,” he admits. “I just came from prison. I was sick of looking at a bunch of guys. But I said, ‘I’m not going to run from this.’” Before sweeping the streets, Leon spent 30 days working in the kitchen in The Doe Fund’s Harlem facility. “The cook was impressed with my skills. He said when I had enough time in the program, he’d make sure I came back to work for him.” Six months later, Leon was cooking for his fellow trainees. He recently received a certificate for completing 400 hours of on-the-job training and has started RWA’s advanced cooking course.
“I love The Doe Fund,” he says. “I feel safe here. It’s calmed my mind and given me confidence. Cooking here, you mix with everyone. I’ve learned to read people’s attitudes and talk to them. For instance, this guy was brand new and hungry all the time. I told him, ‘I’ll make sure you get a plate saved for you that you can warm up at night.’ He said, ‘Thank you!’ I said, ‘What are you thanking me for? You’re hungry. I’ll make sure you’re alright.’”
Devon King, 33, recently traded his blue Ready, Willing & Able shirt for a red one. He was hired as a street-cleaning crew supervisor after completing a 12-week Supervisor-in-Training (SIT) program, which prepares people for jobs at The Doe Fund and other social service agencies. His goal is to become a youth counselor, he says, “to help kids avoid my mistakes and see that even if you do fall, you can get up and move forward.”
Devon fled to the streets of the South Bronx at the age of 14 when his crack-addicted stepfather began sexually abusing him, threatening to kill anyone he told. By 16, he was selling crack. By 19, he had his own crew. “A guy tried to rob one of my workers and I shot him,” he reveals, haltingly. “I regret it deeply.” He served 12 years in prison.
“When I got to Sing Sing, I couldn’t stop crying,” Devon recalls. “I was cold. My body was numb. I stayed isolated in my cell. After a while, I started feeling more in tune with myself, mixing with positive people, studying for my G.E.D.” He got it at RWA, where he also got his drivers license, required by the SIT program. “I loved the training,” he says. “It gave me a chance to give back what was given to me. I really appreciated what George and Harriet McDonald did, creating a program like this. It meant a lot to me.”
“In training, I shadowed all the supervisors,” he explains, “learning from guys who have worked with trainees for some time. In classes, we were taught how to deal with incidents, communicate effectively and give and take instructions. I learned to resolve situations so that no one feels like they won or lost, but the problem is solved. I tell the guys, ‘We’re out here as a team.’ I say the same thing to New Yorkers who thank us for the work we do. I tell them, ‘We appreciate you, too.’”
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