Troy Calton is helping unload a trailer full of bags of donated clothing, destined to be sorted and given to various substance use disorder and mental health providers to help those receiving their services both within their programs and when they come out and are reintegrating into jobs and education and ordinary lives.
The shirts, suits, pants, dresses and other items are part of the North Star Recovery and Wellness clothing drive, happening along the Wasatch Front until Dec. 16. New or gently used items for adults will be split among different mental health and substance use programs. Some will be worn, others sold. All will benefit people who are working toward healing.
Calton knows precisely what these garbage bags stuffed with used clothing will mean, because he’s been on the receiving end of such largesse.
He was sitting in a jail cell in 2019 on miscellaneous serious criminal charges including burglary that were rooted in addiction, when he saw a flyer for The Other Side Academy, which offered an alternative to incarceration. He wrote the organization a letter asking if he could be interviewed. He admits candidly today that he was hoping to “beat a prison sentence.”
He got far more than he bargained for, he told the Deseret News.
Calton got “a lesson in being a better person. A lesson in being responsible. In having integrity,” he said. He found good parts of himself that he’d misplaced but not lost. And five years later, he’s helping the academy’s newer students find the same things in themselves. The 52-year-old is now on the academy program staff, where he’s an understanding mentor because he knows their challenges but also the good things that lie ahead if they persevere.
Someone enters the academy — and many similar programs — with little if anything more than the clothing on their backs, Calton said. So clothing matters a lot. Additionally, donations may be sold to help fund the programs and pay for things like the very meals that people in recovery or treatment eat. The resource helps meet fundamental needs.
Second chances are real and they matter, he said. For people and even for clothes.
Stepping up
Jay Tobey is the founder of North Star Recovery and Wellness, a network for mental health and substance use treatment, the corporate child of parent company North Star Financial Group. In 2019, he invested in a rehabilitation center in Ogden, though people he trusted thought it was a bad idea. His interest, he said, was meeting some of the unmet need for mental health and substance use services by reducing barriers. He describes North Star as both a for-profit company and a national initiative to address mental health through private sector support and action. Besides investing in facilities, North Star sees itself as an umbrella facilitator that helps other service providers, he said.
“Facilities are so focused on care, they are not working together cohesively,” Tobey said. Doing so could strengthen all of them, he added.
That means, among other things, helping programs that are already providing services through more sharing of community resources and combining forces to meet needs, said Parker Paulsen, who was leading the unloading effort Tuesday on behalf of North Star Financial Group, where he’s head of investor relations. During the drive, North Star volunteers and staff periodically gather the donated items and take them to places like The Other Side Academy.
The clothing drive is just one of the community initiatives North Star hopes will make a difference. Calton estimated that about 70% of the clothing donated will be usable to clothe those in programs or for sale to help fund programs. People also sometimes donate items that can’t be used because they’re stained or too worn. Those must be disposed of.
The clothing drive
For those who want to help out, gently used or new clothes can be dropped off before Dec. 16 at one of these locations scattered along the Wasatch Front:
- Tax Hive, 260 S. 1200 West, Orem
- Club Paddock, 734 E. Utah Valley Drive, American Fork
- Renaissance Ranch, 829 E. Pioneer Road, Suite 101, Draper
- VEGA Media Studio, 47 S. Orange St., Unit 2, Salt Lake City
- Weber Recovery, 2740 Pennsylvania Ave., Ogden
- APEX CRE, 4020 W. Daybreak Pkwy, South Jordan
- The Other Side Academy Thrift Boutique, 4290 S. State St., Murray
- B-10 Capital, 42 N. 650 West, Suite B, Farmington
