Drug court’s 100th graduate starts new life

Jane Wear was in court Tuesday evening, and her judgment was delivered with flowers and words of love and praise.

A little more than a year ago, a night like this seemed beyond imagining for the 34-year-old Coeur d’Alene woman, who began using methamphetamine and marijuana when she dropped out of school at 13.

In September 2003, Wear was facing charges of possession with intent to use. The friends she had been living with had just been sent to prison for possession, and she had nowhere to stay.

For comfort, she turned, as she often did then, to drugs.

“I was in a drug house. My kids were there with me. I looked up and I said, ‘No more. I can’t live this way any more,’ ” Wear said.

Against long odds, Wear became the 100th graduate of Kootenai County’s Drug Court on Tuesday, standing with tears and smiles in front of a standing-room-only crowd that included drug users in the program, attorneys, family, counselors and even Idaho Supreme Court Chief Justice Gerald Schroeder.

“Jane came into my office just over a year ago,” Tanya Gomez, drug court coordinator, told the assembled crowd. “She told me point-blank, ‘I’ve been using meth 14 years and I don’t want to stop.’ She walked out – this is a voluntary program – and I thought it would be the last I’d see of her.”

But Wear did volunteer. The shock of being in her 30s and never having held a job and the pain of seeing her children scattered among other homes steeled Wear for her year of drug court, a diversionary program that offers addicts a chance to become accountable and go straight without prison time.

First District Court Magistrate Judge Eugene Marano, who has run the county’s six-year-old drug court for the past five years, read a poignant letter written by Wear’s youngest daughter, thanking her mother “for showing if you want to stop doing something you can have faith in yourself and in your family. … I’m proud of you for going to drug court and making things better for all of us.”

Marano presented Wear with a plaque to mark her graduation.

In the hallway outside of court, Wear assembled with about 14 family members for a group photo and talked about the simple joys of having a job and a stable life, of having her children with her, and of the pitfalls that are never far away when she bumps into friends who still use meth.

“It’s hard. I know a lot of people in this town. I tell them I don’t want to live that lifestyle any more,” she said. “This is the first time I have ever completed something in my life. I was never there for my kids earlier. I needed help and it’s been wonderful.”

Just before she decided to enter drug court, Wear met Carl McGovern, now her fiancé. McGovern has tackled Wear’s past drug addiction head-on and has been a rock of stability.

“I told her I was willing to be a bad guy to a lot of people. We set curfews down. We said no late nights, no talking on the phone late at night.”

The strict boundaries helped create a household where Wear regained custody of her children.

“They were spread to the winds. Now we’re back together,” McGovern said.

As the group walked out into the night air, Wear clutching roses and gifts and surrounded by smiles, a previous drug court graduate sounded a sobering note of reality.

“I think it’s going to be extremely difficult because nobody is telling you what to do any more. It’s overwhelming when you walk out of here and you are free,” said Michelle Fulton, a 2002 graduate of drug court.

Graduates who fall back into drug use are rare. Only 12 percent of Kootenai County drug court graduates are rearrested for drug crimes, compared with 54 percent of drug users not in the program, data shows. Some 260 offenders have signed up for the program since its inception, and it takes in as many as funding allows.

Gomez said that when she helped form the drug court in 1998, “What I liked about the idea was the recidivism rate is so much lower. I had been here, at that time, for 12 years and I would see the same names over and over.”

The drug court is modeled after Spokane County’s approach to involving people on all sides of the drug issue: prosecutors, public defenders, treatment providers, law enforcement and judges.

It was the first drug court in Idaho, and the concept is now hailed by the governor, the Legislature and the courts, Schroeder told the packed courtroom.

The challenges are immense and the choices can be stark, said Fulton, who now works for the drug court.

“I came out into a relationship, and I left three months later because he was still using. He was not worth my three years in prison,” the former convicted felon said.

Drug court is a good program, she said, that gives users the tools to realize they can stand up for themselves.

Some graduates who backslide into drug use never call for help, said Fulton, 30. “They think they are a failure. But if they go out and use again, call us. We haven’t fallen off the face of the Earth.”

Offering a hand, “That’s why we’re here,” she said.