By Peggy Kreimer
Post staff reporter

Six years ago, Vanessa Warner was a drug addict, a prostitute and a thief who'd sell anything to get high.

When she walked through the door of Cincinnati's Drop Inn Center one night, all she knew was it would give her a bed so she wouldn't have to sleep on the streets.

But the agency wound up giving Warner much more.

"They gave me my life," she said last week, as she sat in her own neat kitchen, wearing clean clothes and seeing the world through clear eyes as she marked her fifth year of being sober and drug free.

The 34-year-old agency at 12th and Race streets in Over-the-Rhine is the region's largest emergency shelter, known for taking in anybody who needs to get out of the cold or the rain or the heat.

Housed in a former Teamsters Union hall, it provides three meals a day, showers and clean clothes. But it's a lot more than an emergency place to stay, said director Pat Clifford.

People who walk in to find shelter take a first step over the threshold that can take them much further.

"A lot of people don't know we have our own transitional and permanent housing programs. We have a recovery program and counseling. We help people get jobs," Clifford said.

Drop Inn Center workers do everything from forging relationships with homeless people who maybe living under bridges or in abandoned cars to running substance abuse recovery programs to helping people move from homelessness to self-sufficiency, with their own homes and jobs.

The agency's emergency shelter has 250 beds, including 60 in a women's dorm. But when the winter turns bitter, it puts up cots in the lobby that can expand its capacity beyond 300.

This year, the demand will be even greater because Northern Kentucky's only emergency cold shelter was closed for good in March. That volunteer-run shelter had a capacity of 33 but often sheltered more than 80 people when the weather turned frigid.

"Without that shelter, a lot of those people will end up here," said Clifford. "There just aren't enough places for people to go."

That's why the Drop Inn Center started - as a last-resort basic shelter for alcoholics and drug abusers who had been dying on Cincinnati's streets, said Clifford. The late Buddy Gray opened his home to take in people from the streets and alley ways of Cincinnati in the early 1970s. The program became a formal shelter in a storefront in 1973, a project of the Homeless Alcoholism Task Force.

"There was no shelter that took people who were drinking, and people were dying," said Clifford. Today it is still the least restrictive shelter, accepting virtually anyone who needs help. Alcohol and drugs are not allowed on the premises, but guests don't have to pass a breath test to get in, like some other programs require.

"We take care of their basic needs first, and then we move from there," said Clifford.

A place to stay was all Warner wanted when she carried a garbage bag of her clothes through the Drop Inn Center doorway in 2001.

She had walked out of prison after completing her sentence looking to get high again. "They give you a hundred or so dollars to get back on your feet. I used it to buy drugs as soon as I got out," Warner said. "It took me right back to ripping and running the streets like I'd been doing for half my life. But I didn't like the fact that I had nowhere to go. My girlfriend kicked me out in two weeks, after I spent all the money."

She moved in with her sister, who soon also gave her the boot.

"I didn't have any income," she said. "I was prostituting to get money."

She was not quite 40, but her body and her spirit were worn out.

"I was tired of going to jail; tired of getting high; tired of getting in trouble," she said.

When a man she bought drugs from pulled a gun on her, it was like putting a mirror to her life.

"I said, 'Vanessa, you have to do better than this,'" she said.

Somebody told her about the Drop Inn Center.

"I called them and told them I knew I needed to change myself," she said. "They welcomed me. They were the only people who welcomed me with no money.

"I wasn't ready to stop, but I knew I needed somewhere to sleep," she said.

She was assigned to a bed, given new clothes and food and treated with respect by the shelter's staff.

"Something clicked," she said. "They put a spark in me."

The Drop Inn Center had a women's and a men's recovery program then. Full Circle, the women's program, closed in 2005 and women who want a recovery program now are sent to First Step, a residential females-only program in Walnut Hills, said Clifford.

Warner decided to give the Full Circle program a try. "The first 90 days was a real struggle. It was like my back was forced against the wall. I wasn't used to people telling me what to do," she said.

The program was highly regimented with therapy, counseling and education. "After 90 days went by, I was starting to like it. My counselors were real hard ball, but they had soft hearts. They went through some of the same stuff. They understood," Warner said. "They told me, 'We're going to get this thing, you know?' My mind started coming back. I started to want it, to really want it."

She graduated from the program on May 21, 2003, her mother's birthday, and moved into the Drop Inn Center's Transitional Housing program - 18 one-bedroom apartments around the corner from the shelter.

Applicants must be homeless, drug- and alcohol-free for 60 days, pass random drug tests, and have an income or prospects of an income, either from a job or disability or Social Security benefits. The program is designed for people coming out of recovery programs who need counseling and some support as they move back into the community, said Debra Brundidge, counseling team coordinator for the Men's Recovery Program and the Transitional Housing Program.

Tenants get ongoing counseling, help with budgeting, dealing with relationships, jobs, and stabilizing their lives.

Residents must pay rent of either 30 percent of their income or a maximum of $300 a month. Most stay from six months to two years before moving into apartments in the community.

Warner is one of two "long timers" in the Transitional Housing Program who now help show new tenants the ropes.

"I was having a problem finding an apartment. I have all this drug trafficking and possession on my record," said Warner. "When they gave me this place, it was the first time I ever had my own place. This program gives us back our life. It gives us hope and a future.

"If you really want this thing, it can be done. But you have to want it."

Her Full Circle graduation certificate hangs in her kitchen, like a second birth certificate.

"Growing up as a teenager, I always had a job. I was real athletic. I danced. I went to Hughes High School and got trophies for swimming. I got started out free-basing when I was 17," she said.

"The first hit - wow. It took me on a real trip that I don't ever want to go back down

"It destroyed my life. It puts you at rock bottom. I don't care if you're rich or what, it will take everything you've got."

At one point, she spent months in a mental institution. She's on disability now and must take medication for continuing problems that the drugs caused, she said.

But she's reclaimed her life.

God and her church are part of her lifeline, Warner said. She works at the church, cleaning and helping with programs. She helps her mother, making up for years of stealing her money and her time and her energy.

Warner's sister raised her two sons, but Warner recently renewed her relationship with the boys.

"A lot of days I cry about it, about everything I messed up," she said.

"Nobody made me do drugs. I chose to try that monster stuff. I used to leave my kids with my mom and say 'I'm going to the store. I'll be right back.' Right back turned into days and weeks. My mom had a life. She had to go to work. I was gone. The drugs had me. I call it walking around lost," Warner said.

"I can't get that back, but I've been given a second chance, and I'm not going to mess it up.