Pubdate: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer (WA) Copyright: 2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer Contact: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/408 Author: Levi Pulkkinen Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment) TREATMENT CENTER BEING SUED BY RECOVERING DRUG ADDICTS Two Say They Were Forced To Work For No Pay They came to Seattle Drug and Narcotic Center Inc. looking for help kicking heroin addictions, and were put to work. Six days a week, they moved and sorted paper at SeaDruNar Recycling LLC, a for-profit recycling plant owned by the treatment center. They exhausted themselves week after week without a wage, keeping the multimillion-dollar operation going one pallet of paper at a time. SeaDruNar managers called the program "work therapy" aimed at teaching ex-addicts how to work in the sober world. Some former clients take a different view. "It's like slavery," said David Schodron, who has joined another former SeaDruNar patient in a lawsuit against the treatment center. "You either worked or you went back to where you came from." Schodron, 52, and co-plaintiff Leann Lafley said they were forced to work either at the plant or cleaning the treatment center where both lived, or risk prison time for drug offenses. They say they're entitled to back wages that were denied to them and other patients forced to work at the plant. They are waiting to hear if the state Supreme Court will take the case. Their suit has received a frosty reception in the state courts; it was tossed out by a King County Superior Court judge, then by an Appeals Court three-judge panel. The judges agreed with SeaDruNar's founder that patients volunteer their labor at the plant by choosing the treatment center. In court documents, Nan Busby, a 73-year-old former addict, said she was just three years out of prison in 1968 when she founded SeaDruNar in a Capitol Hill boarding house. She'd started the house with $18,000 from The Boeing Co. and the help of community leaders interested in fighting the growing heroin problem in the city. "The only training any of us had was we were ex-addicts," said Busby during a 2004 deposition. Busby said the program was based on "addict-to-addict" mentoring, a system the center continues to use while employing licensed counselors. Supporters see Busby as a tireless advocate who has helped thousands of addicts and devoted her life to treatment. Her program has received the backing of several influential Seattle-area leaders, including former King County Superior Court Judge John Darrah and Superior Court Judge Michael Spearman, both of whom serve on the SeaDruNar board. Busby's enterprise grew steadily until the late 1970s, when state and federal drug treatment dollars grew scarce. She and the SeaDruNar board were looking for solutions to the center's money woes when they decided to get into the recycling business. The new three-man operation was headed by Richard Busby, a former SeaDruNar patient who married Nan after completing the program. In statements to the court, Richard Busby said he and the other men would drive around Seattle in a van, stopping to dig through trash bins in search of scrap paper to resell. The business grew and brought in money for SeaDruNar's expansion. The clinic began acquiring properties around the city and, in 1995 bought the plot of land in the Georgetown neighborhood where SeaDruNar Recycling's 46,000-square-foot plant now stands. Nan Busby incorporated the recycling center as a for-profit company in 2000, listing herself as executive director of both the recycling business and treatment center in tax documents. Richard Busby directs the recycling plant, where the couple's daughter, Sheri Healey, is employed as a manager. About two dozen of the treatment center's roughly 100 clients work at the plant alongside 15 paid workers, most of whom are former SeaDruNar clients, Richard Busby said in a 2004 deposition. A paid crew also works an evening shift at the plant. Those working at the recycling center are bused from the SeaDruNar in-patient treatment center, where they undergo therapy or have free time when not at work. They're allowed limited contact with the outside world in the later phases of treatment, but are otherwise isolated. Though both were destitute when they became involved with SeaDruNar, the treatment business brought wealth to the Busbys. According to tax documents filed for the non-profit treatment program, Nan Busby is paid $112,000 a year while her husband earns $100,000 annually managing the recycling business. The couple now own a $767,000 waterfront home in Des Moines. The recycling plant brought in $3.3 million in 2006, covering about 74 percent of the program's $4.5 million cost. The rest of the money came from state and federal sources, primarily a program designed to support drug addicts who are unable to work. Most of the clients are also registered to receive food stamps after arriving at the center; according to court documents. SeaDruNar pools food assistance to feed its clients. While other paper recyclers use expensive optical scanning to sort paper, SeaDruNar continue to sort paper by hand. That savings combined with access to a large pool of unpaid labor has allowed SeaDruNar to actually buy waste from companies when its competitors demand payment for pickup. The labor-intensive operation has seen its share of accidents, including two deaths in the past decade. In 2000, paper sorter Brandi LaValla was pulled into an exposed conveyor belt while doing maintenance on the machine. Schodron, who'd grown close to LaValla while both were in treatment, watched the 31-year-old woman as she was crushed to death. SeaDruNar lost another worker last June, when longtime paid employee John Colombini was crushed to death under a lift. The state Department of Labor and Industries fined SeaDruNar $900 for safety problems found in inspections following the 46-year-old's death. Another client was seriously injured two months later when she fell 15 feet after stepping into a hole at the recycling plant. She filed a lawsuit last year demanding damages. Schodron said he had been doing well in treatment until the October day that LaValla died. He'd come to SeaDruNar in an effort to avoid a prison sentence after being arrested in a heroin sting in Montana, and had been using the drug regularly. Any progress he'd made was erased by LaValla's death. Schodron fell apart, landed in Harborview Medical Center's psychiatric wing, then refused to return to SeaDruNar after being released. He expected to face jail after leaving the program. Instead, he found the charges against him had been dropped two months earlier and, he said, the SeaDruNar staff never told him he was out of legal jeopardy. A former union carpenter and shop steward, Schodron said he's now unable to hold down a job because of the psychological damage done to him by seeing LaValla die. He's currently sober and living in New York City, but believes he's owed payment for the work he did at SeaDruNar. "People deserve something coming out," he said. "We got absolutely nada from it. ... What kind of job training do you get out of sorting paper?" Joseph Lawrence, Jr., the Seattle attorney representing the Busbys and SeaDruNar, said the program is designed to help addicts learn to work again while filling the time. "All of those things are designed as part of a treatment plan, basically to get them back in work shape," Lawrence said. "A lot of these people aren't used to getting up every morning and going to work." Lawrence said the work program's "ultimate goal is to get these people better," not provide funding for the program, which is provided free of charge to most clients. Gene Bolin, the attorney representing Lafley and Schodron, disputes SeaDruNar's claim and has argued that his clients should have been paid in accordance with the state minimum-wage rules. The sole purpose of the recycling program, Bolin contends, is to provide revenue for the treatment program. Lafley, the former construction worker and recovering heroin addict, said she found nothing therapeutic about paper sorting. Like Schodron, Lafley left the program early after breaking her wrist on the job in 2002. Unlike him, her legal trouble hadn't disappeared. Lafley ended up in a federal prison for three years on drug charges, and has since returned to the Flathead Reservation in Montana where she was raised. She said she's now clean, sober and employed. In an interview, Lafley said SeaDruNar clients deserve to be paid for their labor. "You're working for free, and it doesn't seem right," she said. "We had to give 100 percent when we're in there. They could give a little." - --- MAP posted-by: Steve Heath