Scott Hall’s struggles with alcoholism and drug addiction will be profiled on next Wednesday’s episode of E:60 on ESPN. A preview clip has been released featuring comments from Eric Bischoff.

The Wrestler – Scott Hall

At the height of professional wrestling in the 90’s, Scott Hall was adored by millions, his name chanted by loyal fans. Today, he has hit rock bottom. E:60 follows his descent from superstar to a broken man battling alcoholism and drug addiction, but still trying to hold onto the glory he once found in the ring.

*PHOTOS* Batista’s new mohawk ->

When Barry “Bear” Haefs renovated a storage building near Le Mars’ can redemption center, he used one section for his concrete business equipment and one part for his weight lifting equipment.

But the third portion he designed with others in mind.

There are several comfy couches and chairs, a coffee maker and the fixings, wall hangings featuring the 12 steps used by AA and Narcotics Anonymous (NA), and a sign that reads,”quityerbellyaching.”

This is a meeting space for a new Drug Court Alumni group that Haefs helped start this summer, and it also is used by a few other groups.

“I’m just on fire about trying to help people out,” Haefs said. “I’m a recovering addict myself, and I’ve seen the need for it.”

The alumni group is designed with graduates from the Plymouth County Drug Court in mind.

Drug court is a program that puts adults and juveniles facing drug-related charges in front of a panel of their peers, challenging them to follow the recommendations of the panel or face consequences.

It is an alternative to incarceration that allows people to keep working and stay with their families, all the while encouraging making responsible choices.

Usually it takes more than a year for a person to complete the drug court program.

To do so, they’ve made a string of good decisions — getting a job, staying sober, attending NA or AA meetings and more.

But when they graduate from drug court, they leave behind what has become a major support system in their lives.

Haefs has been there. He is a drug court graduate himself.

“There are a lot of people telling you what to do and how to do it while you’re in drug court, but once you’re done with that, you could really just drop off the face of the earth — there’s really nothing else out there beside NA meetings,” Haefs said.

He said he wanted to “create a world of accountability” around him.

Drug court coordinator Don Nore, of Le Mars, said many drug court graduates miss having the community of accountability drug court offered.

“They go from being held accountable to the drug court program to no longer having that accountability — we’re removed from the scene,” he said. “The alumni group is another method or program they can use to continue on the steps to recovery.”

Haefs said the alumni group is different from the NA groups, where people talk about their problems and recovery, and different from drug court, which has a strict feel, focusing on following through with responsibilities.

“The alumni group is set up to bring fun, activity and friendship, continuing support,” he said. “It’s a social community. Instead of being serious all the time, it’s building friendships.”

Nore said the alumni group has few rules and no set agenda or formal program.

A member of the recovery community himself, Nore generally sits in on the meetings and serves as a facilitator as needed.

“We come in and we can talk about anything that’s going on,” he said. “If an individual is having some issues, it’s a place they can come for some sound advice.”

The alumni group offers drug court graduates more support, Nore said.

“It’s another avenue of being held accountable to others,” he said.

Now drug court panels are requiring participants to attend an alumni meeting even before they graduate from the drug court program.

Currently, this requirement comes in the final phase of drug court.

“One of the things we’re going to look at is ‘should we have them involved sooner?'” Nore said.

He added that attendance at the alumni group is not limited to people who have gone through drug court.

“We encourage anybody interested in the alumni group to come to a meeting and find out a little more about it,” Nore said. “Whether they’re in the recovery process or just want a little more information about it, come sit in on a meeting.”

This aspect is important to Haefs, too.

“We’ve just left the door open for anybody in recovery or anybody that wants to be part of the alumni group,” he said.

The Drug Court Alumni group meets at 7 p.m. the second Monday of each month at the Redeemed Club House, just west of the Redeemed can redemption center.

Nore said the alumni group is starting out small in hopes more will join.

“We need the ideas and input of those in the program to make it a better group,” he said.

Nore is confident Haefs will do well in helping organize the group.

“He’s got a firm belief that this is a viable program and something that’s needed in the community,” Nore said. “He’s got a passion for this, and when you have that passion, you’re going to do well.”

That passion is exactly what inspired Haefs to renovate the Redeemed Clubhouse and donate the use of the room to the community.

He explained that he’d been to NA gatherings in a hospital meeting room, and after the meeting, everything had to be packed away in a storage tote and tucked in a closet.

He envisions the Redeemed Clubhouse as a place groups like that can make their home.

The Redeemed Clubhouse’s doors are open for other ministry ideas people have, too, Haefs said.

“NA meets three nights a week here and we have a men’s Christian book study on Wednesday, so this is really open for anything,” he said.

As for the Drug Court Alumni group, Haefs said he’s OK with it starting out simple.

“We just wanted to open the door and let it grow,” he said.

By Lawrence Budd, Staff Writer 11:38 AM Thursday, October 13, 2011

SPRINGBORO — Two school board incumbents face four challengers in the Nov. 8 election.

Mike Kruse, the postmaster in Springboro, is seeking a second term on the board. Gentry Ellis, a stay-at-home mom appointed in July 2010, is also on the fall ballot.

Running together are David Petroni and Jim Rigano, founders of Educate Springboro, the political action committee that has opposed levies and pressed for budget cuts since forming in 2008.

Rounding out the ballot are Lisa Babb, a stay-at-home mom and former teacher, and Jane Gregg, a former Springboro educator now at Miami University.

“It’s what democracy and politics are all about, ” said Kruse, whose wife and son work for the district.

Amidst five levy defeats, the school board cut employees, busing and other expenses, while increasing fees.

Earlier this year the budget was balanced and fees reduced following early retirements and concessions on wages and health benefits by teachers and classified employees.

Kruse and Ellis, after her appointment, were part of the board that adopted a five-year budget projecting a surplus of more than $3 million — assuming voters renew a levy lapsing in two years.

Jim Rigano and 
David Petroni

Rigano, top voter-getter in the 2001 school board election, and Petroni said they deserved some credit for the balanced budget and cuts, several similar to some of the “12 Steps” they urged the board to consider while representing Educate Springboro at board meetings over the past two years.

Last week, Rigano emphasized the other four candidates supported recent levies.

“They all in the end supported a levy that wasn’t needed,” he said.

Rigano, an engineer whose kids attended the local schools, said the board needed to improve communication with the community.

Petroni, a real estate consultant who home-schools’, and Rigano called for more college preparation work and course work on preserving liberty.

Petroni also advocated more curriculum improving critical thinking, while promising to open up the board, if elected.

“It shouldn’t be this hard to be a citizen and offer ideas,” he said.

Jane Gregg

Gregg joined Babb, Ellis and Kruse in calling for consensus building on the board.

“As a board member, you have to stand united,” she said during a candidate forum at Springboro High School.

Gregg’s children graduated from Springboro schools and she has a granddaughter currently attending Dennis Elementary.

If elected, Gregg said she would urge the district to add programs promoting global competitiveness, foreign languages and electronic textbooks.

Lisa Babb

Like Kruse, Gregg and Ellis, Babb said the board needed to rely on the staff.

“It’s the board’s responsibility to look ahead,” Babb said at the forum.

She also called for a community consensus on the level of public school services.

“What does Springboro want?” said Babb, who has children in the local schools.

In response to criticism of her past levy support, she said, “that was needed” before the cuts and employees concessions.

She declined to compare herself to her opponents.

Gentry Ellis

Ellis, who has a child in the schools, separated herself from Kruse in her response to the Dayton Daily News Voters Guide, emphasizing, unlike him, she had no family members employed by the district,

In response to a forum question, she recognized the role concessions by employees on pay and health benefits, along with fees, played in balancing the budget.

“It’s balanced on the backs of those of us that back this district,” she said.

She called for expanded curriculum, including an international baccalaureate program, robotics and foreign languages.

Mike Kruse

Kruse, whose children attended the local schools, also called for new technologies and books, as well as more courses teaching foreign languages and pushing advanced students.

He emphasized his experience on the local board, as well as one overseeing the Warren County Career Center.

While philosophical about the election process, Kruse acknowledged he hoped to win re-election.

“If I wake up Nov. 9 and I’m in first place, I’ll be very pleased. If I wake up and I’m sixth, so be it.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2261 or lbudd@DaytonDailyNews.com.

• Philip Machemedze broke the jaw of one victim with pliers in Zimbabwe
• Judge tells him to work for church for half a day a week and he will avoid jail
  
• Tory MP said it’s a disgrace he can hide behind Human Rights Act to remain in Britain

By Jack Doyle, Home Affairs Correspondent

Last updated at 12:02 AM on 14th October 2011

A thug who carried out horrifying acts of torture for Robert Mugabe escaped jail yesterday – despite earning £151,000 while working illegally in Britain.

Phillip Machemedze, 47, was able to work here for seven years as a carer for those with learning disabilities and on a unit dealing with drug and alcohol addicts.

He was able to secure the jobs by  showing a letter from the Home Office, a National Insurance number and birth and marriage certificates. These documents were not checked properly in a series of failures.

There was outrage earlier this year when he was allowed to stay in Britain to protect his human rights.

An immigration court in May ruled he must be allowed to stay because he could face mistreatment if sent back to Zimbabwe.

 

Yesterday he admitted breaking immigration rules – but was told he will not be jailed if he volunteers for just half a day a week for the next six months.

Machemedze – who is now jobless and trying to claim benefits – admitted two charges of obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception.

Judge Julian Lambert deferred sentencing for six months, but told him he had to work for half a day a week at his local Pentecostal church.

‘I require you to work hard with your church to make better the lives of the poor and needy,’ he said.

‘You should bring letters to show the good work you have done. I expect you to devote half a day each week to serving the community through your church. If I see you have done good work when you return and I have your promise that you will continue that good work I shall give you your liberty.’

Machemedze, from Bristol, worked as a bodyguard in Mugabe’s feared Central Intelligence Organisation.

An immigration hearing heard he committed ‘savage acts of extreme violence’, including torturing numerous political opponents of the Mugabe regime.

He smashed one victim’s jaw with a  pair of pliers, before pulling out one of  their teeth.

Another victim was electrocuted, slapped, beaten and punched unconscious and a woman victim  was taken to an underground cell where she was stripped naked and whipped.

Machemedze admitted putting salt in her wounds.

Tory MP Chris Skidmore, who represents Kingswood, Bristol, said: ‘It’s a disgrace that our system allows these people who have committed crimes elsewhere to remain in this country.

‘It’s ludicrous that people can hide behind human rights acts in order to prevent themselves from being sent back to their own country to face justice.’

Yesterday Richard Posner, prosecuting, told Bristol Crown Court that Machemedze arrived at Gatwick Airport from Zimbabwe in July 2000 and was given a six-month visitor visa which banned him from working.

But he stayed in Britain, working illegally as a carer at the adolescent unit within The Priory, a drug and alcohol recovery hospital, in Stapleton, Bristol, from June 2005 to May 2010.

He also worked as a support worker for the Milestones Trust, a learning disabilities and mental health charity from May 2003 to May 2010.

In April 2005 bosses at the Milestones Trust were tipped off that Machemedze was working illegally but after Machemedze showed them the Home Office letter the matter was dropped.

Mr Posner told the court: ‘At a subsequent meeting the defendant provided a letter from the Home Office confirming he was allowed to work in the UK.

‘That letter was deemed satisfactory and he was allowed to continue to work.

‘This case is primarily the use of that Home Office letter in order to create a deception that the defendant was allowed to work here.’

The court was told that in the seven years he had worked Machemedze took home a net income of around £151,000.

Jane Chamberlain, defending, said her client had indefinite leave to remain in the country and was allowed to work but was now unemployed and seeking benefits. Machemedze’s wife Febbie had been granted asylum.

 

• Philip Machemedze broke the jaw of one victim with pliers in Zimbabwe
• Judge tells him to work for church for half a day a week and he will avoid jail
  
• Tory MP said it’s a disgrace he can hide behind Human Rights Act to remain in Britain

By Jack Doyle, Home Affairs Correspondent

Last updated at 12:02 AM on 14th October 2011

A thug who carried out horrifying acts of torture for Robert Mugabe escaped jail yesterday – despite earning £151,000 while working illegally in Britain.

Phillip Machemedze, 47, was able to work here for seven years as a carer for those with learning disabilities and on a unit dealing with drug and alcohol addicts.

He was able to secure the jobs by  showing a letter from the Home Office, a National Insurance number and birth and marriage certificates. These documents were not checked properly in a series of failures.

There was outrage earlier this year when he was allowed to stay in Britain to protect his human rights.

An immigration court in May ruled he must be allowed to stay because he could face mistreatment if sent back to Zimbabwe.

 

Yesterday he admitted breaking immigration rules – but was told he will not be jailed if he volunteers for just half a day a week for the next six months.

Machemedze – who is now jobless and trying to claim benefits – admitted two charges of obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception.

Judge Julian Lambert deferred sentencing for six months, but told him he had to work for half a day a week at his local Pentecostal church.

‘I require you to work hard with your church to make better the lives of the poor and needy,’ he said.

‘You should bring letters to show the good work you have done. I expect you to devote half a day each week to serving the community through your church. If I see you have done good work when you return and I have your promise that you will continue that good work I shall give you your liberty.’

Machemedze, from Bristol, worked as a bodyguard in Mugabe’s feared Central Intelligence Organisation.

An immigration hearing heard he committed ‘savage acts of extreme violence’, including torturing numerous political opponents of the Mugabe regime.

He smashed one victim’s jaw with a  pair of pliers, before pulling out one of  their teeth.

Another victim was electrocuted, slapped, beaten and punched unconscious and a woman victim  was taken to an underground cell where she was stripped naked and whipped.

Machemedze admitted putting salt in her wounds.

Tory MP Chris Skidmore, who represents Kingswood, Bristol, said: ‘It’s a disgrace that our system allows these people who have committed crimes elsewhere to remain in this country.

‘It’s ludicrous that people can hide behind human rights acts in order to prevent themselves from being sent back to their own country to face justice.’

Yesterday Richard Posner, prosecuting, told Bristol Crown Court that Machemedze arrived at Gatwick Airport from Zimbabwe in July 2000 and was given a six-month visitor visa which banned him from working.

But he stayed in Britain, working illegally as a carer at the adolescent unit within The Priory, a drug and alcohol recovery hospital, in Stapleton, Bristol, from June 2005 to May 2010.

He also worked as a support worker for the Milestones Trust, a learning disabilities and mental health charity from May 2003 to May 2010.

In April 2005 bosses at the Milestones Trust were tipped off that Machemedze was working illegally but after Machemedze showed them the Home Office letter the matter was dropped.

Mr Posner told the court: ‘At a subsequent meeting the defendant provided a letter from the Home Office confirming he was allowed to work in the UK.

‘That letter was deemed satisfactory and he was allowed to continue to work.

‘This case is primarily the use of that Home Office letter in order to create a deception that the defendant was allowed to work here.’

The court was told that in the seven years he had worked Machemedze took home a net income of around £151,000.

Jane Chamberlain, defending, said her client had indefinite leave to remain in the country and was allowed to work but was now unemployed and seeking benefits. Machemedze’s wife Febbie had been granted asylum.

 

The South Middlesex Opportunity Council has signed a contract with the federal government to open its downtown sober housing shelter for homeless veterans to vets with drug and alcohol problems.

Starting this week, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs can send up to 10 of those veterans at a time to Larry’s Place, 90 Lincoln St., as part of its new Safe Haven program.

Previously, all 19 beds at the dry shelter, which SMOC opened in 2009, were for veterans in recovery who used the agency’s substance abuse, mental health counseling and job training services.

Those in this new group coming from the Bedford VA hospital don’t necessarily want treatment for their addictions, SMOC spokeswoman Jane Lane said.

“Some of these veterans will be in recovery,” Lane said yesterday. “Others have not committed to recovery, but the important thing to note here is that there will be no alcohol or drug use permitted on-site, period.”

“One strike, they’re out,” Lane said. “That’s it. There are no exceptions to that rule.”

SMOC has the final say on who it accepts to stay at the house, she said.

The shelter played a part in a bitter feud between SMOC and the town that the sides settled last year. The agency filed an anti-discrimination lawsuit in federal court in 2007, arguing, in part, that the town violated federal law by stalling permitting for Larry’s Place.

The case ended in a settlement last October, when the town’s insurer agreed to pay the agency $1 million and the sides committed to stay on speaking terms.

Town Manager Julian Suso said yesterday that he had heard about this week’s change at Larry’s Place from SMOC’s planning director Jerry Desilets.

“I want to underscore the capacity of the facility is unchanged, and they are dealing with veterans in need and that is the mission of that facility,” Suso said.

Suso said he’s comfortable given what he knows about Safe Haven, including the shelter’s continued 24/7 staffing and strict house rules, and the fact that sex offenders and arsonists aren’t admitted.

But, “any program brings with it concerns,” Suso said.

Lane said Veterans Affairs approached SMOC, looking for housing for homeless veterans to help them reintegrate into community living.

Larry’s Place case managers will try to convince those battling addiction to accept help, “but there will be a portion of these veterans that are resistant to that,” Lane said.

Residents have their own bedrooms and are assigned household chores. There are monthly group meetings, and case managers provide individual support.

“The goal of Larry’s Place,” Lane said, “is to get people into recovery, to be successful in their recovery, to get or maintain a job and then to move on to productive lives – and a lot of them do move on.”

Brian Robinson, 36, found his way to the shelter while trying to put his life back together.

The Marine Corps veteran, who planned to have a career in the military, was honorably discharged after he seriously injured his left knee.

“I didn’t have much of a backup plan,” Robinson said yesterday in the sitting room at Larry’s Place.

The married father of two turned to alcohol when he couldn’t find his calling.

He finally got help for his addiction, shortly before he moved into the shelter. He’s been sober for more than eight months.

While he plans to move out of Larry’s Place into his own apartment by Thanksgiving, he said he hopes to be a role model for the new veterans coming in with addictions.

“The people in this house can and will serve as a good example for them,” said Robinson, who is holding down several jobs and plans to go back to school in January. But, “you have to be ready to take certain steps and make a change.”

A spokeswoman for the VA’s Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital in Bedford did not respond to a request for information.

(Danielle Ameden can be reached at 508-626-4416 or dameden@wickedlocal.com.)

SAGINAW — Adrian McKissick was pronounced dead from alcohol withdrawal.

But the 31-year-old Saginaw resident survived seizures and a six-day coma, and turned her life around in the MidMichigan Teen Challenge program.

The residential Christ-centered ministry, 818 S. Michigan in Saginaw, is designed to provide drug and alcohol addicts with a better life through Christianity. Pastor Salvador Flores and his wife, Alicia Flores, are celebrating its 40th anniversary with a banquet at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Horizon Conference Center, 6200 State in Saginaw Township.

Many alumni are set to return and share their stories since graduation.

“We’re excited about that,” Salvador Flores said.

The MidMichigan Teen Challenge name is misleading — while the national program helps teens, Saginaw does not have a license for those younger than 18.

The national program was founded in 1958 in New York, and now has 100 locations across the country, Flores said.

McKissick is a recent graduate of the program, and an example of how the program can help. The Birmingham native and Central Michigan University graduate took a job in Florida, and also drank alcohol to cope with her father’s death. For seven years, she drank daily, she said.

“It consumed my life completely,” McKissick said.

Family intervened last year and asked her to go to MidMichigan Teen Challenge. McKissick quit her job immediately and got on a plane. On her return trip to Michigan, she started having seizures because she hadn’t had a drink in eight hours.

“I didn’t want to come here,” McKissick said of the program.

But she completed the program this summer and has stayed on as an intern. The most important thing for her was learning how to live life without her addiction.

McKissick said she enjoyed the classes and learning more about Christianity.

“God saved my life,” she said.

Flores’ greatest satisfaction is seeing a lost, troubled person come into the program and transform throughout the following weeks, he said.

The pastor is open about his past troubles with drugs. He was a heroin addict and involved with gang activity, but going through the Teen Challenge Program saved his life, he said.

After graduating, he went through Bible school in Texas and met his wife, Alicia Flores, a native of Honduras.

They moved back to his hometown in 1980 to run the MidMichigan Teen Challenge.

“We had about five men,” Salvador Flores said. “It was new, then it started to grow.”

There was no women’s program until 1986. Over the decades the program participants increased from a handful to now more than 34, 19 women and 15 men. MidMichigan Teen Challenge has an 86 percent national graduation rate.

The days are busy to prevent students from thinking about drugs or alcohol. To graduate, students must complete 40 classes in a 14-month period. The classes teach students about Christianity, how to love God and how to build their own self-esteem, among other things. Each day the students attend classes with local pastors who come to teach, complete chores, have devotions and enjoy some free time. The students also sing in a choir, visit local churches and help raise funds for the program.

The program has strict rules for visitors and when participants can leave campus. The program has two houses, one each for men and women.

MidMichigan Teen Challenge focuses on giving students direction and love, Flores said.

“Love covers a multitude of sins,” he quoted from the Bible.

Difficult family lives are common for participants, with 75 percent coming from divorced backgrounds. Many of the students enter the program through a court order, while others enter themselves.

Having gone through a life with drugs himself, Flores said, he can connect with students and help them get their lives on track.

Karen Baum in Off the Wall’s Shaken & Stirred. Photo courtesy of Off The Wall Productions.

The title is a multi-layered pun. “Shaken” and/or “stirred” are standard directions for the making of cocktails, but they also describe the characters in this revised production of Virginia Wall Gruenert’s drama, which premiered at Off the Wall Theater in 2007. And, of course, the one-act, told in a series of flashbacks, aims to shake up and stir its audience in pondering the ricocheting effects of alcoholism on the drinkers themselves and those around them, in this tale of quirky, strong women.

Originally a one-woman showcase for Gruenert, Shaken & Stirred now depends upon four talented actresses (including director Robyne Parrish and the playwright herself). The focus is on the travails and progress of two young women: the whimsically named Happy and Harley, respectively a non-drinker and a drinker. As the former, Erika Cuenca moves with feline grace as she grows from gawky schoolgirl to the bloom of young adulthood, under the shadow of her father’s severe, anti-social alcoholism. 

We’re not subjected to his debaucheries — all the male characters are off stage — but Karen Baum jumps into the nitty and the gritty as Harley. At heart she’s a good kid, but a whole heap of real bad luck pushes her into the arms of John Barleycorn as a teen. So good elsewhere at portraying pert and cute, Baum succeeds against type wallowing in serious and vicious muck. 

Supporting the disparate heroines, Gruenert and Parrish are both multi-cast as various older women: mother, aunt, et al. Gruenert still has a star turn in the surprising role of a long-time AA sponsor, not to mention Happy’s beleaguered mother. Parrish adds glamour and pathos as the wife of an upscale alcoholic. The two also add a bizarre comic twist in a send-up of AA presented as a drunken fantasy. (While not hostile to Alcoholics Anonymous, Shaken & Stirred is far from unmixed endorsement.)

Paul A. Shaw’s set, Michael E. Moats’ light and sound, and costumer Chaleece McCracken augment both the nightmare and the human comedy.

 

SHAKEN & STIRRED continues through Oct. 22 at Off the Wall Productions, 147 N. Main St., Washington, Pa. 724-873-3576 or insideoffthewall.com. Also Oct. 26-29 at Theatre 54, 244 W. 54th St., New York. 412-394-3353 or proartstickets.org

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