From Addiction To Motherhood: Program Helps Turn Lives Around

Ashley Hinesley says she knew her life hit a low point when she found herself living behind a Dumpster at a Food 4 Less grocery store in Indio.

“That’s where my addiction brought me,’’ the former Palm Desert resident said, adding that she panhandled money to feed her crystal methamphetamine addiction, which started when she was 16.

But Hinesley left that life behind five months ago when she decided to stay sober for her unborn child. She checked into the ABC Recovery Center’s Perinatal Program in Indio, which currently houses six women.

Making a daily choice to remain sober, she has vowed to keep custody of her healthy one-month old daughter, Allison Shalyce, who was named after two staff members at the center.

Her greatest wish for her daughter is simple: “To live a life where you never have to see me high. Just to grow up in a healthy, happy environment. I just don’t ever want you to ever have to see me high.”

David Likens, a Palm Desert resident who is the center’s CEO, said the program offers a refuge for women like Hinesley so they can remain drug and alcohol free during their pregnancy.

It costs about $2,500 to provide services and support for the women while they live at the center, he said.

“We’ve been doing this program for 20 years,’’ Likens said. “We’ve had 400 women come through. We’ve had lots of babies.”

The program is funded through mostly private donors and a small grant from Riverside County. Likens recently held a fundraiser last weekend for the program, but he is always in search of funding for the mothers, who get a baby shower as well as medical care, counseling services, food and housing for a year.

“This year we’ve seen a decline in women coming to our Perinatal Program,” he said. “We never turn women away. I don’t know what happened this year. We try to get the word out there. We get calls from all over the state.”

The program is the only one in the Coachella Valley, with the nearest one in Riverside.

“I’m always trying to serve as many women as we can,’’ he said.

One of those women includes Jennifer Burkett, a former methamphetamine user who is seven months pregnant.

The 30-year-old Indio resident said she enrolled in the program three months ago and has remained sober.

"My pregnancy did help because you don't quit until you want to,'' Burkett said, adding that the classes offered at the ABC Recovery Center are giving her the tools she needs to get well, attend college and get a job.

She plans to pass along the message to her son that: "The best defense is to never start."

‘Messed Up’

Ashley Hinesley enrolled in the program in December, partly as an option to stay out of jail.

“I was so out there. I was so messed up,” she recalled.

Hinesley was arrested shortly before that on suspicion of smuggling immigrants across the Mexican border. She said she did it for drug money.

“I picked them up in El Centro and drove them to Coachella and then I got caught (by U.S. Border Patrol),’’ she said. “I wasn’t very good at it.”

That was a turning point for Hinesley, who has two other children aged 2 and 3 that are in the custody of her father.

Her high point in life occurred one month ago at the ABC Recovery Center.

“My highest point was delivering her sober and not having to worry about having a car seat and how I was going to get her home,’’ she said.

Hinesely credits her success to the staff at the ABC Recovery Center, which held a baby shower for her in which women from the community provided her with a car seat, stroller and enough “diapers until October.”

“She has clothes she’s never going to wear. This place is really amazing. They really take you under their wing,’’ Hinesley said.

Hinesley says she does not take these gifts for granted. She has plans to attend college – possibly the -- and work in the medical profession.

 “I’m ready for this and they are making sure of it,’’ she said.