Recovering addicts work to help others in 'Project Recover'

CHESTERFIELD, Va. (AP) — Wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with the word “PEER,” Joy Bogese approaches people struggling with drug addiction the way a teacher might approach a reluctant student — gently, calmly and armed with experience in a subject that has stymied each of them.

Bogese, a recovering heroin addict, breaks the ice by telling them a bit about herself.

"I've been homeless, I did time in jail. I remember thinking, there's no hope. I'm always going to be a junkie," she tells a homeless man while standing next to a uniformed police officer. “I made it and you can, too,” she quickly adds.

Bogese is one of four peer recovery specialists who have been working in central Virginia this year as part of "Project Recover." The specialists are embedded with ambulance crews and police officers so they can offer guidance and resources to victims during one of the most difficult times of their lives — immediately following an overdose.

The program began after Courtney Nunnally, a recovering addict who founded a nonprofit organization to help get people into treatment, partnered with the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of Virginia. For its first year, the project received a $302,000 federal grant to hire peer recovery specialists who have turned their lives around after waging long battles with addiction. The program's supporters are currently searching for funding for a second year.

Most days, Bogese and Nunnally are out on patrol with police in Richmond and Chesterfield. They respond to 911 overdose calls and also patrol areas around abandoned buildings, cheap motels and parking lots, looking for the signs of addiction.

On a recent Monday, Bogese spots Adam Hall, a homeless man she first met two weeks earlier, in the parking lot of a shuttered...