Doing the hard work

There’s a common theme every time someone graduates from Steele-Waseca Drug Court:

“This is hard work.”

The two graduates who completed the rigorous program last week, though, made it look easy.

Abraham Groth had struggled for years with drugs and alcohol, at times punctuated with arrests, stints in treatment – and relapses.

As he sat in a residential treatment program in Chaska on Sept. 14, 2023, Groth learned he was accepted into drug court.

“He chose to do a long-term program there before he returned to the community,” said Nicole Grams, coordinator of SWDC.

“He said, ‘I need more time to focus on myself before I come back home and focus on everything else.’ It was very wise,” Grams said, “because we’ve seen nothing but continued growth the whole time he’s been in our program.”

Groth was serious about success, so much so that Kate Hendrickson would see him and think, “he seems kind of grumpy today – and then you would stop and say hi to me,” she told him.

“I don’t think you were grumpy; I think it was you thinking about what you were learning, taking it seriously and processing it,” said Hendrickson, who is a licensed drug and alcohol counselor with the program.

When Groth completed the residential treatment program, he returned to Steele County for drug court.

Coming “face-to-face with the judge is when I knew that I could change my life for the better, if I would just put in the work,” he said. “I put in the work, and it paid off.”

Groth has a job, his own vehicle, “and was able to build a bunch of really strong relationships in and out of drug court,” he said, especially with his children. “It taught me to hold myself accountable, even when others won’t – and I am responsible for what I put in my body and the choices I make for my life.”

His future plans include travel, and he hopes to “do a gratitude group in different towns and different communities, just find people,” Groth said. “It’s like baseball: If you build it, they will come. If you’re grateful, they will come.”

He graduated from SWDC with 713 days of sobriety.

Jillian McCarty needed just a hair more than the bare minimum amount of time required – 18 months – before accepting her plaque and other recognitions of her success.

With 580 days sober on her graduation day, McCarty said she “honestly didn’t know that I would make it through, because I have failed so many times before. But I just went into it with an open mind and determination, because my kids mean everything to me.”

She started using weed and alcohol at age 12, meth at age 13.

She had a child at age 18, but lost custody of him two years later.

After a couple of run-ins with the law, McCarty said, “I had short, dishonest stretches of sobriety, but I was still disconnected from real life and from myself.”

In August 2021, she regained custody of the child she had lost 10 years earlier, then had a second son.

“If you had looked at my life from the street, you would have seen a mom going to work, paying bills, putting food on the table,” McCarty said. “Inside, I was numb, lost and still using. I didn’t know how to be present; I didn’t know how to be free.”

On Nov. 29, 2023, she was arrested again. She calls it “my chance to stop dying and start living.”

In drug court, she said, she found what she had been missing: “Structure that didn’t bend to my excuses, accountability that met me every single day, and a team who believed in change, even when I didn’t.”

In the past 19 months, McCarty has regained custody of her children again, navigated a high-risk pregnancy and sought stability in her life.

She persevered, got married and had a healthy baby.

McCarty is entering her third semester at Rochester Community Technical College, studying alcohol and drug counseling.

“I want to sit with people who are still in the darkness that I remember,” she said, “and tell them with credibility and love that there is a way out.”

She thanked Judge Joseph Bueltel “for being fair and firm and for holding the line that I needed.”

McCarty also thanked the drug court team “for pairing accountability with compassion, for telling me the truth and for not giving up on me when I wanted to give up on myself.”

Drug court didn’t just help her stop using drugs, though.

“It helped me become who I was created to be: a daughter, a mother, wife, a student, a friend and a woman of faith,” she said.

“Thank you for believing that people can change, and thank you for giving me a chance to prove it.”