Drug court grads grateful

Bonnie Lambert trembled. Her appreciation flowed Wednesday through words and tears to the people who helped turn her away from a lifetime of addiction.

The 37-year-old now has a circle of clean friends. She is working. Her felony drug possession charge has been dismissed.

“I never have been as proud of anybody … for going so far from where she started,” Superior Court Judge Linda Tompkins said Wednesday at the ceremony for eight graduates of the Spokane County felony drug court. “This one is an absolute miracle.”

Before the intensive one-year program, Lambert was living in a van parked in an alley. Addicted to drugs for the better part of 20 years, Lambert begged for money or simply stole for food.

Depending on the amount of methamphetamine she could score, Lambert could stay awake for a week and then sleep for two more.

“I can remember at the grips of my addiction where I would fix up a hit of heroin at night so I could sleep,” she said. “And then I would fix up a hit of meth and stick it in … my nightstand drawer. I would grab my hit of meth and do my hit in the morning even before my feet hit the floor.

“And it would continue day in and day out for years. I used to think life was not worth living if I didn’t have dope.”

Her life took a turn in January 2003 when she was pulled over at 3 a.m. as a passenger in a car. At the time, she was holding an eight-ball of meth in her hand.

After the arrest, she was sent to drug court, which has helped more than 326 addicts through counseling and intensive supervision in its 11 years of existence. Just like 357 others, Lambert failed on her first attempt.

“I went back out and it took them almost a year to find me. And so the second time when they re-offered it to me at Geiger, I took it,” she said.

But still she wasn’t convinced.

“The second time I did drug court, I was looking at it more to get a felony off my record,” she said.

Lambert was caught using crack cocaine last April and she was sent to Geiger Corrections Center for 47 days.

“It was a wakeup call. I would lay in my bed at night and stare at the ceiling and I would think, ‘This is not what I want to do for the rest of my life. I want to make something of my life,’ ” she said.

Drug court counselors kicked in but Lambert first had to want the help.

“In my using days, I used to sit there high out of my head and I used to think about the life I’m living right now,” said Lambert who praised the advice from counselor Tom Lloyd and others. “He could see the good in me when I couldn’t.”

Lambert also got tough love from Sheena Hargrove, a community corrections officer who refused to allow Lambert to go to certain locations or see certain people.

“I really hated Sheena when she first came on board,” Lambert said. “But Sheena knew what was best for me when I didn’t know what was best for myself. And she made judgment calls for me when I didn’t know what judgment was.”

Hargrove remembers how hard Lambert fought when she was first brought into drug court.

“Just to see where she started and where she is now, it is a miracle,” Hargrove said. “We see so many negative things. Seeing something like this makes it all worthwhile.”

At the graduation ceremony, Lambert’s sister from Montana listened on speaker phone. Lambert shook so hard she couldn’t hold the phone.

Her rehabilitation finally brought her family together after six years of separation, Lambert said.

“My mom and dad quit having anything to do with me because I broke into their house in the middle of the night while they were sleeping and stole my mother’s china set out of the china cabinet for the dope man’s wife,” Lambert said. “And I got caught.”

After years of hiding how she lived, Lambert was able to spend the last three months of her father’s life with him before he died in 2004. “And he forgave me because he understood,” Lambert said.

And so Lambert stood in front of a packed courtroom and shared tears and applause from the graduates, families and drug court officials.

“I had nothing when I came into drug court and I had nobody,” she said through tears. “I was hungry, angry, lonely and tired. Drug court gave me my life back.”