Matthildur Kelley
The Long, Hard Road to a New Beginning by Sherri McGinnis
She has described herself as an absurd child, an insecure woman, a drug user and a prostitute.
It's been a long road, but Matthildur "Matta" Kelley now sees herself as an educator, career woman and caretaker.
Kelley began her career at UIC more than 14 years ago when she became one of the first outreach workers with the Community Outreach Intervention Projects in the School of Public Health, a community-based program to prevent HIV infection among people who inject drugs.
"When I hired Ms. Kelley early in 1988 she was living in public housing and had stopped using drugs -- including methadone -- through a sheer act of will," said Lawrence Ouellet, director of the outreach project, in a letter of support to the Janice Watkins Award Committee.
Kelley's job was to reach out to addicts on the streets of Chicago's Uptown neighborhood and around Lathrop Homes (the housing project where she had lived), educating users about HIV/AIDS and its link to drug injection and sexual behaviors.
The program sought caseworkers who, themselves, has once injected drugs and who could serve as role models for users who wanted to change their lives.
Kelley knew well the struggles of her clients. But, more importantly, she had empathy and understanding for the obstacles that drug users face: homelessness, the need for medical care, no access to drug treatment programs.
"No 'shooting gallery' was too filthy, no abandoned building too dangerous and no alley too forbidding for Matta to enter in hopes of helping the people she would find there," Ouellet said.
Although her job didn't require it, Kelley took phone calls from the addicts who called for assistance or advice 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
She eventually took on the added responsibility of supervising the project's Uptown site, where she trained other case managers and began to focus her work on young people who inject drugs.
Four years later, Kelley was promoted to become the project's first quality assurance coordinator. She now trains and works with staff at five storefront field stations, a motor home and a mobile van unit. As the project grows in size, it's her job to ensure that it provides the highest-quality services.
Kelley's life -- chronicled in the Studs Terkel book Will the Circle Be Unbroken? -- has been a remarkable journey most people cannot even imagine.
In 1967, at age 21, she emigrated from Iceland to the United States, leaving behind a son. She married and had two children. The marriage ended in divorce, she had a fourth child, then fell into a life of drugs and prostitution, spending almost 15 years as an addict.
Since Kelley made the decision to change her life and quit using drugs, she's become a role model for many.
If you've been through addiction, you don't have the right to keep that fact to yourself, she said.
"I wouldn't be anything without the community outreach program," said Kelley, who credits Ouellet for not only hiring her, but "always believing in me."
She says she's grateful to be alive and to have her children back in her life.
"There are hundred, if not thousands, of women like me out there that nobody pays attention to," Kelley said.
"They just need someone to reach out to them."