DUI Outreach President & CEO
There was a time when I walked through life wearing the mask of a man who had it all together. I worked in the DUI world, helping others gather the pieces after alcohol shook their lives apart, all while quietly drowning in the same storm. It took four DUIs and four broken marriages before I could finally see what the world had seen in me for years. My own drinking had become the author of my undoing.
The moment of truth did not arrive loudly. It arrived in stillness. I remember sitting alone in a house that echoed with emptiness. A house filled with beautiful things but stripped of love, stripped of family, stripped of any warmth that could remind me of who I once hoped to be. There I sat, alone with the bottle that had stolen my joy and convinced me it was my only friend. In that quiet room, I understood that I had not just lost my way. I had abandoned it.
That realization became my beginning.
I left my comfortable home and stepped into a sober living house where I shared a bedroom with four grown men and a kitchen with eight. Humility became my companion. Each day, I walked into an AA meeting and listened with the ears of someone who knew his life depended on it. I found a sponsor, and through the guidance of the twelve steps, I learned to listen rather than judge, to identify rather than compare. I learned that I could not control people, places, or things. I could only control myself.
I learned that the world did not begin or end with me.
I learned the simple courage of asking for help.
I learned that a higher power had been waiting patiently for me to stop trying to run the world on my own.
I learned that forgiveness is a kind of freedom, and resentment a weight too heavy for any soul to carry.
I learned to live in the day I was given, to be grateful for the breath I took, and to trust that the man I was becoming deserved a place in this world.
And as I grew honest and sincere with myself, the promises began to unfold in my life like blessings I never believed I deserved. I stood by my father’s side as he took his final breath. I reentered my daughter’s life and witnessed her wedding with a heart full of gratitude. I spent time with the son-in-law I thank God for. I held my grandson in my arms. I traveled with my mother and watched her joy as she reunited with those she loved. I discovered friendships built on truth rather than escape. I even found peace with the women whose hearts I once broke.
But the greatest gift has been this.
I have been granted the sacred chance to help others.
It is said that it takes one to know one. I believe that it takes one to save one too. I have met so many people who ache for change but do not know where to begin. Walking beside them as they rise toward their own healing has been one of the deepest blessings of my life.
This is why I created my nonprofit, DUI Outreach. I built it to pay forward every grace that was given to me, to help others find their footing, and to study this epidemic of impaired driving not just in its tragic outcomes but in its origins. My mission is to offer wisdom, resources, compassion, and guidance so that every person who reaches for a new life finds a hand waiting to lift them.
I stand here today, not as a man untouched by struggle, but as one transformed by it, committed to helping others rise from their darkest places into the light they were always meant to walk in.
And what a blessing it is to serve.
