Jeff: “I’m getting stable ground under me”

Overcoming years of substance use and incarceration, Jeff is using his time at Pallet to forge a path to self-reliance and strong family relationships.

Family is everything to Jeff. Through incarceration, addiction, and every dark moment he’s faced, his relationships are what kept him grounded and moving forward. Now nearly three years clean and working toward running his own business full-time, he says it’s made all the difference. 

“For me to be sitting here right now is nothing short of a miracle,” he explains. “My family and my higher power are what made that possible.” 

Jeff spent his childhood living with his father and sister in Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna Valley just north of Anchorage. He was taught from an early age the virtue of earning your keep by hauling and packing wood to fuel their barrel stove among various other household tasks. 

“Growing up was awesome,” he recalls. “Hard work, you know, which is what’s translated into who I am today. So I grew up always having lots of chores and got a good work ethic ingrained from day one.” 

In school, Jeff played football and was on the boxing team. But he had plenty going on outside of class: he started drinking and smoking cannabis around age 13; he got into motorcycles, learning to ride and maintain his first bike; he routinely hitched rides down to Anchorage with his best friend to work odd jobs at the truck and trailer dealership where his friend’s dad worked as a mechanic. 

“We would go and we'd work around the shop there or his buddy would pay us to come work,” he recollects. “We’d be sandblasting painting equipment, doing different lightweight mechanics stuff, heavy equipment, working on bikes and cars or trucks. Whatever work we could do.” 

Up until high school, Jeff says life was simple. 

“That was pretty much my childhood: work, go to school, hunt, fish and drink.” 

In 11^th grade, things started to change for Jeff. He began failing some of his classes, which meant he was barred from playing football in his senior year. Not long after, he got into an altercation with one of his teachers and was promptly expelled from school. 

“I started doing cocaine around the time I started driving and then things kind of spiraled a little bit out around that,” he says. “It's no longer just working or whatever—then all the other bull**** comes in.” 

For the next year Jeff and his friends lived on a remote property in the woods, using drugs and growing marijuana. One day, his dad and uncle showed up to put an end to it: they told Jeff he’d be moving down to Oregon to live with his uncle and get his act together. 

Once in Klamath Falls, one of the main house rules was prohibiting Jeff from talking to or seeing his mother, fearing that her substance use would be a bad influence. But when his uncle was gone working in the oil fields of Alaska, Jeff took the chance to call his mom and go over to her house. 

The night that Jeff reunited with his mom was also the night he met his future wife and fell into the world of methamphetamines. The next period of his life was defined by this relationship and the circumstances surrounding their lifestyle of selling and using drugs. 

The sister of one of Jeff’s mom’s friends, they hit it off immediately. Things moved fast after that: Jeff began living with her and her young son a few months later and they became their own family unit. But not even a full year after they met, Jeff got into legal trouble and her son was taken by child protective services as a result. 

This prompted his first stint at recovery. Both of them entered programs and got clean, allowing them to take back custody of her son. What followed was several years of calm and stability: they got married, moved in together, and had a daughter of their own. One year on Christmas, Jeff met up with his friend, who offered him drugs.  

“I don’t know why I did it, but I did it,” he says. “I just quickly went downhill. And within nine months I was in jail for the first long sentence, and it was five years.” 

This chance encounter and Jeff’s relapse set off a chain of events entailing multiple incarcerations and participation in different recovery programs. While approaching the release date of his last sentence, a couple promising opportunities arose for Jeff, and he was determined to make a path out of the life he’d grown to know. 

Upon being released in Seattle he was able to move up to Everett and rent a room from his sister and brother-in-law, who quickly connected Jeff to his best friend Josh. Josh told Jeff about Pallet, and the company’s focus on providing fair chances to people who have experienced incarceration and substance use disorder. Jeff had a feeling this was the direction he needed and applied right away. 

“I liked the idea of how they were willing to give people opportunity, a chance, and the idea of getting further in my education was something I wanted and needed,” he says. “And to get that in addition to surrounding yourself with like-minded people that are facing the same struggles—I thought that was pretty amazing. So I just set my mind on waiting and prayed about it, and here I am.” 

Since starting at Pallet, Jeff’s focus and determination have led to great progress in his future career and personal life. This December will mark three years clean. He saved up enough to buy a new truck, which he uses for independent contracting jobs after his shifts on the manufacturing floor. He’s joined the deployment team, seeing firsthand the positive impact Pallet’s shelter communities have for people who have been displaced. He's reconnected with his daughter, and is currently planning on a trip down to Oregon to see her and meet his grandchild for the first time. 

For now, Jeff is dead set on working hard and planning for the future. He says the steadiness of his life and the support and encouragement from his coworkers are making it easier. 

“Everybody here is willing to make themselves vulnerable to help you succeed,” he says. “There's no other place in the world where you’ve got coworkers like that.” 

After completing Pallet’s Career Launch PAD, Jeff is determined to leverage the technical skills he’s learned and the certifications he’s obtained to operate his own business and maintain his relationships with his family. For good reason, he’s betting on himself. 

“My vision is that when we graduate that class, I can move on to just work in my own company completely and move forward,” he says. “Because when you work for yourself, you get what you're worth.” 

Meet the other three featured participants in Pallet’s Career Launch PAD and read their stories.