A monthlong special report
from Spokesmanreview.com
A monthlong special report
from Spokesmanreview.com
|
Christopher Bridges is going home.
A telephone call from his past beckons him back to Arkansas, where substance abuse severed family ties a decade ago, hurtling him through a life that nearly ended in self-destruction under a Spokane bridge.
The story of how Bridges, 28, and his wife, Dejah, 25, began their long climb out of addiction and homelessness illustrated the relationship between drugs and child endangerment in last year's Our Kids: Our Business newspaper series.
When a street minister found them in the fall of 2006, methamphetamine had taken from them nearly everything but the infant growing inside Dejah. The state took the baby the day he was born in February 2007.
But a week later, social workers gave the boy back to the Bridgeses because of their willingness to submit to regular drug testing and the support they were getting from church groups.
"Living the street life so long, we tried to pull our lives out and couldn't," Dejah Bridges said. "We're finally in a place where I know we can do it."
She has been drug-free since Oct. 14, 2006, the month the couple were married. Chris had a relapse in October but has been clean and sober since then, he said. Their son, Seven, 14 months old, is undergoing occupational and speech therapy for developmental delays.
Two months ago, another son, Kalin, was born to the Bridgeses, who cite "the love of our children and the love of God" for their continuing recovery. Dejah has had two other children, a 6-year-old in foster care and a 2-year-old who was placed with relatives in Texas.
Last month, The Spokesman-Review received an e-mail from an Oklahoma State University employee who had stumbled upon the Bridgeses' story on the newspaper's Web site.
"My name is Mike Howell," the letter began. "My wife and I discovered an article on your site from last April about Christopher Bridges and his family. I am looking at the grainy image of Christopher holding his baby and wondering if he might be my brother.
"My brother is named Christopher James Bridges. He was born in 1978, and is of Native American descent. Ten years ago, he ran away and neither I nor my family have heard from him since. For years, we have only heard rumors that he may be in one place or another.
"I realize this is a long shot, but the man in the photo bears a resemblance to my brother and I have to find out."
Howell also contacted Off-Broadway Family Outreach, a Spokane ministry mentioned in the newspaper article that had helped the couple. Off-Broadway put Howell in touch with Bridges, who was indeed his long-lost half-brother.
"I was beaming and shaking for an hour and a half talking to him on the phone," Howell said recently from his home in Cushing, Okla.
Howell told Chris' sister, Jessica Boyett, who still lives in Cabot, Ark., north of Little Rock.
"She was crying and shaking," Howell said. "We've all been afraid that Chris has been dead. When I told her I found him, her first question was, 'Is he dead?' "
He very nearly was.
Bridges is undergoing interferon treatment for hepatitis C, possibly contracted through intravenous drug use. While living under Spokane's Maple Street Bridge, he said, he was so sick of his life he contemplated suicide before he was rescued by a street minister called Pastor Cowboy and Off-Broadway.
The Bridgeses also credit the Lord's Ranch in Newport, Wash., the New Hope Ranch in Spokane and Union Gospel Mission transitional housing for helping them recover.
"So many religious organizations chipped in to help," Bridges said. "We had nothing."
In interviews with The Spokesman-Review, Howell and Bridges pieced together the events that led to their separation in Little Rock.
"Our mother had a tough time growing up, too – a lot of the same things Chris went through," said Howell, who is five years older than Bridges and has a different father. "She was into drugs and had kids she couldn't take care of. It led to our grandmother raising us." But their grandmother suffered a stroke when Bridges was about 4 and Jessica was 3. For reasons that Howell does not clearly understand, he went to live for a time with his grandmother's sister and her husband while his half-siblings were taken into the state foster-care system.
"That was the difference," Howell said. "A lot of it had to do with that defining moment when I stayed and he went. It laid the foundation for a long time."
After their grandmother recovered, Howell said, "She entered this long, drawn-out court battle to retrieve them while Chris and Jessica were bounced from foster home to foster home."
Finally, the grandmother won custody of the other children, but she lost her job at a jewelry store, took her savings and moved the family to Cabot.
Bridges had himself legally emancipated at 17 years old. He ran around with some rough teens, started using marijuana, methamphetamine and cocaine, got into trouble with the law and spent several months in jail for a burglary he says he didn't commit.
Meanwhile, Howell pursued a college education to become a computer specialist for the physical plant at Oklahoma State University.
"The last time I saw him it must have been Christmas of 1998," Howell said. "Our sister told him he couldn't stay if he was using because she was expecting a baby. He left and we never saw him again."
Bridges said he was 20 when he got out of the Pulaski County Jail in Arkansas. Then he moved to Texas, where he was arrested for crashing a car while intoxicated.
"From the ages of 13 to 21, all I wanted to be was part of a family," Bridges said, but he felt pushed away.
He made his way to Seattle before ending up in Spokane, where he met Dejah in 2005. Born in Aransas Pass, Texas, near Corpus Christi, Dejah has relatives in Spokane, but both she and Bridges were homeless when they met and for most of their time together since.
Since pulling their lives together in 2006, they are reminded of their self-destructive past nearly everywhere they look.
"I look around and I see more places in this town where I put a needle in my arm than I was sober," Bridges said.
"We just need to get out of this town," Dejah said.
On May 2, they will get their wish. Howell has bought the family bus tickets to Cabot, where Bridges' sister has been living in the home she inherited from her grandmother. Now she is ready to give Bridges the home. "This is the most happy ending," said Howell, a deeply religious man. "This whole thing has been delivered to my family by the hands of God."
He said his brother hopes to start a youth ministry when he gets to Arkansas.
"There are kids in Cabot that are going through what he went through and they need to hear his testimony," Howell said. "They need to hear how he was saved."
Spokane, Wash., Coeur d'Alene, Idaho and the Inland Northwest • ©Copyright 2009, The Spokesman-Review
