PORT ANGELES — Every day at work, Julia Keegan cares for heroin addicts.
A nurse at the Clallam County jail, she helps them through withdrawal and, when they leave, hopes they can start down a new path.
On Wednesday night at the third meeting of PA CAN, the Port Angeles Citizen Action Network confronting the community’s drug problems, Keegan encountered one who has begun anew: Brian Soiseth of Port Angeles.
Clean for nine months now, Soiseth lives at Oxford House, one of Port Angeles’ group houses for recovering addicts. He and two other residents came to the PA CAN meeting to raise awareness about Oxford, a national organization, and to lend their support to the new network’s efforts.
Soiseth remembered Keegan from his using days. He gave her a bear hug.
Then they, along with a roomful of other Port Angeles residents, got busy setting priorities for PA CAN.
June beginnings
The network began in June when Revitalize Port Angeles member Gail Gates put out a call on Facebook.
Essentially, she said: Let us do something about the heroin and methamphetamine scourge in our town.
In its first three meetings in the upstairs conference room at The Landing mall, PA CAN has brought together drug counselors, schoolteachers, public health workers such as Keegan, and law enforcement officers including Port Angeles Police Chief Terry Gallagher.
Joining them were recovering addicts and parents who have watched their children struggle with addiction.
At Wednesday’s session, organizer Angie Gooding posted swaths of butcher paper showing the goals suggested for PA CAN: ideas discussed at the group’s July 9 meeting.
She invited everyone to vote for the three they believe are most urgent. That didn’t take long.
The top goals were: establish a school drug-awareness program, help Oxford House provide services and expand programs at the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula.
“My idea,” said Gooding, “is to have presenters for each ‘winner’ at our next meeting.”
The date for the next meeting is Aug. 5 at 6:30 p.m. in The Landing mall conference room, 115 E. Railroad Ave. , but anyone interested in PA CAN’s activities can find “Port Angeles Citizen Action Network” on Facebook and via www.RevitalizePortAngeles.org, she added.
Aside from all of the talk, PA CAN has projects underway.
The network is holding a diaper drive now through Aug. 2 to help the young parents at The Answer for Youth (TAFY), Port Angeles’ drop-in center for at-risk people in their teens and 20s.
Diaper donations
Volunteer Martin Shaughnessy urged attendees to donate diapers at TAFY, 711 E. Second St., when the center is open between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturdays.
Keegan, for her part, is organizing an event next month. It’s something she has long hoped for: a vigil and walk in Port Angeles to raise awareness about heroin overdose.
Aug. 31 is International Overdose Awareness Day, Keegan told the group.
Here on that night, participants will gather at dusk at Civic Field at Fourth and Race streets, then walk to 939 Caroline St., Olympic Medical Center’s emergency room.
It’s where “people are dying, or living, after an overdose,” Keegan said.
In remembrance
During the vigil, participants may say prayers, talk about loved ones who have suffered from addiction and perhaps carry signs to let passers-by know what the walk is about.
“This is happening in our community,” said Keegan, “and we are going to push back in a loving way.”
Candace Priest, another nurse who works alongside Keegan at the county jail, was at the PA CAN meeting with her.
She, too, sees inmates in heroin’s grip. But she also knows people who have gotten free: people such as Soiseth.
“These people,” said Priest, “are worth it.”
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
