While his office might be what you’d expect, Richardson certainly isn’t. Outspoken and jovial with red cheeks beneath parted white hair, an untied tie draped haphazardly around his neck, the Deputy Commissioner of Streets and Sanitation is so affable it’s little wonder that most know him as “Bobby”.

But underneath his carefree façade punctuated by his rather colorful rhetoric, Richardson is a man who has had to come some tremendous obstacles wrought by his own personal demons. The lesson that he learned through his darkest days however, has turned him into one of Safer Foundation’s most ardent supporters within the Chicago City Government. His support has helped create numerous job opportunities for Safer clients, and it might not have happened had he not struggled with addiction for nearly two decades.

“If it wasn’t for my parents constantly bailing me out of trouble, I could have easily been in an orange jumpsuit,” Richardson said. “When I look at it, 90 percent of people who are in jail or have been in jail because of drugs or alcohol. When I got sober, and it’s been seven years now, I learned that the only way to stay sober was to help another alcoholic or addict.”

When approached by Safer Foundation Chief Program Officer Jodina Hicks in 2006, Richardson saw an obvious connection between the work the Department of Streets and Sanitation (DSS) does and Safer Foundation’s eager client base.

“Because Streets and Sanitation is so broad and does so much, we basically clean up the entire city,” Richardson said. “Ex-offenders are a perfect fit because there’s always work to do here. Since we got a contract put together, in the last three years we’ve grown to one of the biggest ex-offender programs in the country.”

With strong support from Richardson, Safer Foundation teamed with DSS and began the Ambassadors Work Crew program. Designed to provide transitional jobs for people with criminal records with limited work experience, the program gave Safer clients the chance to develop new skill sets by cleaning their old communities. By adding legitimate work experience to their resumes, these clients positioned themselves to be a more attractive asset on the job market.

“When you’re labeled as an ex-offender, it puts up an iron curtain in front of you,” Richardson said. “This program helps build up a sense of self-worth and gives a chance to give back to the neighborhoods they used to take from. It also gives them the courage to move forward.”

Courage is a concept that Richardson has embraced in the seven years since his last drink. But for over three decades, his abuse of alcohol and drugs threatened his relationship with his family, plunged him into dark depression, and pushed him to the brink of self-destruction.

“I started drinking when I was 13 years old,” he said. “I got sober when I was 46, so that’s 33 years. It hasn’t been easy. When I go down the street and see a vodka ad on a billboard, I think ‘Man, I wonder how that tastes.’ But then I remember that I’m not like everyone else and I can’t do that without risking a relapse.”

In order to stay clean, Richardson regularly attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, stays active in the community and has fostered a very close relationship with his grown daughter, Jessica.

“I go to three meetings a week,” he said. “I also do a lot of service work, but what helps me the most is my daughter. She’s my best friend in the world, and I’m not going to lose her.”

Richardson’s personal battle with addiction nearly derailed his life, and because of his self-proclaimed good fortune, he wants to help others get back on track. Embracing this attitude, he routinely goes and visits the work crews to show them that they have an ally in a most unlikely place.

“They love me,” Richardson said of the work crews. “I’ve gone out and talked to the crews myself. I’m in a suit and tie and I show up looking like I know nothing about them. Then I pull them aside and tell them that I’m a recovering alcoholic and addict. People’s perception is that we’re all just skid row bums or junkies, but addiction doesn’t discriminate. You should’ve seen the looks in their eyes when I told them that.”

His ability to relate to the work crew participants strongly influences his desire to grow the program until it is as big as possible.

“Somebody gave me a second chance,” he said. “And it insults me when we are categorized as no good. It gives me tingles to see what we’ve done in just a short time. It’s exploded and the possibilities are unlimited. I hope that people around the country can look at what Safer Foundation and Chicago have done as a model. These programs have really done a lot to drop recidivism.”

Before he hustles off to a meeting, Richardson takes out a pencil and a pad of paper. On the top sheet, he draws a large rectangle, which he separates into three parts. In the first part, he draws a straight line. He colors in the middle box, gradually getting darker as he moves from left to right. And in the third box he draws another line. This simple drawing represents his life.

“This is my childhood,” he says, pointing to the first box. He then notes the second, “This is where I battled addiction. It kept getting darker and darker. But the last box is me at 46. I know I could go back to that middle box, but I know that I don’t have to live that life anymore. If I could say one thing to a fellow addict, I’d say that you can work out of it, get a sponsor, help another addict. It’s possible.”

--David Dexter

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