'I did this program to change'

May 13—URBANA — Orlando Lewis recalls he always had a problem with drinking. But looking from the outside, you wouldn't have known it. He had a house, a car and a good paying job.

That changed after his older sister died in 2020.

Lewis remembers arriving at her workplace after she overdosed on a fentanyl-laced substance and asking the police what happened. An officer wrapping up the yellow tape just shook his head, and that was enough for Lewis to know she was gone.

He moved from Racine to Rantoul to be closer to his mother and racked up four DUI charges over the course of a year and a half — two in the same month. Following his final arrest, he spent 300 days in jail, and the state offered him a deal of five years in prison.

"When I moved here, my grief kind of took over," Lewis said. "I stopped caring about yesterday, and I stopped caring about tomorrow, and I didn't have full control of my life."

Today, Lewis is sober, employe, and again licensed to drive to the Phillips Recreation Center today, where he and seven other people will graduate from the Champaign County Drug Court program he attributes having saved his life.

The decades-old specialty court diverts people otherwise bound for prison into an intensive treatment plan run by a local team that aims to "bury them with resources" and address the root causes of their substance-abuse and legal trouble, said Judge Ben Dyer, who presides over it.

"The whole idea of drug court is to invest in people who look like really bad investments and to help them gain the tools they need to change their lives and then live healthier, happier lives without the criminal justice system involved in it," Dyer said.

"It's rewarding, personally, for everybody on the team, and it also feels like the right thing to do," the judge added. "It's a very happy thing when people graduate from drug court. "

Growing up in a middle-class area of Wisconsin, Lewis said he and his sister were like "left-hand, right-hand" together. She was three years older, but she acted as his best friend, his life coach. Anytime you saw her, Lewis was right at her side.

After she passed away at 36, he wondered why it wasn't him who died. She had four children and no addictions Lewis knew of. She just tried something once that was offered to her, he said, while he was the one who regularly drank and accepted drugs.

While Lewis tried to help take care of her kids, he eventually ran out of bereavement days and missed enough work that he lost his job. Without any income, he not only lost his house but everything inside it. When he moved to Rantoul in 2020, he arrived with just one bag of clothes.

Living without any responsibilities, Lewis was solely free to drink away his grief and guilt, for it was killing him inside that he couldn't support his sister's children, he said. The DUIs followed after he received his 2019 tax return and enough money to buy a vehicle.

"That's where everything went wrong," Lewis said. "Now you got someone who doesn't care, who's an alcoholic with a car and a license. That mixed up was just like a bowling ball."

Lewis said he couldn't stop drinking, that's why it took someone else to take control. Facing a sentence of up to seven years, he hung onto the silver lining that no one else got hurt when he got behind the wheel, and prepared to accept the state's plea offer.

He had never heard of drug court before Chief Public Defender Elisabeth Pollock told him she was going to try to get him into the program, though it would be a long shot.

The initiative was constituted in its current form in 1999 and consists of representatives from the Public Defender's Office, the State's Attorney's Office, Probation Services, Champaign County Sheriff's Department, Rosecrance Health Network and the Family Services nonprofit.

The team assesses whether candidates are statutorily eligible — applicants can't have violent or gun-related charges — before professionals evaluate their medical and social history.

While the drug court partners often recommend defendants for the program unanimously, sometimes they disagree on whether someone is appropriate. The decision to admit is ultimately left to a judge. In Lewis' case, that was Judge Randy Rosenbaum.

"Really, the number one thing that you're looking at is whether these people are sincerely committed to treatment this time," Rosenbaum said. "It's a hard thing for a judge to know, and sometimes we get it wrong, but hopefully we see something in individuals that leads us to believe perhaps they're at rock bottom but that there's nowhere to go but up."

After Pollock whispered into Lewis' ear that the drug court team was willing to give him a chance, he said he was "ready for the ride."

The program was overwhelming in the beginning. During his first month at a treatment center, he was told what the next two years were going to look like.

Participants must appear in court every Monday, submit to random drug tests, home visits from the sheriff's department, attend regular group meetings and numerous classes. In the first two or three months, Lewis said he managed three classes a week, then it was four classes a week, then two, then back up to three, and so on.

All the while, he also had to obtain a job and a sponsor. Luckily, the latter was already taken care of. After Lewis started working at Walmart, his mother, who was also working at the shopping center, introduced him to a greeter named Scott Hillanbrand. Though he never entered the court system, Hillanbrand said he's also struggled with addiction, and he knows what it's like to have family worry about him. That's why he could relate to the pain he saw in Lewis's mother's face.

Eventually, Hillanbrand learned what happened to her daughter and began to mentor Lewis once he got out of jail.

"Our tax money is not getting wasted," Hillanbrand said of drug court. "What happened to this kid, you can see it, that he is going to serve the community better, much better than when he was looked at differently. Now people look at him for respect, for encouragement, within this little bit of time."

Shy and lacking confidence without alcohol, Lewis said drug court taught him how to communicate with people all over again. It laid out the necessary steps for getting back on track with basic responsibilities, like establishing a budget or a primary physician. The program also provided tools and resources on how to be mindful, showed him there are multiple paths to the same destination. Ultimately, Lewis said drug court's rigid structure gave him the blueprint he needed to rebuild his life — all it asked for was that he be willing to change.

Lewis doesn't believe he would be living in his own apartment today, sober and stable, if he had been sentenced to prison. Drug court intertwines itself in participants' lives, keeping them near local family and in jobs. Meanwhile prison does not rehabilitate many people, Rosenbaum said, and drug court routinely beats the Department of Corrections' recidivism rate.

"I would've had a welcome home party," Lewis said of getting out of prison. "I would've picked up a bottle. I would've just went on break, on recess, and I would've picked up right where I left off."

Lewis added that, sitting in that jail cell, he never thought it would be possible to ever get his license back. But his turnaround has inspired others. Two friends, who were once familiar with seeing him parked and passed out in front of a Casey's, have also decided to get clean.

After collecting his two-years-sober coin on March 31, Lewis is done counting the sober days. He doesn't need to.

Monday's ceremony feels like it will be one of his greatest achievements, but Lewis feels like he's already graduated. The people he'd like to see receive awards are the ones who saved his life.

"It's a lifestyle now. I didn't do this program to graduate, I did this program to change," Lewis said. "That, ultimately, was the goal inside. The acknowledgement and celebration is nice, but I'm going to continue to work these steps for the rest of my life. The steps are never done."