Cheryl Houk has seen it all – she’s been to the bottom of the barrel and picked herself back up to create success from sorrow. Her very personal experience battling alcohol addiction 24 years ago became the catalyst that led to her lengthy career within the alcohol and drug recovery community.

Houk’s last day as Stepping Stone’s executive director will be March 31, after serving in that post since March 1989. Stepping Stone is one of only three nonprofit residential alcohol and drug recovery facilities in the state specifically targeting the GLBT community. The agency operates a 28-bed long-term residential recovery facility and a day recovery program, and provides sober living opportunities as well as homeless outreach, referrals, education, prevention and social support programs.

Houk told the Gay & Lesbian Times about her struggles and mishaps related to alcohol addiction during the years she lived in Chico, a small Northern Californian town, before she moved to the San Diego area to pursue a career helping those in recovery.

“I completely totaled three cars under the influence,” she said. “I was completely aware that I drank too much. I just didn’t want to live my life that way.

“If you wake up with a hangover every day and look up at the mirror, you’re not very happy about who you’re looking at. I don’t care who you are.”

Houk said she did not feel comfortable going to Alcohol Anonymous meetings in Chico.

“I got in recovery, but it took me awhile because I was a lesbian,” she said. “In that area [Chico] there were three or four people in a meeting. I couldn’t be me in those meetings…. I just knew from my experience how important it was to be in a safe place to be who I was.”

Houk quit drinking on her own, but said she would have quit a lot sooner if she was aware of an organization like Stepping Stone.

When she joined Stepping Stone as an administrator in 1989, she was one of just three employees, and she supervised the other two. The organization has since grown to 28 staff members, while the budget has increased from $120,000 to $1.9 million. The number of clients served annually stands at over 2,000.

Creating a safe haven for the GLBT recovery community was a primary concern for Houk when she learned of the job opening at Stepping Stone. She worked previously for Mental Health System’s North Coast Neighborhood Recovery Center in Oceanside.

Houk said one of her major accomplishments was helping lead Stepping Stone in the construction of its 28-bed facility on Central Avenue in 2000, which replaced the residential cottages that previously housed residents.

“When I came to work here it was appalling to see that,” she said. “In the end, I learned we were in one of the worst-condition facilities in the county. I didn’t like that. I thought that perpetuated a sense of low self-esteem.”

In 1994, Stepping Stone received $95,000 from the Housing Trust Fund to put a down payment on the Central Avenue property. In 1998, former San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor committed $100,000 for the Central Avenue project. Houk worked with several other city officials over the next two years to secure even more funds for the construction of the new facility.

“I wanted to put the building either in better shape or give them a new one,” Houk said. “It’s extremely rewarding, because my biggest goal was not to perpetuate that sense that we don’t belong because of the kind of building we’re in, and to change that around is extremely emotional.”

Stepping Stone’s director of operations, Marc D’Hondt, who has known Houk for 13 years and worked for her for almost 10, said she never gave up on her goals.

“Cheryl has worked tirelessly and tenaciously, not only for this agency, but especially for our community,” he said. “She has persevered through adverse situations and rarely lost sight of her vision. Although Stepping Stone hobbled along in the old, dilapidated buildings of the past, Cheryl never lost sight of her vision that our community deserved the finest state-of-the-art facility that participants, donors and staff could be proud to claim as belonging to the community of San Diego.

“When skeptics, even her closest allies, told her that it could not be done, she used their words as fuel to build one of the greatest, award-winning social model recovery facilities in the nation.”

The Center’s chief executive officer, Delores Jacobs, also praised Houk’s contributions to Stepping Stone’s growth over the years.

“Addressing substance abuse in our community is no easy task, and I deeply appreciate Cheryl’s many accomplishments on behalf of our community,” Jacobs said. “I especially admire her longevity of service to Stepping Stone. Having a leader commit 17 years to an organization is a rare thing…”

Joyce Marieb, executive director of the Greater San Diego Business Association, met Cheryl in the early ’90s when Marieb served on Stepping Stone’s board of directors.

“At that time, most of Cheryl’s work was in making the residential and the day programs more and more effective, and in hiring experienced professionals to staff the programs,” Marieb said. “She was also busy building a solid reputation for Stepping Stone, one that came to be highly respected in the recovery field.”

Marieb said it was difficult to obtain the finances in order to construct the new residential facility.

“We had a feasibility study done to see if the community would support a building fund,” she said. “The report recommended that we not move forward. Cheryl and some of the board were not deterred by the findings of the study. Throughout the campaign, Cheryl said it was going to happen because it was a worthy cause and we would succeed. And succeed we did.”

With the help of federal HUD funding, the California Endowment, local funds and some individual community members, sufficient funds were raised not only to build the new facility, but to do so debt free, Marieb said.

“This facility and the Stepping Stone programs are now national models for other recovery services to emulate,” she added. “All of this progress was due to Cheryl's leadership and vision.”

Although Houk looks forward to retirement, she said she will miss working at Stepping Stone.

“I love this job. I always have, because I believe that all of us have a purpose in our life and that’s to help other people,” Houk said. “I got the opportunity to help my own population here in the highest realm.