New Job Hope For Adults In Drug And Alcohol Recovery
Doug Kiker (left) and Dan Schmalen are founders of Retrofit Careers, a job portal for those in successful drug and alcohol recovery.
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For most of his life when he was in between jobs, Tim Tulvey would toss his resume up on a hiring site like Indeed.com. He had decades of management experience working for landscaping companies, and even owned his own pest control business for a while.
“I was getting hits left and right,” Tulvey said, recalling previous times he’d posted. “I mean, there was companies reaching out to me a lot.”
But this time was different. This time, he had been through rehab, and picked up an assault charge. He didn’t get any bites.
For many with a history of addiction, finding a job can be tough. Of the 22 million adults in recovery in the United States, nine percent are unemployed — that’s more than double the overall rate. There are lots of reasons for this – addiction can cause people to go long stints without working, and that doesn’t look great on a resume. For others, like Tulvey, addiction goes hand-in-hand with jail time and a criminal record.
But that doesn’t necessarily make them less qualified for a job — or at least, that’s the logic behind a new hiring website called Retrofit Careers, designed specifically for people in recovery.
Tulvey was 50 years old when he decided he had to stop drinking. It had gotten bad — each day when he woke up, he knew he’d be drinking by lunchtime until he went to bed at night. He had no illusions that quitting would be easy — he checked himself into rehab and after, moved into a recovery house to get back on his feet. But he was homesick, and wanted to move back into his own place. As soon as he did, he started drinking again. One day, he blacked out and threw a glass at the wall, hitting his wife. He was arrested for assault and spent almost a month in jail.
Tulvey had been working as a warehouse manager for a construction company, and through rehab and the assault charge, his boss agreed to keep him on. But maintaining regular hours on probation can be tricky — as a condition of his release, Tulvey had to carry a breathalyzer that he was required to blow into at random times to give his bail officer a blood alcohol level. But, Tulvey says, often the machine didn’t work right. So, to prove he wasn’t drinking, he would have to take a train from his job in the northern suburbs of Philadelphia, into the city, and hop on another train to head South to the courthouse where he would blow a negative breathalyzer test in person for his bail officer.
Pretty soon, Tulvey’s boss said all the trips to see his bail officer were eating up too much of the workday, and he let him go.
Tulvey put his resume on Indeed, like usual, but he didn’t get any responses. He figured potential employers must be doing background checks. So, he stopped even applying for lots of the jobs he thought he’d be qualified for.
“Right now, I’m steering away from anything that I think might be iffy as far as, you know, having an assault on your record,” Tulvey said. “I mean, I’m not that person, but the word assault says it all.”
Eventually, Tulvey got a job with the recovery house where he lives — they knew about his past, but also trusted that he was a good guy.
That idea — that with a little context, employers will give someone a chance — is the foundation for Retrofit Careers. Doug Kiker, who has been sober for 13 years, is one if its founders. He always made an effort to hire people in recovery for his construction business, and he knew there were other employers out there like him. So he figured there should be a formal way to connect people in recovery with workplaces that will understand their situation.
“So that even if the question’s asked, the answer is, well, this is when I was rehabbing, this is when I was on the street, this is why I got fired from my last job,” Kiker explained.
It may seem like a tough sell to ask employers to pay to post jobs that draw from a pool of applicants in recovery. So far, Retrofit has just a handful of employers advertising for jobs. But more and more, job places are actually looking for people with a history of addiction. While private job boards are less common, some states are aggregating “recovery friendly workplace” lists.
Delta lighting runs a bustling call center just north of Philadelphia. Its 50 or so sales reps sell lighting and cleaning supplies to companies across the country. Joe Arndt is Vice President there. He’s been recruiting workers with a history of addiction for years and says he’s found they make great employees.
“They’re tremendously loyal to us, and they just work harder because they realize that they don’t necessarily have a lot of other options which is kind of sad,” he said.
When Arndt heard about Retrofit, he called to see how he could advertise for open positions at Delta.
“I’m not gonna sit here and say like we’re saints and we really want to help the community, which we do, but at the same time, we see it is an opportunity to get more employees like the ones we had gotten,” he admitted.
Arndt says he knows there are risks involved with hiring people in recovery – commission jobs aren’t for everyone, and the potential for relapse is real.
But, he says, a lot of those are risks you’d come up against with anyone. At least this way it’s out in the open.
Kitka Brings 'Powerful Women's Voices, Joined Together' From East To West
For four decades the Oakland ensemble Kitka has sung intricate harmonies from Eastern Europe. Members Shira Cion and Kelly Atkins talk about the group’s new album, “Harmonies of Heaven and Earth.”
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LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
The daylight is dwindling away. The solstice arrives on Friday. So let’s listen to some warming songs from Eastern Europe that celebrate the season upon us.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “MOMCI KOLEDARCI”)
KITKA WOMEN’S VOCAL ENSEMBLE: (Singing in Bulgarian).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: The album “Evening Star” features harmonies unique to Balkan, Slavic and Caucasian lands. But here’s the twist – they’re served up by Kitka, a vocal ensemble of many years standing based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Shira Cion is the group’s artistic director. She joins us from the studios of KQED. Welcome.
SHIRA CION: So great to be here, Lulu. Thank you.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Also with us is Kelly Atkins. She’s another Kitkat – I think that’s what you call yourselves, right?
KELLY ATKINS: It is, yes. Hi.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Hi. Shira, I’m going to start with you. You’re quoted in the press notes saying this music springs from a, quote, “instinct to come together and sing in the deep, dark heart of wintertime.” I love that, by the way. Does this music help bring up the body temperature?
CION: They actually think it probably does. And it’s been interesting. You know, so many studies are now coming out about sort of the physical and cognitive and social benefits of harmony singing and choral singing. And I think all the science is just proving something that Eastern European villagers have known for centuries, which is that when times are tough, when weather conditions are cold, where merely surviving through a difficult season really calls upon communities to come together, it’s a time to sing. And I think singing does lift spirits. It does sort of synchronize our organisms together. I really do believe it helps us survive through trying times.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Kelly, that image of the deep, dark heart of wintertime is also a metaphor, I guess, of the kind of music that this is. Tell me what – how you see it.
ATKINS: Well, we also use the metaphor of the cycles of life. Some of the songs, as you probably noticed, from the album are literally about winter. And some of them are about the winter of life. So we kind of see a lot of the songs that we sing not only about the holidays themselves but about the cycles that we go through in our own lives.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Let’s listen to a bit of the title track. It’s a Bulgarian song – “Evening Star.”
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “ZVEZDA VECERNICA”)
KITKA WOMEN’S VOCAL ENSEMBLE: (Singing in Bulgarian).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I got to tell you, it feels like something deeply thrumming and ancient. You know, it comes – it really comes from this sort of essential place. It really does. It’s amazing. Kelly, I understand you have a background as an indie rocker. What got you interested in Eastern European vocal music?
ATKINS: Well, the first time I saw the Bulgarian Women’s Choir, I was at Grace Cathedral. And I sat in the pews and just wept. And I couldn’t figure out what was happening to me. And it just rocked me on a very, very deep level. So I think that was my gateway drug, as we call it in the group. Most of us have our gateway drug of Bulgarian choir music.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter) Shira, people also may be surprised to learn that there’s actually many vocal groups here in the states specializing in Eastern European music. There’s Kitka. There’s Planina based in Denver. There’s the Yale Slavic Chorus, which has been around almost 50 years. What do you think makes…
CION: Yes.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: …The music so irresistible to female vocalists?
CION: Well, I think for those of us who I would say identify as liberal American feminists, there’s something about the quality of powerful women’s voices joined together in this very physical, very close harmony, sometimes dissonant harmony configurations that really appeals to a contemporary American female sensibility.
(SOUNDBITE OF UNIDENTIFIED KITKA SONG)
KITKA WOMEN’S VOCAL ENSEMBLE: (Singing in foreign language).
CION: And these are cultures where labor was traditionally divided by gender. And women were accustomed to creating in community and creating music together in community. We were actually just talking about this in the greenroom earlier today – how all of us who sing in Kitka are much more oriented towards kind of collective and harmony singing than individualistic, soloistic singing. And I think it sort of counters the sort of strongly individualistic trend that America values so much. It’s, like…
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Exactly.
CION: …Everyone to…
GARCIA-NAVARRO: The solo artist.
CION: …Themself (ph).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah.
CION: The solo artist. And this is really a communal form that can really only take flight when there’s a community of people participating in it.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Let’s listen now to a Ukrainian carol from your album.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “V HOSPODARON’KA”)
KITKA WOMEN’S VOCAL ENSEMBLE: (Singing in Ukrainian).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So this is actually a Ukrainian carol for New Year’s. And you actually traveled there a while back and met up with a Ukrainian group. What about your other travels to perform in Eastern Europe? What’s been the reaction from audiences?
ATKINS: We were in Serbia about – was it five years ago?
CION: Yeah, 2013.
ATKINS: And it was my first time with Kitka traveling abroad and singing Serbian music to Serbians. And I honestly was nervous going. I was thinking, who am I as an American to go and sing these songs in front of these people where, you know, they have these deep roots with these songs? But in fact, we were received very warmly. And it was really a cathartic experience for both the audience and for us.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So, Kelly and Shira, this is to both of you. What’s your favorite song on the album?
CION: Oh, that’s a tough one.
ATKINS: It is.
CION: What do you think about maybe “Blazentsv”?
ATKINS: Maybe “Blazentsv.”
CION: Yeah. This isn’t technically a winter song. But it’s a song that we feel articulates qualities that we all try to summon in ourselves during the holiday season. It’s a musical setting of “The Beatitudes” by the Russian composer Vladimir Martynov. And, you know, these are calling the listener to embody qualities of generosity and compassion and kindness, living simply so that others might simply live and seeing that true contentment really comes from kind of going against the grain of greed and egoism and materialism and violence and living gently, living kindly so that others can feel the kingdom of heaven here on Earth.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That is a good holiday message. Shira Cion and Kelly Atkins from the Kitka Woman’s Vocal Ensemble. Their new album is called “Evening Star.” Thank you both very much.
CION: Thank you so much for having us.
ATKINS: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “ZAPOVEDI BLAZENSTV/ THE BEATITUDES”)
KITKA WOMEN’S VOCAL ENSEMBLE: (Singing in Russian).
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'Bleed Out' Shows How Medical Errors Can Have Life-Changing Consequences
In Bleed Out, filmmaker and comedian Steve Burrows documents the 10-year odyssey of trying to figure out what went wrong when his mom went in for a hip replacement surgery and came out with brain damage and mobility issues after a weeks-long coma.
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In 2009, Steve Burrows’ mom, Judie, went in for hip replacement surgery. She came out with brain damage and mobility issues after a weeks-long coma that would change her and her family’s life.
In the new HBO documentary Bleed Out — Burrows, a filmmaker and comedian, tracks his 10-year odyssey to find out what happened to his mother and who is to blame. It’s a deep dark dive into the heart of America’s health care system.
What happened to Judie is complicated, but it essentially began with massive blood loss.
“In the end, that’s really how this whole thing started,” Burrows says in an interview with NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro. “She lost over half the blood in her body.”
After her surgery, she was put into recovery and left alone with that’s called an electronic intensive care unit, or eICU.
With a series of monitoring tools that usually include microphones, video cameras and alarms, eICUs are meant to provide the 24-hour monitoring that many patients require after a major medical emergency.
“This [eICU] didn’t notice my mom was in a coma for at least a day and a half and I wanted to talk to the ICU doctor who was there that night,” Burrows says. “We were told there was no doctor there. I said ‘Well that’s insane, what do you mean?’ “
He says there were doctors monitoring the cameras out by the airport in Milwaukee and they were supposed to be the safety net for his mother.
Burrows says that when he asked whether the camera was on, the head of the ICU told him it wasn’t because of patient privacy issues.
As Burrows dug into his mother’s case and the failure of the eICU to recognize her coma, he came across a staggering statistic. According to a study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, the third leading cause of death in the United States is medical errors.
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And those errors, Burrows says, can leave patients one step away from financial ruin.
“That’s the hard lesson we learned,” Burrows says. “My mom, certainly. She was a single mom, she raised my sister and I. She did everything right. She was set. And this happened and two and half years later, she’s broke. She’s on Medicaid … and now we, all the American taxpayers, are paying for her.”
Burrows says that before her surgery, Judie was a vibrant, independent and adventurous woman. These days, her health care has become increasingly more complicated, and in the past two months, she has started long-term hospice care.
“She is very compromised,” Burrows says. “She lost her speech several years ago and that was really the thing that really hurt her the most because she was so articulate and so full of life. I know that the loss of her speech is really the thing that is really killing her the most.”
Throughout the 10 years that Burrows documented his mother’s struggles, he recorded many conversations — both openly and secretly. One of those conversations was with the doctor who conducted his mom’s hip replacement surgery. At the time, the doctor didn’t know he was being recorded.
Steve: If you were in my shoes, right now, what would be …
Doctor: I’d like an accounting, just like you, for why in the hell no doctor was there. Their intensive care unit, where this problem occurred, we still don’t know what happened. We don’t have accountability.
Steve: I mean, do you think they’ll ever tell the truth?
Doctor: No. I don’t.
Up until this point, Burrows had been asking basic questions to the doctors and caregivers involved in his mom’s situation and their stories were always changing, he says. When he finally heard what he thought was the truth by the doctor, Burrows says it was shocking.
He started filming his mother’s pain and suffering after consulting with attorneys about trying to pursue justice for her. She was at her most vulnerable. It was painful and uncomfortable, but he knew he had to do it.
At the time, he didn’t want to make a documentary, but he eventually decided others needed to know what happened.
“When I started to find out about this universal thing, about the third leading cause of death, and then the eICUs, I thought I really have to tell people about what I just found out,” Burrows says. “Because I’m a pretty informed guy and I didn’t know about any of this stuff.”
Although he’s done his best to make sure his mother is comfortable, Burrows says he hasn’t been able to give her what she really wanted, which was to get her life back.
“I had a great mom and I really tried hard to give her everything she wanted and I couldn’t give her any of that,” he says. “She wanted to go home. She wanted to drive. She wanted her life back.”
Burrows says he hopes that as people watch the film, they realize they need to ask thoughtful questions when it comes to their health care, and he stressed the importance of having a patient advocate in case things like this happen.
“You need to shop for doctors and hospitals like you’d shop for a car,” he says. “You know, shop like your life depends on it because we found out that it does.”
NPR’s Sarah Handel and Cindy Johnston produced and edited the audio for the story. Wynne Davis adapted it for Web.
