Yakima Neighborhood Health Services

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Kicking a $200/day addiction

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Manny Correa-Torres, 62, knows he’s lucky to be alive.

Discharged from the hospital after a motorcycle crash about 3 years ago, Manny came to Yakima Neighborhood Health Services for help. He had lost his apartment and had no income. What he did have was a $200-a-day heroin habit.

After his discharge from the hospital – where he had undergone surgery for multiple broken bones — Neighborhood Health case managers moved him into an apartment for respite care

When he recovered, Manny moved into Bright Futures, Neighborhood Health’s supportive housing program. His case manager, Veronica Castaneda, said he talked about wanting to beat his addiction, which he had committed to after his discharge. But he had a hard time. His son had recently died. Heroin was all he had.

“I had no emotional support,” Manny recalls.

Veronica would not give up on Manny. She’d find him at a homeless encampment, nearly lifeless and incontinent, buying and 

selling and using heroin. “Manny and I went back and forth. I’d say, ‘Manny, you can’t be doing this. I don’t want to find you dead.’”

But Manny spiralled downhill. He was on the verge of getting kicked out of Bright Futures. Veronica tried getting him into a methadone clinic but for medical reasons, it was not a good fit. She then took him to a suboxone program. Within a month of starting suboxone, he agreed to go to a residential treatment center in Vancouver, WA.

After 30 days, he returned to Yakima and Veronica picked him up at the bus station. Manny was stable and free of heroin. Veronica reports that he now counsels others recovering from substance abuse. He also tends a bountiful garden at Bright Futures, harvesting cabbage and other vegetables and flowers. He tended to his Grandmother’s garden as a boy in Puerto Rico.

“Veronica,” Manny says to her during a recent visit, “you were stronger than me. I was struggling. I’m sorry.”

“Oh no, no, no” she replies. “It’s OK. I’m happy for you. You have a lot to live for Manny.”

Louise Pulliam: Calling on Others to Understand Homelessness

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Louise Pulliam

Louise Pulliam of Yakima knows too well the heartache of homelessness. Just two days before Christmas last year, her youngest son, Scott, died on the streets of Fort Smith, Arkansas. He was just 44.

Louise, 81, didn’t know it at the time, but Scott had a heart condition and had likely run out of medicine he was supposed to take, according to a friend who phoned her the news.

Losing the youngest of her ten children to a preventable death stirred something in Louise’s already generous heart.

She and her grandson had each recently won $150 in a radio contest. Instead of indulging themselves, they spent the money on socks and hygiene items for homeless clients of Yakima Neighborhood Health Services at The Depot, the Union Gospel Mission and Rod’s House.

Louise told an employee of The Depot that to honor her son, she was going to donate anything she could to assist the homeless of Yakima, and earlier this week she arrived with three large bags.  Her birthday had been over the weekend, but she informed her family and friends that she did not want a birthday party or gifts. If they wanted to do something for her, they could donate to the homeless.

It’s Louise’s way of keeping the memory of her late son close. Scott used to call his mother every week, and in one of their last conversations, he said he wanted to come home to Yakima.

“He said he made a mistake going back to Arkansas. He said, ‘I want to come home.’”

Hardship and loss are nothing new to Louise. As a young mother, she was a migrant farm worker, or “fruit tramp” as she calls it, during the 50s and 60s, following the harvest across the West. She had watched her mother’s hands grow gnarled and chapped from picking cotton in Arkansas and decided she would only work in orchards.

“To put nylon stockings on, she had to wear gloves,” Louise recalled.

Despite the loss of Scott, Louise said she’s grateful to God she’s still alive to enjoy her many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And every year on her birthday, she vows to help Yakima’s homeless in some way, gathering donations of whatever they might need.

And she called on more people to understand homelessness as a way to honor Scott, who she said didn’t want to be without a home but who had anxieties about being in enclosed spaces. “He would stay with his sister here and in the morning she’d find him asleep outside.

“I want to do whatever I can to be helpful to these folks,” she said.

What’s happening with the old Roy’s Market?

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6th Street

Eleven volunteers from Wells Fargo Bank participated in the Day of Action Sept. 27 by creating a “Bucket Brigade” to clear out the old Roy’s market at Sixth St. & Walnut.

The group completed work started in the summer by the Washington National Guard.

Neighborhood Health is renovating Roy’s into a Community Resource Service Center to provide transitional living for chronically homeless members of our community. We hope to break ground in January with the facility opening late next summer.

Barbara Johnston’s Story – Quality Primary Care

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Barbara Johnston

It’s no secret that when people gain health insurance coverage and access to a primary car provider, their health improves.

Last year, 64 percent of patients who visited a Yakima Neighborhood Health clinic gained control over their hypertension. That is in line with the national average for community health centers.

Quality primary care also means looking after our patients in the communities where they live and finding gaps in that care that could lead to more costly problems down the road.

Take Barbara Johnston. The Yakima senior told her Neighborhood Health care coordinator – whose job is to find those care gaps – that her eyesight was quickly deteriorating. It was declining so significantly that she was having trouble reading prescription labels and unable to call for a refill of her blood pressure medication prescription. The coordinator connected Barbara with Neighborhood’s Vision Care program in Sunnyside. There, over four months, she received a series of injections for macular degeneration. Her vision improved – so much so that she could again watch her beloved Seahawks on television as well as reading again.

Just imagine the consequences if Barbara had been unable to read her prescription labels to reorder her blood pressure medication!

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