So Few Realize So Many Aided By 1st Step
Darold Johnson has a heart full of love and a loaded 9mm handgun under his vest.
The two seemingly incongruous images make perfect sense at 1st Step - the all-hours clean and sober refuge Johnson and his wife, Penny, opened nearly three years ago to help alcoholics and addicts in Spokane’s East Central neighborhood.
Just about anyone is welcome to wander through 1st Step’s lockless front door at 1927 E. First, as long as the booze and dope are left outside.
These days it is financial ruin, not troublemakers, threatening the Johnsons’ noble dream.
1st Step is $12,000 behind in monthly payments on the building. The Johnsons say they are tapped out after pouring $85,000 of their own money into 1st Step. Each week seems to bring a new crisis.
The contradiction is that 1st Step is busier than ever serving a very needy clientele.
Only last week, a rape and torture victim stumbled into 1st Step before dawn. Volunteers called the police, who were able to get the battered man to a hospital.
Besides 1st Step, where this person would have found help at that hour is anybody’s guess.
“We get ‘em all,” says the gravel-voiced Johnson, 53, a recovering alcoholic who figures 10,000 people have wandered into this humble haven. “Train tramps, street kids … even a few doctors and lawyers come in here now and then.”
They got me on Super Sunday.
I dropped by the cavernous, former post office to catch the game and chat with some of the life-worn souls who consider this place a godsend.
Here you can buy an inexpensive meal or merely enjoy a bit of sanctuary from the local landscape dotted with porn shops, massage parlors, strip joints and bars.
During last November’s ice storm, about 50 people holed up warm inside 1st Step, which was one of the few buildings in the neighborhood to not lose power.
A few days ago, however, the electricity nearly went off for lack of payment.
Fortunately, an insurance check intended to cover winter roof damage arrived. Darold, like always, improvised a survival plan. He rounded up volunteers and materials to make the repairs so he could use the money to stay open a little while longer.
1st Step would have folded long ago were it not for Jim Lewis, who holds the mortgage on the building. “I go down there and think about foreclosing, but I don’t have the heart,” says Lewis. “I look around and it about makes you cry.”
It is an amazing place. During the Super Bowl, I joined about 20 men who sat on mismatched shabby sofas, recliners and folding chairs. We fixated on a television perched high atop a Pepsi machine.
It figures such a gritty crowd would cheer mostly for the no-frills Packers.
A nearby room held another 20 men and women not interested in football. One man slept on a couch. Three others played darts. The rest smoked and kept to themselves.
Everyone here could tell a different - yet similar - tale about scraping bottom.
Patrick Partridge, 31, says he stumbled into 1st Step six months ago and asked to be taken to Detox. He hasn’t had a drink since and now has a job. “This place helps a lot of people,” he says.
A 43-year-old woman who gave only the name JJ credits the Johnsons for helping her break a 20-year cycle of heroin addiction and prostitution.
“They care,” she says. “They’ve been through their own hard times. They want people to get something better. How many places do that?”
The tragedy of 1st Step is that the general public still knows so little about the vital services provided here. Try as he might, Darold can’t drum up much interest or media coverage.
1st Step regular Gordon Abild offers one theory I hope isn’t true:
“This club deals with a segment of society,” he says, “that most of Spokane doesn’t want to admit exists.”
, DataTimes