'That door was always open': Paterson’s RealFix program gives city’s opioid addicts hope

PATERSON — Edward Peterson, whose street name is “Splash,” was in downtown Paterson panhandling for money to buy drugs when social worker Ingrid Lawnick went out looking for him.

Peterson, 51, was struggling to stop using opioids, his efforts complicated by the fact that he was living on the streets of Paterson.

But Lawnick doesn’t give up on people. When an Essex County nursing home contacted her about an opening for Peterson to live there, she went searching for him, walking to some of his known panhandling spots.

“I asked cops where he was. I asked some of his old drug dealers,” she said. “I scoured the city.”

About an hour later, Lawnick tracked Peterson down on Main Street.

That was several months ago, and Peterson has been living at the nursing home ever since, enjoying his longest stretch in years of being off opioids and sleeping in a warm bed with a roof over his head.

Peterson is one of Lawnick’s clients in Paterson’s RealFix program, an initiative launched by Mayor Andre Sayegh that is designed to combat the city’s opioid problem by providing addicts with medication that’s supposed to take away their urges and prevent withdrawal.

RealFix, funded with a $1 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, has handled 213 clients since it started early last year. That group that includes 85 people who were unsheltered when they entered the program.

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What does the RealFix program do?

RealFix tries to provide addicts who are going through opioid withdrawal with quick and easy access to the medication suboxone. The goal is to get people who contact RealFix the medication within 90 minutes, said Edward Boze, Paterson’s innovation officer, who oversees the program. To accomplish that, RealFix uses a call service, a Paterson-based transportation company, and working relationships with pharmacies and treatment programs.

If getting people medication takes longer than 90 minutes, Boze said, addicts tend to seek out their old drug dealers, who he said often excel at timely and efficient customer service. Clients on their way to pharmacies have hopped out of cars to go see street dealers when the pangs of withdrawal hit them hard, Boze said.

Peterson said he first heard about RealFix from one of his drug-using friends from the streets who used the program to straighten out his life. Peterson said he was impressed, because the other guy had been a heavier opioid user than he was.

“If you think there’s no hope, that’s not true,” said Peterson, who had been on the streets for more than a decade and started using drugs almost 40 years ago. “If we can get clean, anybody can do it. Sure, it takes work, but anything that’s worth it takes work.”

Virginia-Fatimah Young, 58, who used opioids “on and off for 30 years,” often hung around some of the same panhandling and drug dealing spots in Paterson that Peterson frequented.

The apartment where Young had been living was demolished last spring, and later that year she ended up at a hospital emergency room while she was going through opioid withdrawal. Tameka Ruffin, a social worker with Paterson’s Opioid Response Team program, contacted Lawnick about Young, and RealFix had another client.

Young now lives in the same nursing home where Peterson stays, with their health insurance paying for it. Young has been part of the program for about six months. At first, she was living in another facility where there were problematic conditions, she said. Lawnick helped her find another place to live.

“She’s like a little pit bull,” Young said of Lawnick. “She takes care of me like she was a daughter of mine.”

A year ago, Peterson and Young were among the opioid zombies who roamed Broadway, looking for ways to get money, and then drugs once they got the cash. Broadway has transformed since the Police Department launched its neighborhood stabilization program on the notorious street.

The gas station parking lot where Peterson and Young frequently hung out now has become a base of operations for police officers patrolling the area. Peterson’s initial setbacks when he tried the RealFix program are common.

“It’s the nature of the problem,” Lawnick said.

More on RealFix: This new city program puts medication into the hands of Paterson opioid addicts

'His heart was in it'

A RealFix client who gave his name as Kimble had more than six unsuccessful attempts at cleaning up when he first joined the program. RealFix helped Kimble, who is 48, get into drug detox programs in Morristown, Marlboro, Brooklyn, Harlem and Paterson.

“I’d be there 24 hours, and then leave,” said Kimble, who asked that his full name not be published. “Forty-eight hours and leave, 72 hours and leave.”

Getting back to Paterson wasn’t easy. Kimble wasn’t going to call his family for a ride, because home was not his destination.

“I wanted to get the drugs,” he said.

After leaving a program in Morristown, Kimble said, he was walking on a highway when a police officer in Morris County gave him money for train fare to Paterson. After he left the Harlem facility, he made his way to the Port Authority bus terminal, where he panhandled until he had enough cash for a ticket back to the Silk City.

Kimble felt embarrassed going back to RealFix after all those failed attempts. But he noticed that James Monks, the RealFix program monitor who drove him to the detox facilities, didn’t seem to be judging him.

“I started to see his heart was in it,” Kimble said of Monks. “You can tell when somebody is sincere.”

Kimble has been doing well since April, he said. He is working in a warehouse and plans to take a class to get a commercial driver’s license so he can become a truck driver. He said his life would not be on track without RealFix.

“That’s what it's all about,” Kimble said. “Every time I messed up, that door was always open for me.”

Joe Malinconico is editor of Paterson Press. Email: editor@patersonpress.com

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Paterson NJ: Real Fix program gives opioid addicts hope