People with addictions, people at the end of their ropes, people feeling lost, alone and friendless, walk one flight down with hopes of recovering their sense of direction and reason for living.
Salvation is a possibility, though it isn’t guaranteed. What is guaranteed is the friendship and goodwill of others who have been there, done that and want to help.
“We’re a family, and we’re here for each other,” said Kirk Shea, a core member of the Underground Oasis outreach ministry.
The Underground Oasis conducts most of its business in the basement of the Olde Towne Mercantile at the corner of Adams Avenue and Fir Street. The building is owned by Steve Fund, who also happens to be a co-founder and principal member of the ministry.
The program got its start on a night five years ago when Fund, owner of a sewer and drain cleaning business, received a frightening telephone call from employee John Shepherd.
Shepherd was high on meth and threatening to kill himself. Fund did not feel prepared to handle the situation alone, but had friends he knew he could count on.
He called Dale Johnston, a man who like Fund himself is best described as one part old-school biker, one part businessman and one part lay minister.
Johnston in turn brought in Leo Bristol, a fellow who has spent 15 years of his life on drug offenses and knows a thing or two about the hell of addiction. Together, the three answered Shepherd’s cry for help.
They spent two hours talking with the troubled man, basically giving him the message that he could win his struggle against drugs. Words they spoke struck a chord.
“When we left, Johnny said, ‘I have a lot of friends who need to hear this.’ That became our battle cry,” said Johnston.
Johnston, Bristol, Fund and Shea all live a biker lifestyle — Johnston in fact is the chaplain for the Las Vegas-based Tribe/M/C Motorcycle Club — and they’ve all battled personal demons, including drug or alcohol addiction, at some point in their lives.
For a long time, they had thought about forming a local addiction support group. The encounter with Shepherd set them in motion.
Fund opened his basement for meetings, giving rise to the name “Underground Oasis.” Around the same time, he shut down a pawn shop he was operating on the main floor of the building. In doing so, he eliminated a major conflict of interest.
“You can’t very well work on both sides of the drug trade. In the pawn shop business, you have a lot of people selling stuff to get drugs,” he said.
Though by no means a professional social worker, Johnston had some experience in community service. In Nevada in the late 1990s, he had worked with Oasis Outreach, a street ministry that provided food for the poor.
He had always hoped the call to serve would come again. After he met Shepherd, he felt he and his friends had found the right mission.
“Leo and I had often talked about doing something, but we didn’t know what it should be until after that night,” he said.
In shaping the ministry, Johnston wrote his own version of a 12-Step Program, keeping principles he believed to be useful but adding emphasis on spiritual faith.
He said he thinks some recovery groups have moved too far away from that.
“I’d been a part of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous in the past. I love those programs, but I felt I wanted to do something to put God back in the center,” Johnston said.
He drafted a list of goals for the ministry, plus a statement of commitment and a unique definition of a successful outcome. The spiritual aspect is present in all the wording.
Johnston is the first to say that the religious approach to recovery isn’t for everybody. But for many, including Shepherd, it works very well.
“I love the program, and love knowing about God. I can always stay clean and sober, and that’s something I couldn’t do with other programs,” Shepherd said.
In the five years since the founding of the Underground Oasis, many people have come and gone. They have sought not only help for substance abuse problems, but also with depression and family violence.
“There are all kinds of addictions, and not every one of them has to do with drugs,” said Shea.
There have been success stories, and some failures, too.
A core group consisting of Johnston, Bristol, Fund, Shea, Johnston’s wife Diane, Jerra Woods, Jim and Bertie Harris, Shepherd and his life partner Ricia Kallunki, keep the ministry going. They conduct meetings, help with outreach, and generally spread the word.
Some, though not all, of those members are associated with Underground Oasis because of addiction and an ongoing need for friendship and support.
Shepherd overcame his crisis long ago but stays with the group nonetheless. He said the Underground Oasis has given him something to believe in.
Other core members are associated with Underground Oasis simply because they want to help.
The Harrises, for instance, have never had substance abuse issues but see the ministry as a way to share their own spiritual beliefs.
“I never had any time for people of that class of society, drug addicts and such,” Jim said. “But Dale was a member of my church and he showed me how people were responding to this. Bertie and I decided to come and show our support, and we’ve never looked back.”
Over the years, the ministry has taken on community service projects, including an ongoing drive to provide clothing and hygiene items for the La Grande School District’s Youth In Transition Program, which serves the needs of kids who have been kicked out of their homes or have run away.
Coordinator Pam Dodds said she is more than grateful for the help she has received from Underground Oasis.
She also had words of praise for the ministry’s efforts to help people with addictions.
“What a great program for recovering addicts. It’s a real asset to the community,” she said. “They’re a bunch of old bikers who got clean and found God and are sharing it. They’re doing it right.”
Also in the way of community service, Underground Oasis “adopted” a poor family at Christmas time last year, raising $800 for presents. This coming Christmas, the group plans to adopt two families.
Shepherd and Kallunki head up that effort, and take great pleasure in it.
“It was so much fun going out and buying the gifts last year,” Kallunki said.
Johnston, a self-employed physical therapist, said the ministry is gaining in the battle for local acceptance, garnering support from churches and public agencies.
Not only that, the program is spreading to other places. Johnston said there are now Underground Oasis ministries in four different states.
But there are still hearts and minds to win, he added.
“There are all kinds of different programs out there, established programs like Ala-Non and Ala-Teen, and a lot of people wonder if we’re just a flash in the pan,” he said.
Through it all, Underground Oasis carries on. For those with addictions, people needing friends who have been there, done that, the stairway leading down beckons.
And no one is ever turned away.
“We don’t care where someone’s been. We care about where they’re going,” Johnston said.
