Once on a path of drug and alcohol addiction, Rodney Atleson, left, and Roger King are turning their lives around with the help of the Outreach Gospel Mission. The Pilot/Steve Kadel

He knew he’d hit bottom when he woke up on the banks of Link River in Klamath Falls.

Drug and alcohol abuse had driven Rodney Atleson to despair. He realized he had to change his life.

“I asked God for help,” he said. “I walked to Grants Pass and started praying about it. My feet were bleeding and blistered.”

 Atleson, now 45, hitchhiked from Grants Pass to Cave Junction, where he stopped at a store and spotted Roger King, an old friend from Gospel Outreach Mission in Brookings.

The two men hugged and King gave him a ride to Brookings.

“It was meant to be,” King said of their meeting. “He was in dire straits. He said, ‘I’m going back to the mission. I need help.’”

It was Atleson’s second stint there for substance abuse recovery. The first stay lasted just three months.

“I thought I was strong enough to do it on my own, but I wasn’t,” he said. “I ended up back on the street.”

Now Atleson serves as the mission’s cook. He’s taking continuing education classes at the Brookings campus of Southwestern Oregon Community College and plans to go on to Multnomah Bible College in Portland for ministry and leadership classes.

“I can see myself helping these guys,” he said of clients at Gospel Outreach Mission.

His friend, King, has taken a similar path in life. Alcohol and drugs created demons for him, too.

“I was on a road to destruction and that road was about to dead end,” he said.

Problems started early with substance abuse in high school at Clarksville, Tenn.

“My last couple of years in high school were dazed and confused,” King said. “I just showed up.”

He began working to finance his drug and alcohol habits, eventually moving to Los Angeles where he worked at the airport. Still, partying was more important than anything else. As years went by, he began feeling shame, guilt and depression, he said.

Eventually he accepted God, found the Brookings mission, and cleaned up. King, 55, has been sober for 22 months and is manager of recovery programs at the mission. He’s also working on his GED through the community college, taking classes a couple of days a week.

“Education helps a person gain respect for themselves,” he said. “I’ve been turned down for so many good jobs because I didn’t have a high school diploma, but you’re never too old to go back to school.”

Mission Executive Director Michael Olsen called education the key in turning lives around.

“In my 15 years of experience, I’ve never seen progress among men in missions unless education is involved,” he said.

Olsen’s goal is for every client at the mission to be involved in some kind of educational program. He schedules things at the mission so each man can do their required chores and have time for some classes.

“In Roger’s case I told him to leave here with a high school education and possibly a couple of college credits and he’d be on his way,” Olsen said.

He doesn’t encourage clients to take online classes. That’s partially because the mission doesn’t have a tutor, but mostly because online study doesn’t offer the student-to-student or student-to-instructor interaction that traditional classes provide.

“That’s what they need to work on,” Olsen said.

Atleson and King, who share an apartment in Brookings, are both grateful for the encouragement Olsen has given them.

Said Atleson, who hopes to enter the ministry, “Michael has been a huge blessing to my life.”