Drug court answered Oklahoma woman’s prayer
BY SONYA COLBERG
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Published: November 8, 2009
She must have made a sad, tiny figure flopped on the floor alone, high on cocaine. Judy Jenkins, then 40, pressed her hands together and tears trickled from her fawn eyes.
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BY The numbers
→4,501: Active drug court participants.
→53: Drug courts operating in Oklahoma.
→23.5 percent: Drug court graduates who are arrested again.
→
54.3 percent: Released inmates, without drug court exposure, who are arrested again.
→$19,000: Annual per person estimated cost of state Corrections Department incarceration.
→
$5,000: Annual per person estimated cost of drug court.
SOURCE: Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, January and July figures.
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How it began
About two decades earlier, Jenkins was draped in diamonds and furs, posed "like a little Barbie doll” before the cash register at the So Fine Club. At Interstate 40 and Council Road, it was a popular ’50s and ’60s club owned by her husband at the time, Larry Jenkins. He gave her a $6,000 mink for Christmas in 1987 and four days later served her papers that ended their nine-year marriage, he wrote in his book, "The Life of Larry Jenkins — From the Barroom to the Upper Room.”
"It wasn’t that I wanted another man. It was the drugs,” Judy Jenkins said of the affair her husband discovered. "You abandon all your moral upbringing, teaching and standards when you start getting high ... I broke his heart. I destroyed him. At the time I said I didn’t care, that it was fine. But that was a lie.”
More lies followed as the divorcee suddenly had more time to pursue her new love — small rocks of crack cocaine. She said she manipulated people to borrow money for drugs and lost track of months as her life began revolving around crack.
"You get money, that’s what you do ... say, ‘I’m going to the dope house.’”
She lost contact with her daughter and her parents even though they assured her whenever they did hear from her: Judy, you’ve always got a home to come home to.
"You can only destroy the people that love you. That’s what (counselor) Tasha Sherman-Harris says. And she’s right,” Jenkins said.
"I chose to dance that dance with the devil.”
Jail and prison became like second homes to Jenkins. She prefers to remember the light moments but said it was easy to continue her drug addiction in prison.
One night, a prison worker walked through and, according to Jenkins, called out, "All right girls. I smell that marijuana. You better put it out.”
"One of the girls yelled out, ‘Put it out, hell. We’ve done smoked it!’” Jenkins said.
Getting straight
Jenkins traded in her diamond jewelry for shackles and luxurious furs for orange jail garb as she stood before Special Judge Carol Ann Hubbard in Oklahoma County Drug Court in the fall of 2007. The judge placed her under the counseling of Tasha Sherman-Harris of Turning Point.
"Anyone going through this, you’ve got to have a Tasha Sherman-Harris. When I said I didn’t know whether I could do this, she said, ‘Yes, you can do this, Judy. I’ve got enough faith for both of us.’ I wouldn’t be where I am today without Tasha Sherman-Harris,” Jenkins said.
Sherman-Harris said she couldn’t comment because of privacy laws.
Jenkins said she made it through drug court in 18 months.
"A lot of folks think of this as some sort of free pass,” said Jeff Dismukes, spokesman for the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. "That’s wrong. These are tough programs and they’re well-managed programs. The evidence is the people who come out and change their lives.”
Jenkins, 52, now proudly displays her graduation certificate on her townhouse wall. She’s been sober three years, re-established family relationships and, though she’s not ready to give details, she’s now making plans to start her own business.
Looking back, she said, she realizes her mother was right when Jenkins complained to her that when she sought help from God, she got an immediate trip to jail.
"He did help you, Judy. He stopped the party,” Jenkins said her mother told her. "He answered your prayer.”
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