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By PATRICK BUTLER
Staff Writer

Through her tears, Kari Howell, 31, remembers the night she was "coked out" and compulsively clawing at her face, scratching herself bloody. She was alone in her Jacksonville house, she said, peering out into the after-midnight darkness, nervously looking for someone who would never come.

"I had no idea what I was looking for," she said. "I'd do another line of coke and then look outside again for something or someone, I don't know which. I'd really made a mess of my life. I'm surprised I don't have scars all over my face today."

That night she began to wander around her neighborhood, looking for the elusive something. A stranger came up to her and asked, "what in the world are you doing?"

"I didn't know what I was doing," she said. "My life had hit the bottom."

But hitting bottom led her to Tyler's Salvation Army City of Hope, where she's lived since September 2007. With three of her children beside her, she recounted her steps toward self-destruction.

"I'd only been doing powder cocaine for about two years but in that time, I lost everything," she said, "my house, my kids, my job - everything. Thieves came and stole things from me. My best friend called Child Protective Services and my kids were taken away."

All of this she recounted with a humble calmness. What finally made Kari cry was the recollection that she'd been looking for love in all the wrong places for years, and it really hadn't worked - men, drugs, things. She had her first child when she was a teenager. Six children and 12 years later with no husband, she finally feels like she's on the right track.

"I made a mess of my life and there's no one to blame but myself," she said, drying her eyes. "I'm not going to say God did anything to me. Everything happened because of the choices I made."

She ticked off a list of choices.

"I got pregnant and my momma didn't know what to do with me, she said. "And then the men and those things that followed. I don't blame her for turning away."

She said she was surprised, though, by drug addiction.

"I just decided one day to do the drugs. I don't know what in the world possessed me to do it. For some reason, I thought it would be a good thing to do. I just broke under the pressure, I guess. It got out of hand," and then after a reflection added, "it got way, way, way out of hand."

Since going through the Salvation Army's chemical dependency program, Reconnect, she's slowly been reunited with her family, child by child. She now resides in the Family Dormitory of the City of Hope's Lodge.

The contrast to her former life could not be more vivid, Kari's mother, Sherrill, said.

Sherrill has dropped by briefly at the City of Hope to bring Terrance, Kari's firstborn son. "I was a dumb as a doorknob about the things Kari was involved with," she said. "I couldn't tell what was happening. But she's in a safe place now and I'm proud of her. There are not many people who get into the mess she did and pull themselves out of it. You can't imagine the difference in her."

In the quiet of a Thursday evening after dinner, Kari sits on a bench in the City of Hope's courtyard holding her hands in her lap. She watches her daughter Jakayla, 11, happily at play with her brother, Melvin, 9. Sunlight through the tree above makes shadow and light dance around her tied-back hair. There are few obvious traces of a life of turmoil written over her pensive features. If this moment was not at the Salvation Army, one could picture Kari Howell at a church social.

Surveying the scene before her, she said quietly, "I cried for a month when I got here. I was so full of shame for what I'd done and how much I'd hurt everybody around me. I took my kids for granted. When God showed me that, it took the breath out of me."

Terrance comes and takes a seat by his mother. In the seventh-grade, Terrance is polite, quiet and clearly having to adjust to his new surroundings. Kari looks quietly in the young man's face with patience and a mother's look of hope and empathy.

"This will be an adjustment for him," she said quietly, patting his knee. She's right. The entire family will sleep in a room about 15 by 30 feet with bunk beds and a wide double bed.

"I'm working now and saving my money, so we can move out," she said. She may be considered for a managerial position at the store where she's employed, she said. Her children go to school and attend the Salvation Army's After School Program, which they enjoy.

"I can't believe how good God has been to me," she said. "Miracles happen in this place. They really do."

There is plenty for Kari and the other families at the City of Hope to do. There are 15 family rooms in the Family Dormitory section of the Lodge. The rooms surround a large, clean central living area. There are hugs and hellos and happy children playing there as Kari and her own kids pass through to their room.

Everyone seems to be comfortable and encouraging with each other.

"Right now, we have a pretty good group of 13 families," said David Craddock, director of residential services at the City of Hope. "One time we had 43 children on hand, and it can get a bit stressful at times when there's that many, but it's fairly calm right now. They get along really well."

Krystal, 5 years old, runs up with wide eyes and excitedly asks, "Is Jakayla going to be in the newspaper? Can I be too?" There is a palpable sense of support at the City of Hope.

"There really is plenty of support here," Kari said. "These Salvation Army people are here to help. If you want to start over, this is the place."

Kari attends the Alcoholic Anonymous meeting, the Narcotics Anonymous meeting, the Marijuana Anonymous meeting and the Sunday service meetings at the Salvation Army chapel. She attends the Praise and Worship and has gone through the Army's Reconnect program.

"I've learned what my 'triggers' are, how to handle it, how to deal with past issues that keep you in bondage and how not to be afraid," she said. "I am afraid sometimes."

Capt. John Falin, commander of the Tyler Corps, oriented Kari to God, during Sunday meetings, she said and David Craddick, the dorm manager.

"He said God is a forgiving God," she said. "He's the God of the second chance. There's nothing you can do bad enough to separate you from the love of God. When you come off the street, you need to hear that because you're full of shame of the hurt you caused everyone."

And she's learning about unconditional love to others.

"Sometimes people coming here (the City of Hope) are right off the street," she said. "They're dirty or smell sometimes and it's easy to want to avoid them. But God showed me, 'this is where you could have been if you'd continued the way you were going.' I look at those people now and think 'what happened to you that you ended up like this, hungry and homeless, addicted to drugs and dirty?' Maybe they're veterans. They need love too and that's what God is showing me; you've just got to love everybody."

NEXT WEEK: Summer Youth Program