PASCO COUNTY, Fla. — David Smith has been through years of trauma, but now he’s dealing with the worst thing ever to have happened to him.
“I came home. I was gone in the middle of the night, and I came home to my home being missing, and my wife was gone,” said Smith.
The shed he and his wife were living in burned down in September. His wife was killed in the fire.
“It’s sad for me,” he said.
Smith said this isn’t the first time he’s been out on the street.
“I’ve lost everything so much so many times. Probably four or five times, I’ve lost everything I own,” said Smith.
Perhaps the biggest issue keeping Smith from turning his life around is addiction.
He admitted to me he’s still using drugs.
“If I told you no, I would feel inside hard that I was lying. I can’t do that. I’m not a liar.” said Smith.
Thomas Herold knows what Smith and many others are going through because he was there.
Herold spent more than 13 years in prison for cocaine dealing, but now he’s looking ahead at a life without drugs and trying to help others.
He started the Coming Home Coalition, a non-profit working with those fighting addiction and homelessness.
The non-profit offers classes on job skills, resume building, and parenting.
“It was my transition through that incarceration and my experiences through life that I just understand so much and had so much experience in this field that others really just don’t understand where addiction comes from, where these mental health issues come from,” said Herold.
Herold knows changes don’t happen overnight and said it takes baby steps.
“I see Pasco's problems in these people, and I guess I see myself involved in Pasco’s problems. Understand my experiences coming through the Pasco school system in the 80s and 90s and the lack of opportunities here. The lack of things to do for the younger generation,” said Herold.
But people like Smith have to want to change.
“They don’t like the situation that they are in. They just succumb to it because they feel like there’s no other choice,” said Herold.
“Is the help out here,” I asked.
“Yes, it’s out here. You have to seek it, though. You have to want the help. I believe that. And I might not be ready. Some people aren’t ready,” said Smith.
