Chris Green: Not wasting life experience

Chris Green has spent the last several years as a casework manager at St. Vincent de Paul. After a tough adolescence and the startup of a successful heavy-equipment business in Alaska, he is now working toward a bachelor's degree in social work. His philosophy? The most important thing we can do in life is to help one another.

You're currently working as the veterans case manager at St. Vincent de Paul. Were you ever in trouble or homeless yourself?

I was raised in Spokane and I was an angry teen. I ended up on my own in Anchorage and staying in someone's garage when I was 13. I was washing dishes at a Sizzler and trying to go to school. I made it through the eighth grade and made four stabs at the ninth grade, but the whole time I was working full-time. I lived on the streets for the better part of a year and that garage was what saved me from being on the streets.

By the time I was 16, my wife - now my ex-wife - was pregnant with my first daughter.

Did that change anything for you?

When I learned she was pregnant, I knew instantly that I had passed the point of no return - it changed me. It made me focus on my responsibilities. I quit dishwashing and took a job on the North Slope up at Point Barrow (Alaska) and I worked 87 days straight before my first day off. I was trying to get enough money for my first daughter to be born.

After your daughter was born, did you have any sort of life plan?

I lived my life at that point out of necessity. I was a father and I had to provide. In a couple of years I went from a dishwasher and construction labororer to a crew leader at ENSTAR (Natural Gas Company). I eventually moved up to the engineering department and became a surveyor.

I wanted to provide for my kids. I worked because I had to, not because I wanted to.

Did you have a substance abuse problem?

I started drinking before I was 10 years old and I was drinking heavily by the time I was 16. In the beginning I was looking for a good time. And eventually, by the time I got divorced at 23, it was to drown my sorrows.

I got one DUI at 21 and a second when I was 25. After the second one, I quit. I lost my license for a year and came to the realization there are some people who can have an occasional beer or two, but I'm not one of them.

I finally took a sober look at myself and thought this was it, that I was hurting my children and breaking apart my family. I was doing everything that drinking did for my father and my family and all the things I swore I'd never do.

What were you doing for work while all this was happening?

In 1993, I started my own company - Rampage Services, Inc. It was an excavation company and did road maintenance, drilled water wells, that kind of thing.

So were things going pretty good for you when you got it all straight?

Not at all. My cousin Matthew English, who was like a brother to me, died in a car wreck in 2001. I don't have a lot of friends because when I was young I got hurt a lot, living on the street, and I didn't trust people a lot.

When Matt died, it was really, really difficult. I guess I was clinically depressed. I was bedridden for six months. It got to the point, though, that I had to get up or I was going to lose everything. Eventually I got help and was able to get back to work. It took me a long time to pull back from that.

What brought you down to the Lower 48?

By the time my kids were grown and gone, I wanted to re-look at my life.

I came to Coeur d'Alene in 2009. My mom's elderly and disabled and I came here to help her. But once I got back, I realized how much I had been missing. I saw how nice it was to watch the leaves turn color. I'd been in Alaska where there's no fall and no spring for almost 30 years.

I've always felt Coeur d'Alene was kind of home. Many generations of my family were from here. I'd only meant to stay a short time, but a big part of what sold me on staying was being around my family.

What did you plan to do once you got settled here?

I wanted to go back to school. I had gotten my GED when I was working on the slope, so I decided to enroll at NIC.

I hadn't been to school for more than 20 years, but I knew I wanted to do something to help others. By my mid-30s, I had been making some decent money, but the money never bought me happiness. After Matt died, I realized that the only things that really matter are the things we do for other people. After I closed the business in Alaska, I came away with enough money to not work the first year when I got here.

How did school go for you?

My first semester it was really hard. Math especially. I had always worked my ass off at any job I had and school was no different. I wanted to be able to come from the kind of background I have and graduate with a 4.0. I ended up getting a 3.97.

By the time I left NIC and started LCSC, I knew I wanted to go into social work. I have the life experience and the background.

I knew I wanted social work and the more I thought about it, the more I narrowed my focus and realized I wanted to work with vets.

How did you link up with St. Vincent de Paul?

I started volunteering there because my mom volunteered there. I started right away working with the emergency shelter clients and then started training to do casework. I learned case management skills from the ground up. After about two years there I had an opportunity to step into the position of emergency shelters director.

What job are you doing there today?

Last month I switched jobs to veterans case manager in the two downtown complexes.

Why the interest in veterans services?

That focus goes back through my whole life. All the men have always served in my family. I wasn't in the military, but I always felt a real desire to serve.

Every time I read books, I would learn the heroic things these guys do. They go in as ordinary boys and are put in extreme circumstances. Then they fight and come back and make something of themselves.

I would like people to know more about our vets - that each of these men and women have a story to tell and that when their country needed them, they stood up. There's nothing stronger than the heart of a volunteer.

And I've always thought that if those guys can survive battle and blood and death, I can survive alcoholism, losing my brother and living on the street.

What do you do for the vets in your job?

We are contracted through the VA to provide housing and case management.

What are their needs? Their life skills and their problems, such as substance abuse, medical issues, and PTSD. All of them are dealing with the thing that brought them to being homeless. My job is considered done and successful when they are permanently housed - when they move on from us to permanent housing.

I've got a personal knowledge of being through hard times myself and I know what it takes to move past that. I also have the tools I've learned at St. Vincent de Paul and from school.

Any future plans?

I want to be a social worker for the VA and I want to get my MSW (Masters in Social Work).

Activism - making a change in our country - starts one on one. It's about one person helping another person. That's where the real differences are made.