A Second Chance

“He looked like he could have been anyone’s father.”

That was what a fellow classmate said last Thursday about Steve Zakrzewski, a recovering alcoholic who has been at the Bowery Mission on New York City’s Lower East Side since last May.

Zakrzewski had actually reminded me of my own father. He was roughly the same height, with salt-and-pepper, barely-there hair. He was well dressed, wearing blue jeans, a dress shirt and tie, with a Polo windbreaker.

“For 30 years I was a functioning alcoholic,” said Steve Zakrzewski. “I had a great job and was able to travel around the world, but about three years ago, I crossed the line and became a drunk.”

“After I lost my apartment and my car, I was hospitalized with liver inflammation,” added Zakrzewski. “AA just didn’t work, so a doctor recommended that I come here.”

That’s exactly what he did. Roughly eight months ago, he arrived at the Mission. Since 1879, the Bowery Mission has worked to provide, as they say, “compassionate care and life transformation services” to those homeless men and women living in New York City. The halls of the Bowery Mission are filled with success stories.

“Before I came here, I drank to numb my feelings because I had nothing to believe in,” said Zakrzewski. “But now that I have accepted Jesus Christ as my savior, I was finally able to pull myself out of the pit that I was living in.”

In mid-November, he graduated from the program, and has since started working as an operations manager at a transitional housing office associated with the Bowery Mission.

Zakrzewski is not the only success story at the Mission. In fact, one of the directors of the program claims to be one of the Bowery Mission’s greatest success stories.

“I like to say that I went from the garbage to Madison Avenue,” said James Macklin, the Director of Outreach at the Bowery Mission

About 22 years ago, Macklin became heavily involved in drugs and lost his business. He eventually made it to the Bowery Mission to receive treatment and guidance. After volunteering at the Mission, he eventually moved to Madison Avenue, the Mission’s headquarters when he was placed in charge of outreach.

“This is my home,” added Macklin. “This is where my family is.”

When I first arrived at the Bowery Mission that morning, I had assumed that it would be a place of sadness. As men lined up for their lunches however, they were covered in smiles: laughing, joking, and patting each other on the back. Despite the hard past that they had obviously endured, the Bowery Mission had given them something that most men and women never get. A second chance.