Still lifting men and women through community and recovery at Helping Up Mission

It’s been far too long since we’ve properly told the amazing story of Helping Up Mission and were delighted that Dan Stoltzfus dropped by Koco’s Pub on “A Cup Of Soup Or Bowl” to discuss what happened with the two bags of donations Nestor left last summer at the doors of one of the venerable institutions that stands for what it says: helping people up.

Dan Stoltzfus from Helping Up Mission discussed their efforts in East Baltimore to help men and women recover from addiction. The mission serves 500 men daily and 125 women and children at their Center for Women and Children, which opened in 2022. They provide a one-year recovery program, including work therapy, clinical appointments, and spiritual recovery classes. The mission serves about 1,600 meals daily and has a mobile outreach bus for street outreach. They emphasize the importance of community support and invite volunteers and donations. The mission also partners with Johns Hopkins for clinical support and has a strong alumni network.

• [ ] @Nestor Aparicio – Promote and distribute Maryland Lottery Candy Cane Cash giveaway tickets at events (today at Koco’s, Pizza John’s in Essex on Thursday, and other upcoming locations) by running on-air promotion and bringing tickets to the sites
• [ ] @Nestor Aparicio – Request more Maryland Lottery tickets from Roz for the Maryland crab cake promotion and secure additional tickets as needed
• [ ] @Nestor Aparicio – Volunteer at Helping Up Mission to serve lunch (approximately 11:00 to 2:00) and help on-site to support meal service
• [ ] @Nestor Aparicio – Text the Helping Up Mission contact (Dan) the next time you are at the mission to coordinate or follow up

Helping Up Mission’s Community Impact

• Nestor Aparicio introduces the Helping Up Mission and mentions various community initiatives, including Candy Cane cash giveaways and Maryland Food Bank awareness.
• Nestor shares a personal story about visiting the Helping Up Mission and donating items, highlighting the organization’s impact on the community.
• Dan Stoltzfus, from Helping Up Mission, joins the conversation and shares his background with the organization, having been there for about seven and a half years.
• Dan explains the mission’s history and its focus on helping men and women recover from addiction, emphasizing the importance of community and brotherhood.

Expanding Services to Women and Children

• Dan discusses the expansion of Helping Up Mission to include a Center for Women and Children, which opened in 2022.
• The center currently serves about 125 women and their children, addressing the growing need for substance use recovery services for women.
• Dan highlights the significant issue of substance use as the leading cause of maternal death in Maryland, driving the need for specialized recovery programs for women.
• Nestor and Dan discuss the broader impact of substance abuse across different demographics and geographic areas in Maryland.

Community Support and Transformation

• Nestor shares his experiences visiting the Helping Up Mission and observing the positive environment and community spirit among the residents.
• Dan describes the mission’s approach to recovery, which includes work therapy, clinical appointments, and spiritual recovery classes.
• Dan shares a personal story about a man named Scott, who entered the program in a dire state and has since made significant progress in his recovery.
• The conversation emphasizes the transformative power of the Helping Up Mission’s program and the importance of community support in the recovery process.

Operational Details and Community Engagement

• Dan provides details about the daily operations at the Helping Up Mission, including the work therapy program and the meals served to residents.
• The mission serves about 1600 meals a day across its two campuses, with much of the food coming from donations and the Maryland Food Bank.
• Dan highlights the importance of community involvement, including volunteers and donations, in supporting the mission’s operations.
• The conversation touches on the mission’s outreach efforts, including a new mobile outreach bus to reach individuals who may be resistant to entering traditional recovery programs.

Challenges and Future Plans

• Dan discusses the challenges of meeting the growing demand for recovery services, especially during times of crisis like the pandemic.
• The mission has partnerships with other organizations to provide additional support and referrals for individuals in need of recovery services.
• Dan shares plans for expanding the mission’s outreach and services, including a focus on pregnant and parenting moms through partnerships with organizations like Hopkins Bayview.
• The conversation concludes with a call to action for community members to support the Helping Up Mission through donations, volunteering, and spreading awareness about the organization’s work.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Helping Up Mission, addiction recovery, East Baltimore, men’s campus, women’s center, substance use, Maryland Food Bank, work therapy, 12-step program, Johns Hopkins, mobile outreach, community support, volunteer opportunities, donations, transformative recovery.

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SPEAKERS

Nestor Aparicio, Dan Stoltzfus

Nestor Aparicio  00:00

Hey, welcome home. We are W, N, S T am 1570 task Baltimore. We are Baltimore, positive, positively here at Koco’s, and once I get my phone out of my pocket so I can promote the helping up mission the proper way, Candy Cane cash giveaways from the Maryland lottery. Have these today. We will also have them at Pizza John’s in Essex. On Thursday, will be a Costa simtimonium on Friday. By then, I will be at a lottery tickets, and I’ll need Roz to give me more for the Maryland crab cake. So we call this a cup of soup or bowl creating awareness for the Maryland Food Bank and all sorts of places that are doing great, great things in a community. We’ve had so many great stories, and I’m not even midway through the week, they haven’t gotten me to cry yet. I’ve been on the edge three different times, once a day, every day, but it hasn’t happened yet. I don’t think it’ll happen in this one because I’ve been down to your place. Your place doesn’t make me cry. Kind of makes me smile. Earlier in a year, not this year, but last year, 25 we had a bag of stuff, and my wife’s like, we got to give that away. We got to give that away. I’m like, I’m going down. I was right down in the city, and I’m like, I’m going by helping up. It was in the trunk of the car, and I threw it in there, and it gave me one of those little forms that I never give to my account, not alone, but I did. I snapped a picture, you know, me with bags of stuff inside of your place, giving away a whole bunch of shirts. And I remember back in the day we collected jackets and brought them down. And though the Ravens do a lot with you on the sports teams, but it’s good to see you dance here from helping a mission. And the first thing you said was, you lived in laurelville. This is, yeah,

Dan Stoltzfus  01:27

that’s right, yeah. I was like, Yeah, I’ll do this at Koco’s. Is great. Give me an excuse to come back. We take care of each other. Exactly how long you been with helping them? I’ve been there about seven and a half years,

Nestor Aparicio  01:36

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all right, so my background with that, it’s probably the 15 years ago, we did a station wide thing. We had coach, Coach. We had to get a truck to take everything that we had down there because of the generosity of our audience. All these years later, give me some statistics. You know, just the white paper on how many people you’ve helped, because helping us an interesting place, because the whole idea is we’re moving men in, changing lives, and then those men are hopefully, and I would think, 15 years later, surviving, thriving out in the community, probably coming back and helping on weekends to help the next group of guys, right? Because that’s, that was kind of the Brotherhood of what

Dan Stoltzfus  02:16

you’re doing. That’s right, you got it, Nestor, that’s you’ve captured it, and right there on East Baltimore Street. Now we have, since you know, you’ve been there to donate you, you understand our our men’s campus, we have 500 men that are living with us every day and working on their recovery. And now, in the last four years, we’ve opened up down the street our Center for Women and children, where we’re serving about right now, we got about 125 women and and their children in that center working on their recovery.

Nestor Aparicio  02:46

So women come it was men in the beginning, right?

Dan Stoltzfus  02:49

That’s right. Historically, we’ve served men and women. We celebrated 140 years last year, so I kind of dug in. Yeah, it’s been around a while, really. And so we historically have served men, women and children, but for the last probably 100 years or so, it’s been mainly focused on men and addiction recovery and decided, our board decided, and my predecessor, Bob Gaiman, led a fundraising campaign, and we built a brand new Center for Women and children. And so we’ve been doing that, and how long we opened in 2022 really?

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Nestor Aparicio  03:25

Okay, I always thought of helping up as a men’s thing, but last couple years, people would say they got a women’s thing cross street. And I’m like, I wasn’t there for the ribbon cutting on that.

Dan Stoltzfus  03:33

Yeah, it is. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a whole new area. We saw the need. We you know, you mentioned you haven’t been you haven’t cried yet. This might make you cry when you hear about the number of the leading cause of maternal death in Maryland has been for women, has been substance use, overdose. And so we saw that need, and we said, hey, we got to open the doors for recovery, for for, for women. Keller’s a good friend of mine. Yeah, absolutely.

Nestor Aparicio  04:06

Yeah, Emily and I’ve gotten to just, we just became friends. I can’t even explain it to me. She’s been with us. You’ve been mouthy on the internet out in Hagerstown when she was the mayor. Yeah, and I called her, said, I want to have you on the show. And next thing you know, we just, when we’re in a room together, we wind up. She met me at Hagerstown for donuts three months ago in the middle of the

Dan Stoltzfus  04:24

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night, and they’ve been great supporters in a number

Nestor Aparicio  04:27

she comes on, she talks to me, and obviously the mayor fell, or excuse me, the governor fell in love with her. Joe. Joe Biden, you know the whole deal, but people that understand what’s going on in the street, not just with men, not just with women. It’s not black, it’s not white, it’s not even suburban and urban. We’re talking about substance abuse. We’re talking about fentanyl. We’re talking about prescription painkillers and in mining towns in the west part of the state and beyond, OH. Yeah, I do think that people think like, oh, it’s a city problem. It’s, it’s a problem of economics, all of that. People come into your center with all sorts of backgrounds, right?

Dan Stoltzfus  05:10

That really cuts across everything socio economically, racially, we’re, we’re touching every county in Maryland Now, up and down,

Nestor Aparicio  05:18

that were not educated or didn’t go to school, or didn’t get a degree, or didn’t have a job, in many cases, didn’t have a family at one point, but they find themselves in these really awful circumstances where no one wants to help them, and that’s helping up. That’s right, mission. That’s we’re there.

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Dan Stoltzfus  05:35

I mean, when Abraham Braden, bar, founder, he was a Methodist minister, came to Baltimore in 1885 said, Hey, I just want to help some people up, and we’re doing the same thing today. And what I tell people when they come to visit us, when they tour, you know, there’s so much talent in our house every day, like the guys that are coming in, the women that are coming in, tremendous talent their lives have just gotten a little off track with addiction, and we want to help them get back on track, but we also want to help people understand they have, they have skills. We want to restore that dignity. We want to restore the hope that they have for the future. And that’s our that’s our job. And sometimes, you know, one of the distinctives of our mission is it’s a one year program like that’s that’s not the norm, but we find people coming into our program are 1520, years active addiction. We just believe you need a little more. It’s not a weekend to change that narrative. It’s not a 90 day package. Absolutely, absolutely dance here from

Nestor Aparicio  06:31

helping up. So let me I’ve been in your building five times in my life, and most recently last year, and I came down, and I double parked out in front, and I was going down to patisserie pub on to get so good some to get some Yum Yums for myself. And I down the street. Yeah, right. So I was, I was dropping stuff off, and I went in, I looked around in his lobby, and, hey, where do I drop? Drop it here. And guys came to me, and they took my stuff said, thank you very much. I’ve been in there and I folks were always eating. There’s, there’s these big rooms to the right when I went in, I’ve been there for I was there feeding folks. One time I would say to anybody out there, I want to do something to help somebody good at helping up for lunch one day. Just get in there from like 11 to two, yeah, help me out a little bit. You know, see what’s going on down there. You won’t feel threatened. Matter of fact, you’re probably every person you meet will probably be the nicest person you’ve ever met, because they come up to you. It is. It’s a little society you have down there. Am I right in saying it?

Dan Stoltzfus  07:36

We like to call it a community of hope, everybody holding everybody

Nestor Aparicio  07:39

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else accountable it is. And I got that right away when I’ve been

Dan Stoltzfus  07:44

exactly, exactly and I mean, I’ve worked there, I’ve worked there for about seven and a half years, I’m still inspired by what I see happening, and I love to be a part of it. I might be a little biased, right, but, but I see the transformation. I tell people, have a front row seat to that transformation. Because I see what, last year

Nestor Aparicio  08:03

or two, somebody comes in, you saw him in their worst place. Now, I can go down there right now, and they’re on their way through beyond out, or even better, somebody already is.

Dan Stoltzfus  08:12

Yeah, tell you about a guy, Scott, he came in through a family connection that I have somebody out of state knew. Somebody. He really knew he came in and I didn’t know him, but a family member said, hey, you need to get to the helping out mission, because he’d been active addiction on the street, panhandling, the whole thing, right? And not from here, not from here, but said, hey, you need to go to the helping up mission. Literally, when he walked in, I looked at his, you know, intake application. Then, like, this guy’s in his 40s, he looked like he was about 70, okay, just by, beat down by the addiction being on the street, he had a walker, like he’s, he’s trying to move around. And his family member that referred him was like, Hey, he doesn’t usually stick in these programs.

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Nestor Aparicio  08:59

Like, don’t feel if he fails, right?

Dan Stoltzfus  09:03

Yeah, but to see him now, I gave him a hug after, after our graduation phase up chapel. He’s now almost six months into our program. He physically looks different, better, right? He no longer has a walker. He’s had to get some, health care, some, you know, some issues address, but that’s the kind of transformation. It happens, sometimes incrementally, but that’s what we see every day, and our our intakes are coming in from around Baltimore City.

Nestor Aparicio  09:34

Let’s talk about this, because fellas got a real problem. He’s in his 40s. Looks like he’s in his 70s. He’s beaten up, giving up giving up for dead. Nobody loves him. Nobody can find him there. Send him to you. He walks in. He’s frightened. He’s scared. He’s sheltered. He didn’t know anybody. Probably been in places where people might hurt him, you know, or can’t even trust, to shut his one eye to sleep, right, right when you’re on the street, I can only imagine. I mean, I’m. Going based on what I’ve seen in movies and the stories I’ve heard. I haven’t been exposed to it like that, but he comes in when I’ve been in your building, correct me if I’m wrong, because I’m just this is, if I had to explain it to somebody on the outside, it feels to me like everybody’s assigned like a gig in the building. That’s right, everybody has a job. And it could be, Oh, you like to cook. You cook. You like to do dishes. You trash. You got trash. Oh, we welcome new people. You’re good with people. Hey, counting the shirts that just came in the Nestor just brought there getting, oh, laundry, let’s take it. These are so it’s like, literally, a little bit, like a little military

Dan Stoltzfus  10:34

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barrack sort of captured it. Well, we call it work, therapy work. Okay, good. They’re the guys get something to do. Yeah, it actually is what people walk into our facility, and I heard somebody told me this, who was, you know, had been in the federal government, worked in a lot of facilities, been in a lot of places. Said most shelters smell like Clorox or urine. You guys are different. Like something’s different about this. There’s a dignity thing. You know, who makes that happen? That is the men and women that come into our program because they each have a work therapy. So that’s a big part of their day, right? That’s a big part of their day. They contribute. They have classes. They have clinical appointments with Johns Hopkins, classes like spiritual recovery classes. It’s 12 step based. It’s meeting people where they’re at we’re a Christian organization, but we don’t force that on anybody. We meet people exactly where they are. We believe we know who the higher power is, but people have a different god of their understanding. So our recovery classes are about helping people work their recovery. It’s centered around the 12 Steps, right? They get clinical appointments through Hopkins, but that work therapy is really important. You talked about the meals being served, and people come to serve. I like to call helping out mission one of Baltimore’s busiest restaurants. We’re here in a pretty busy restaurant, right? But in this restaurant and helping out mission, between our two campuses, we’re serving about 1600 meals a day, right? 365, days a year. The staff. We have three staff in each kitchen. How many folks? And the rest is work, therapy. So we have 500 men in our men’s campus. We currently have about 125 okay, right, right? And so we’re serving that community every day, the you know, we get a lot of food from the Maryland Food Bank. Like we we buy some food, we get a lot of food donations. So Baltimore’s busy. I don’t know if statistically, it’s Baltimore’s busiest restaurant, but it’s pretty close, right? There are many serving 1800 covers, and there’s not many that are running it on three staff members in each kitchen, and the rest is work, therapy and volunteers who come and serve a meal, or, you know, we have

Nestor Aparicio  12:47

job today’s three to five, Joe, get the meals together. Yeah. And what else you got?

Dan Stoltzfus  12:53

And I love that aspect of what we do every every year my my wife, makes this amazing chicken parmesan. So we’ve started the last six years. We we make her chicken parmesan at home and serve our community. It’s one of the most one of my favorite things. I’m like,

Nestor Aparicio  13:08

refer to it as home. By the way, I always hear helping out mission, yeah.

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Dan Stoltzfus  13:11

Sorry, acronym, yeah. Sorry, I speak acronym sometimes, like

Nestor Aparicio  13:15

I haven’t heard it referred to, yeah,

Dan Stoltzfus  13:17

yeah, yeah. So the helping out mission is probably better. But how can people help you? So they can go to helping up.org you can sign up to volunteer, you can donate, you can support the work. You know, just just this opportunity to tell our story, right, like today, we actually dedicated a new outreach bus. We have a mobile street outreach because we found during the pandemic that people were a little resistant to coming into recovery, but we knew that there was this epidemic of addiction that was going to outlast the pandemic. So we said, hey, our team, one of the things I love about our team their peers in recovery. So you mentioned guys that have graduated 15 years ago, like I had the privilege to be out there with Pete Griffin today. He’s our director of intake and outreach. He leads our mobile outreach team. He graduated our program over 12 years ago. He’s now on staff, and to see him in action on the street, there’s inviting city there that there’s authenticity we don’t have. You can’t hire, that you can’t go find that you can’t teach that. And that’s 70% of our team are graduates

Nestor Aparicio  14:23

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when they come on site. So we have, they try and invite people into the mission, right? Exactly.

Dan Stoltzfus  14:27

We’re trying to get them the mission. We serve soup, hot chocolate, coffee. We go out on the street, street food banks that involved in supporting this

Nestor Aparicio  14:36

being on the street right now, I met snow came last week, right? Yeah, and my wife and my wife and I, we’re gonna get this. We’re gonna get that. We’re gonna take care of this and that. Can’t imagine, if you’re on a street

Dan Stoltzfus  14:46

in this city this winter, it’s rough. It’s rough. So we have six bangs on the door at midnight at your place. You let them in. We, we try. I mean, sadly, our men’s campus right now is totally full, but we, we try to make that happen anything we can during time. Times like this. You know, the city and other resources kind of stand up in terms of, right? There’s other shelters that open up.

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Nestor Aparicio  15:06

You pick up the phone and say, We got somebody here. We need to nobody gets turned away.

Dan Stoltzfus  15:11

That’s right, we we try to meet everybody right where they’re at.

Nestor Aparicio  15:15

So donations, simple time, money, resources, or, Hey, I got some coaching hats laying around looking to give away Exactly.

Dan Stoltzfus  15:22

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Away, exactly? That’s a huge part spring cleaning, yeah, we call it gifts in kind, right? The clothes, the hygiene kits, everything we give away makes a huge difference. So thank you for coming by personally and doing that. We appreciate that.

Nestor Aparicio  15:34

You know, for me, I got involved 15 years ago because somebody else knew about it, and that’s kind of word of mouth, hon, that’s what I do at

Dan Stoltzfus  15:41

Baldwin, exactly, exactly. All right? Well, next time you’re there, you know you got, you got my number, text me

Nestor Aparicio  15:47

and specifically on the lady side, tell me, that’s a newer thing, right? I’ve had her resiliency here today. I’ve done house good work so many project place over the West Side. I’ve talked to them earlier this week, the women’s side of this and the need for the outreach for it, I find that to be kind of amazing, because you weren’t doing that work. I hear 125 over there. Well, every six months, every year, four years into this, talking about 1000 women that have probably been through your place just that didn’t exist a decade ago.

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Dan Stoltzfus  16:19

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And different

Nestor Aparicio  16:21

work with women than men. Yeah,

Dan Stoltzfus  16:23

it is. We’re learning. We have a great team. Pam Wilkerson is our senior director there that leads that center, and, you know, been building out a team. We’re serving a lot of pregnant and parenting moms that are referred to us from Hopkins Bayview Comprehensive Addiction pregnancy program, and to see those moms work in their recovery and getting to keep their baby, not losing custody their baby, because they’re in our program, this is something that

Nestor Aparicio  16:47

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a safe place to be, right, and a place where they’re moving forward, exactly, not sideways, and certainly not backwards, right?

Dan Stoltzfus  16:55

Yeah, when we started that partnership with Hopkins, it was 2023, so about three years ago, and, I mean, it’s been all the way live ever since, right? Like, it’s, it’s, there’s a lot of activity in the building. We’ve had 60 babies that have been born, you know, while they’re

Nestor Aparicio  17:13

away, right? Because you really, you sort of looking to take women who might be pregnant, might have pub, I mean, that’s like a lane for you, it’s like, literally, right?

Dan Stoltzfus  17:22

What’s interesting is we haven’t seen as much demand or intakes for that program, and I think maybe part of it is just helping. Our mission has been so long associated with the men’s program. So one of the reasons we’re doing outreach, one of the reasons we build partnerships with other 28 day programs, or programs that are doing great work in the city, like Turk house and pyramid and other places, is because we want to be able to receive some because sometimes they go through a shorter term program and they need a little bit more. And that’s why the partnerships, like with the Comprehensive Addiction pregnancy program at Hopkins Bayview, they’re critical to help us identify women in need.

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Nestor Aparicio  18:00

Well, helping up mission, can help you. Give them the website again, give them a phone number, tell them who you are and how to

Dan Stoltzfus  18:05

find you. Yep. So helping up mission, helping up.org and our intake hotline, if you know somebody in need of recovery, is 410-929-6999, and you can email me at, Daniel at helping up.org

Nestor Aparicio  18:20

Daniel and helping up.org that’s way to find him. My appreciation everybody this week, and certainly to the audience out there, giving you a lot of options and ways that you know good things are going on. And if you know about it, maybe you can help out some way, with a check, a donation your time, if nothing else, your good thoughts that when these things do come to you, Hey, I know Dan. Dan Dan helping up. Let me call Nestor. Let me email me. I heard you one time tell a story about helping some people. This is what it’s all about. And if you’re collecting coats and hats and all that stuff, Christmas time, you’re involved in any of those kind of things that we all get to it’s why I did cup of Super Bowl in February, because for the food bank. And I’m thinking, maybe your organization’s a little different, a little more mature than some of the other places. But food pantries in the neighborhoods and stuff they try up this time of year, because everybody’s got a big heart between Thanksgiving and Christmas, right? Yeah, and then the snow comes and get cold as hell. Ravens lose and we get, you know, we wind up. It’s February, and all this love next week with Valentine’s Day and things like that. Nobody’s yelling, give us some food. Give us some food.

Dan Stoltzfus  19:20

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It’s a great time to do it. Appreciate you highlighting the need. Well, that’s we’re trying to do here

Nestor Aparicio  19:24

each and every year. It’s cup of Super Bowl. It’s all brought to you by the Maryland lottery and our friends at GBMC. By the way, you get a candy lucky 42 there. Jackie Robinson, for you, Lucky 42 Yeah,

Dan Stoltzfus  19:33

we have GBMC clinic right on our campus that are helping out.

Nestor Aparicio  19:38

Mission that to me last week. So, yeah, partnership, yeah, they did. I’m 57 Dan. I never had a colonoscopy until last year. I got talked into it by Dr scary, who’s coming on next month, and I still owe an apology to you know, I did the colonoscopy, the drain did, yeah, like all that. No fun. It wasn’t as often. Cool as I thought, but it was very rewarding when they woke me up afterward, after that beautiful sleep that you get to have, and he’s like, Hey, you had precancerous polyps. Do we? We might save your life. How about that? So, you know, saving lives what we do around here, but GBMC keep me alive and well, and if you haven’t had your prostate colonoscopy, any of those things that you know that your wife’s been beaten up on you. You know your mama wants you to have make sure you go to GBMC, do that. Candy Cane cash giveaway here for the Maryland lottery. GBMC, putting us out on the road. And farmer and Dermer putting us out for HVAC. They visited my house yesterday. My HVAC is working. Thank God for heat this time of year. That’s all I can say. We’re going to come back here and do some more. I’ve got Dave here from mervo talking about robotics. I met him at a robotic I wasn’t a smart child. I wasn’t STEM at that point of I was verbal, right? Yeah, I was Dave here trains people way smarter than me on robotics and stuff. So we’re gonna have him on. We’ll get him next. We’re out here with Marcella and the good folks at Koco’s Pub, putting it on for the fourth year in a row. It is a cup of soup or bowl back for more at Koco’s. It’s a fun week. Stay warm or with us. You.