From Crack to College

Jan. 11, 2009— -- A homeless, crack-addicted ex-convict typically doesn't make the ideal college student.

But when Delora Evans stopped using drugs for good, she became unshakably committed to college, with its hard work and rigorous schedule, so she could help others trying to beat their habit.

"I've been moving at this fast pace since I've been clean, and I didn't know how to do anything else," Evans said.

On Dec. 13, she graduated magna cum laude from the University of North Texas in Denton with a degree in rehabilitation studies.

Evans, 43, a mother of four, gets up at 4 a.m. to work as a drug counselor at Hutchins State Jail. She will begin pursuing her master's degree in January and said her long-term goal is to become a prison chaplain.

"Whenever I went to jail, I was always on my own. My family didn't support me," Evans said. "I only had the chaplains and the people I had in jail, so it just affected me and made me want to be a chaplain."

Such diligence and ambition are a stark contrast from where Evans was about 20 years ago.

Evans gave birth to her first son shortly before graduating from W.H. Adamson High School in Dallas in 1984. Two years later, her second son was born.

She smoked marijuana and started using a new drug, crack cocaine.

"Everybody looked at it as just another drug. Nobody knew the devastation that it held," she said.

In 1988, she was arrested for selling cocaine to an undercover Dallas police officer. When she violated her probation by not reporting to her probation officer, Evans was sent to prison for 21 months.

"My addiction didn't stop through the '90s. I was homeless. I was in jails. I was in rehab five times," she said.

In 1994, she gave birth to a daughter.

In May 2001, Evans checked into a rehabilitation program that would finally work for her: First Choice at the Salvation Army in Fort Worth.

This time, Evans was determined. Deborah Bullock, a staff member at the Salvation Army, could see the steely resolve that Evans put toward turning her life around.

"She's always been a fighter. She's come into a lot of obstacles, but she just keeps her head up and keeps on going," Bullock said. "From the first time I ever met Delora, I think she's always been determined.

"I don't remember her ever being discouraged."

Evans said the program worked because it was holistic. She was homeless, and it gave her a place to live. She was an addict, and it gave her counseling.

After years of abusing drugs, she was clueless about how to manage her life.

"You get to be 35 or 40 and you don't know the first thing about living. You don't know how to pay bills. You don't know how to balance a checkbook," Evans said.

The program helped her with life skills such as budgeting, stress management, meal preparation and exercise.

Evans, who lives in Fort Worth, took some of that focus-on-the-basics-first philosophy when she enrolled at Tarrant County College.

"I went to anything that I could get information from, anything that could help me become a college student," she said.

She earned her associate degree from TCC in 2004, and her fourth child, a daughter, was born the next year.

By the time she enrolled at UNT, Evans was a serious college student.

Linda Holloway, chairwoman of UNT's department of rehabilitation, social work and addiction, said Evans was a hardworking student who could compare her experiences as a former drug user with the research she was studying.

"She's always prepared and on top of things and challenges you," Holloway said.

"She would bring up her past, and she used that a lot in how she prepared herself and what she thought was realistic."