'I made bad decisions'

When Mischelle Story looks at her past, she said, she feels like she's looking at a different woman. A woman who suffered through two decades of drug abuse, dysfunction and darkness before reaching for something better.

When Mischelle Story looks at her past, she said, she feels like she's looking at a different woman.

A woman who suffered through two decades of drug abuse, dysfunction and darkness before reaching for something better.

"I can sum it all up for you: I made bad decisions," the 40-year-old said. "It robbed my life, the decision to get high and numb it (my pain). It's not who I am anymore."

That's apparent upon meeting the new house manager at Freedom House, the Hayden rehabilitation center for women. Story, a brunette with tidy makeup and polished manicure, looks the opposite of what her life had been for so long: A jagged path of drug abuse.

She emphasizes that she blames no one. It was her decision alone to take the drugs, she said, and her decision to marry at 16 and force herself into independence too young.

All of that is eclipsed by something bigger: It was also her decision to eventually turn herself in to the police and turn her life around.

"I was tired of getting beat up. Tired of the drugs," she said on Thursday, seated in the cozy quiet of Freedom House. "I could have easily gone home and said, 'I'm back, let's do this trip again.' It took everything in me to turn myself in."

Growing up, Story said, dysfunction was a normal setting in her childhood in central California. Her mother an alcoholic, her parents divorced when she was 7 and she lived between households. As the baby of the family, she struggled to mediate between her mother and her oldest siblings, especially when her mother was verbally abusive.

"When I was 12 to 14, they (my two older sisters) would call and ask, 'Is mom drinking?' And I'd say 'No' - I'd lie, because I was lonely, and just wanted them to come over," she said. "Placater. That's what psychologists call it. I just wanted everything to be fine."

Self deception only carried her so far. She had sometimes struggling relationships with her parents, and when her father and stepmother threatened to move, she resisted because she wanted to stay with her boyfriend.

"They said, 'Either marry him or come with us,'" she said, adding that she chose the first option. "It was stupid. I didn't want to cause friction between my stepmom and my dad."

Moving in with her husband at 16, she found life confusing, she said, as she suddenly felt separated from her family.

"All of a sudden I was cast out. That's how I felt," she said.

She discovered a balm when she first encountered cocaine, she said, introduced to her by her best friend.

'My husband had me promise him that I wouldn't get addicted. I look back on that statement now and realize that you just never know if you going to be the one who gets addicted," Story said. "It escalated from there. I literally thought, 'One more time, just one more time.' And it ended up being 20 years."

Her dependence on cocaine continued through years of intermittent jobs, and periods as a housewife raising five children, the latter four from her second marriage.

Her children remained with her until 1999, she said, when they were living in North Carolina. She turned the kids over to the state so they could live with her second husband's mother, who Story was confident would take care of them.

"I just wanted them to have a better life," she said. "How do you manage when you're on drugs? You don't."

It would be many years before she would try to help herself, too.

Her introduction to meth in 2001 triggered another addiction, and she got involved with an abusive boyfriend. She was in and out of prison throughout the 2000s for her drug use.

"The first time, it felt like I had lost control of everything. I didn't know what was going to happen, so I was scared. Trembling," she said. "The times I went back after that were more, 'Whew, what a break. At least I'm safe.'"

Everything started to turn around on Jan. 3, 2008.

Living in Ogden, Utah, she had just checked out of run-down hotel - preferable to returning home to a seedy environment.

Standing in the snow and cold, still high, she felt alone. Unsure where to go.

She called her brother, Mark Lay, living in North Idaho, and he offered to pay her bus fare to come live with him. But being out on bail, she knew she shouldn't leave Utah while still facing charges.

It could be so easy to take off with that free ticket, or even just go back to her home in Ogden and get high again.

"I was very wasted at that moment, and I cried out. I said, 'God, I don't want to go that way,'" she said. "I felt like he said, 'Go left,' and I turned myself in."

She showed up to the Utah State Police, and landed another 19 months in prison.

"I never, ever thought I would have enough integrity to do that," she said.

This time in Utah State Prison was different than before. She was placed in the prison's rehabilitation facility, which she compares to a college campus, a relaxed environment oriented around recovery.

With mentors laid off because of recession budgeting, she ended up helping teach the classes herself, she said. When she completed the recovery program, she stayed on as a mentor for another several weeks.

"If felt good, coming out of where I had come from," she said.

One thing that helped was writing back and forth to Jenny Stark, administrator of Freedom House, where Story initially planned to go after being released.

Stark wrote a letter to the prison that helped Mischelle land an early release, and after visiting her children, she moved to North Idaho in August 2009 to be near Lay, who she said played a major role in her recovery.

She decided to attend a vocational rehab instead of attend Freedom House, but stayed in contact with the staff as she built her own business selling designer hand bags.

After several months, she got a call one day from Stark, offering her a position as the house manager.

It was a job Story had never imagined she could do before, she said.

"Jenny asked, 'Would you be interested?' And I dropped everything and fell to my knees,'" Mischelle said. "I can't explain it. (I felt) euphoric. When I got off the phone, I kept asking God, 'Really?'"

Lori Hess, Freedom House director, said the staff thought Mischelle was a perfect choice for the position.

"She has been through a lot in life. She has the desire and passion to be able to show hope to the ladies," Hess said. "It's encouraging for us to see someone come so far and make a deposit on somebody else's life. That's what we hope for every woman who comes in here. It's good to have someone lead the way who's done it."

It has been three months since Story started at Freedom House.

She has become a fixture of the warm farmhouse that takes on four troubled women at a time. She relays her own story to clients, she said, between her disparate duties as friend, mentor, cook, nurse, taxi.

"Everything a mom does, really," she said with a smile. "Being a positive influence, which I haven't been for years."

The nonprofit is dependent on donations, she added. The house always needs simple items like laundry and dishwashing detergent, toilet paper, paper towels, Clorox wipes, grocery store gift certificates, first aid items and new socks.

Folks can make donations by contacting Freedom House at: 704-1110.

The satisfaction of helping other women down the path she once tread is incredible, she said. For the first time in her life, she said, she has a place to go where she is trusted.

"To some people, this could just be a house. But when I walk through these doors and other women walk through these doors, we know it's a home," she said. "When you're out chasing drugs, no place is home. The gutter isn't even home. That's a step up."

For others still struggling with addiction, she has simple advice.

"Stop. Stop," she said. "Stop and pray to God that he will be close in your life and keep 'PUSHing' - pray until something happens."