Mercedes Second Chance

I have found that on my spiritual journey, not everyone who changes my life, or helps me elevate to the next level will be in recovery. That’s the beauty of recovery, we work the 12 steps to right our wrongs, change our defective belief systems, and re-enter the world better than we came in. I first met promise at a Civil Rights Debate & Dialogue event, hosted by the League of Minority Voters. The event was a space for candidat...

Maya Noble is a beautiful, intelligent, and vibrant woman. Maya grew up in North Portland and is not a stranger to drugs, crime, violence, and complete hopelessness. Although Maya had 4 children to raise, she found herself caught up in the grips of a serious drug addiction. Wanting a better life for herself but not seeing a way out, Maya sought help through the 12-Step Anonymous program of recovery.

Maya recently celebrated 16 year...

Roy is a respected and influential member in the Recovery community. He is not only respected for the work he’s done on himself, but he’s respected for the life he has built outside of recovery. I first encountered Roy at the Miracles Club during a recovery-speaker fundraiser. He accredited the Miracles Club for being the first safe place he and his siblings could call home as a child. He said the community there helped raise him, ...

Amir Salam is a lively, passionate, and enthusiastic member of the 12th-Step Recovery community. I met Amir on a virtual platform discussing spiritual principles, walking and living in gratitude, and conducting self-inventory daily, to be intentional about how we show up in the world. Amir works as an Executive Director at a successful music enterprise, and loves the work he does. He makes sure to mention, that if it were not for t...

In this episode, Mercedes sits down with Julia Mines, the Executive Director of the Portland Miracles Club. Julia holds a master’s degree in Social Work from Portland State University. She operates a non-profit organization that supports people surviving addiction, homelessness, and former incarceration. On a daily Julia gets to see folks’ journey from being homeless, to becoming home-owners. She watches folks’ journey from being u...

Walter is one of the most kind-hearted, positive, and motivating people I know. I don’t think I know anyone that doesn’t like Walter. Walter grew up playing football. He loved football and was good at it too. On the field, Walter was like a force of nature, he felt like he was born to play. As one of the fastest, and most powerful players on his team, Walter was recruited and received a full-ride scholarship to a top 10 university ...

Tony Vezina is the co-founder of 4th Dimension Recovery Center (4D), one of Portland’s largest and few recovery centers serving youth in and around the Portland Metropolitan Area. 4th Dimension Recovery Center has become the safe place for young addicts to come and begin a new life in recovery. In treatment I attended many events at 4D from Halloween costume parties, to summer Speaker Jams, and barbeques. I once attended a 12-step ...

In this episode Hubert gives a personal account of his battle with drug addiction, and all the life changing events that led him to get sober. Hubert gives humor to painful and traumatic experiences he has endured in his life. He believes God turned all the matters of his troubled past, into life lessons that help me do his work today. He says he would have never gained these tools otherwise.

Hubert M. Hubert Mathews is one the mos...

Ezell Watson is one of the most amazing people I have ever met. We met during a Zoom meeting when he worked for Portland Public Schools. What stood out to me was that Ezell was a black man in a leadership role. He was also very attentive and respectful to the ladies in the meeting. He was a great public speaker, and he had a way of making everyone feel comfortable around him. I was impressed by his ability to come from another stat...

Ezell Watson III is a leader in the field of Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI), i.e. social justice, and an advocate for human rights, specifically the rights of Oregonians. He currently serves as the Program Director of Diversity Equity and Inclusion for the Oregon Public Utility Commission. Mr. Watson brings a wealth of experience to his role including 10 years of experience in the educational equity sector and 10 years as a D...