Success Stories

Success Stories:

Here you can learn how your donations are helping people take back their lives.

Meet Robert Peterson

Rob grew up as the child of a single mother, but when he was around 14 he became involved with drugs. He was in and out of treatment centers and jail until, thinking it might be his last chance, his mother signed for him to enlist in the army. He had some trouble with boot camp, but once they switched him to working with dogs to find explosives, things went much better. He was sent to Afghanistan and endured much there including watching members of his unit killed and his dog shot. Once back in the states, he was haunted by the nightmares and returned to drugs to dull the pain.

 

Through Rob’s use of first marijauna and then more destructive drugs like cocaine and heroin, he was fired from his job, lost his home because he couldn’t pay the rent, and then found himself on the streets. After a couple of years he knew he was killing himself with the drugs as they no longer made his grief fade away, but he had to keep taking them now just to survive. Rob even bought a gun, for protection at first, then he began to think of it as a way to end his pain. Since the drugs took most of what money he had, he turned to dumpster diving and free food pantries just to get anything he could to eat. He even came to the main warehouse a couple of times right around closing time as if he didn’t want anyone to recognize him. He slept in bushes or the park in summer, and abandoned buildings during the winter or if he was lucky, a homeless shelter or church to get away from the cold.

 

One rainy september day found Rob huddled in the recessed doorway of a building staring at his gun. He was sick from pneumonia and the drugs, he had gotten into a fight the night before and hurt all over, and he was plain tired of everything. He probably would’ve ended his life that moment except for the wet bedraggled dog that plodded sadly by where he sat, its tail and head down and looking as if it had gotten the bad end of a fight.

 

“It was the dog,” Rob told me. “I don’t know why, but the sight of that thing just made me cry.” He was silent for a long moment and I could feel the old grief that still hung about him. “I couldn’t save my dog, but maybe I could save this one.”

 

The next morning Robert Peterson was huddled in the doorway of Hearts of Hope, a drug counciling center, the scruffy dog on a rope next to him. Rob wouldn’t even enter the building until he was assured that the dog would be cared for and be returned to him. He had, somehow, managed to keep identification with him in the old duffle bag he carried, which showed he was a veteran and he was put in touch with MACV (Minnesota Assistance Council for Veterans). Assuring Rob his dog would receive good care, he agreed to enter the program. Anyone trying to come clean of drugs goes through a long, difficult, and painful process as the body can not handle just stopping all at once and must be weaned. After 3 months, with visits with the dog he named Bekka, he was able to move into a halfway house where he could keep her with him.

 

Rob has now graduated from the program completely and with the help and support of MACV and other veterans he has found a permanent home and has recently started a new job in construction. Though his physical scars have healed and the grief of his buddies and his dog has faded, those scars will always be with him. Bekka ended up having one ear amputated and there is a faded line on her chest where stitches once were, and she is now clean and getting regular meals. Rob even volunteers at Local Harvest packing food or meeting with other veterans that are homeless in the hopes his story will inspire them to get help. He knows firsthand the devistation of war and the destruction of drugs and wants to try to help others that feel they have no hope left, and always by his side, is Bekka.

 

According to the Veterans Administration at least 20 veterans take their lives each day in the United States. It is they that fought for our country and it is we that must now fight for them.