I met Connie’s brother, Vincent, for the first time on the phone in December 1991, shortly after Connie and I got engaged and four months before we were to be married. Vinny had been absent from the family for a while. He had battled with addictions, mostly drugs, since he was a young teenager and those addictions followed him into adulthood. Families can naturally drift apart simply because of geographical challenges, but lengthy estrangements are not the normal paradigm for a New York Italian family, drugs or no drugs, so I wanted to try to include him in the wedding party and perhaps bring him “back into the flock,” so to speak.
“Let me call Vincent. I’d like for him to be one of my groomsmen,” I said with my usual blind-faith, “full speed ahead” exuberance.
“That would be great,” Connie said. “Here’s the number. But make sure you don’t refer to him as ‘Vincent Sellecca.’ Use Sellecchia. He’s not a big fan of the shortened version.”
In 1973, Connie’s agent decided that her last name, Sellecchia, needed to be shortened, removing the hi to make her name more agency-friendly and less obviously ethnic.
“With a name like Concetta Sellecchia and coloring like yours,” her agent said, “I’m going to get phone calls asking, ‘Can this Concetta Sellecchia even speak English?’”
To this day Connie regrets she didn’t respond, “Well, just say yes!”
I love the name Concetta. I have it tattooed on my right forearm (the full name would have been too painful).
Vincent Sellecchia had already survived two decades of serious drug use and run-ins with the law that should, at the very least, have landed him in prison and most certainly would have put an average human in the ground. Vinny was the quintessential Italian stallion: thick black hair in a long mullet with the optional ponytail; classic, stocky build; and a focus on bicep development. He wore a crucifix on a chain around his neck. When Vinny spoke, his voice rang out like a character from Scarface. That was the voice I heard on the telephone when I called him on my way to work at the Entertainment Tonight studios.
“L-oh?” the voice said.
Whoa, I thought. I’m speaking to Tony Montana!
I had heard only one syllable, but it was enough to send a shiver up my spine. What’s coming next? Is he going to ask me if I think he’s a clown who is here to amuse me? I wasn’t going to wait to find out. I needed to spit out my pitch and get it over with.
“Hello, Vincent, this is John Tesh calling. As you may have heard, your sister Connie and I are engaged to be married and we’d like you to be in the wedding.”
Silence.
No wonder. I had sounded like a cross between Dudley Do-Right and the Fuller Brush man. I imagined Connie’s brother gagging on my mawkish opening. I continued.
“It’s really important to your sister and me that you be a part of our celebration. I’d like you to be one of my groomsmen. Can you make it? The wedding is on April 4.”
“Let me talk to my sista,” he said. “Maybe tahmarrah.”
No cursing, no threats of bodily harm. Wow, Vincent Sellecchia said yes! I mean, maybe not yes technically, but at least he said, “I gotta talk to my sista!”
“That’s great, Vinny,” I said. “We’ll let you know the details as soon as we have them. Thanks again, man.”
Vinny attended our wedding on April 4, 1992. He was a great addition and was quite dashing in his rented tuxedo. We didn’t see much of him after that, though. We visited him a handful of times in Florida, but the visits were predictable, given the history. Vinny would be mostly lucid, stable for a day or two. But forty-eight hours was his willpower limit. In the middle of a conversation, he would suddenly be overcome by cravings and need to leave. Those few times we were with him, we saw a progressive decline in his appearance.
Vinny was in a serious relationship with a girl named Kathy. They were living together, smoking crack cocaine together, but after the daily investment in their drug habit, they could barely scrape together enough money to feed themselves. By scraping, I mean they were, by their own admission, working intricate shoplifting schemes to rip off supermarkets for food. They had also engineered more serious scams for generating cash. Vinny is not sure about the statute of limitations on these more felonious wrongdoings, so I’ll leave that part of the story alone, for now.
When we were with Vincent while he was using drugs, we felt like we were speaking with a POW who had been held in captivity for decades. He had that “thousand-yard stare” that comes with chronic suffering, malnutrition, and sleep deprivation. Given his self-inflicted predicament, I could only marvel at his superhuman efforts to connect with his family, even if for only one or two days a year. If we were lucky enough to catch Vinny in his rare moments of clean and sober, it was easy to believe he was a pastor, a motivational speaker, the leader of a motorcycle gang, the mayor of Little Italy, or Thomas Edison. Connie believed there was never going to be an average, small life for her brother. “Fortune 500 CEO, or life in prison,” she would say. “Inventor, or drug lord.”
As I write this, Vinny and Kathy are stone-cold sober, over-the-road truck drivers who, in their spare time, run a mission called Intelligent Kindness that feeds the homeless and takes care of war veterans. Ask any expert on addiction and they’ll tell you, it’s a miracle. One that began to take shape at the dinner table on Thanksgiving 2003.
We’re all seated before an Old World Italian feast. On the table are minestrone soup, three types of homemade pasta, clams oreganata, and, oh yeah, a turkey dinner with all the trimmings. Connie’s mom, Anna, and all the women are still wearing their embroidered, flour-stained aprons as we bow our heads and proceed clockwise around the table to give personal prayers of thanks and gratefulness.
Before I take my turn, I’m struck once more by the absence of Anna’s only son. By then Vinny and Kathy’s circumstances had turned critical. Pieces of information would drip in from various sources. The consensus is that the two of them are in very bad physical and financial shape. For Anna’s part, she’s held out hope for Vinny’s healing and homecoming for almost two decades.
My table prayer quickly becomes a conversation with God.
“Thank you, God, for our health, our family, our opportunities. God, I have one prayer today. Please bring Vincent back to us. Let Vinny hear that we love him and that we will always save a place for him at this table. And give us the strength to do what we can do to bring him back home.”
I lift my eyes and see Connie’s mom, widowed at fifty-nine years old by her husband, Primo. Heart attack. Her sad eyes now focus on nothing at all. You can tell that she has little room left in her heart for any more loss.
Then, before I take my first bite of the antipasto, I take a deep breath and give my best version of Maximus Meridius’s booming voice while a Roman general in the movie Gladiator: “We cannot celebrate another Thanksgiving without Vincent seated at this table!”
I go on. “I think we should fly to Florida, do an intervention, get Vinny into rehab, and then bring him back home. It’s that simple. Who’s with me? Faith without works is dead!”
The battle cry divides the room.
Gib, now twenty-two, is right there with me from the start. We are both fans of the Braveheart and Gladiator movies and we are always spouting lines from both films. That happens spontaneously now at the table.
Gib: Every man dies, not every man truly lives.
John: What we do in life echoes in eternity.
Gib: Strength and honor.
John: Strength and honor.
I look over at Connie and she gives both father and son the Italian eyebrow, her eyes underneath it saying to us: “I’m not so sure about this, guys. I’m willing to think about it, but there must be a plan!”
The rest of the table explodes in protest.
“Are you ***** kidding me!?!”
“Already three failed rehabs. It’s not going to work with Vincent this time either.”
“We tried this with him before. It didn’t work then. It won’t work now.”
Wow, I’m thinking, maybe this is a bad idea after all.
But it could also totally work and end up being an awesome, testosterone-fueled, father-son climb up to the summit of Mount Everest.
The protests soon evaporate, mostly because the dissenters view this as pure nonsense and because Connie, mercifully, has changed the subject. Gib and I, seated next to each other, can’t help whispering about our evolving plan for the “Raid on Uncle Vinny.” We think better of having T-shirts printed up and, instead, calm ourselves enough to embrace the wonder of what’s immediately at hand: the Sellecchia Thanksgiving Feast.
The Learjet 35 is a mini rocket ship of an airplane that was once commissioned by the US Air Force. In more recent times it serves as a charter aircraft for thousands of CEOs who want to travel quickly between small-town airports with short runways. It’s a very “mission specific” airplane. Lifts off quickly. Lands almost anywhere. The Lear 35 can fly at forty-five thousand feet, five hundred miles per hour. That’s where Gib and I are, forty-five thousand feet up, somewhere between Los Angeles and Delray Beach, Florida.
Connie had insisted that before we got on the plane, we would all work together to determine the rehab program and destination. She knew that before she put two borderline ADD family members on a Learjet (me and Gib) bound for a Florida crack den, there needed to be a plan.
Following a few more days of research and recommendations, we had decided that Pastor Steve Arterburn’s New Life facility in Arizona would be a good fit for our needs. Our basic plan is for Gib and me to spend as many days as required convincing Vinny that he needs to come with us and start his life over. We will then get him onto the plane and all three of us will fly to the New Life Treatment Center for Vinny’s month of drug rehab. Connie will establish a command center in Los Angeles, remaining behind with Prima. She will maintain contact with us and with the New Life counselors. Together they will suggest strategies for Gib and me, based on our moment-by-moment experiences at Vinny’s place.
Private air travel is, of course, more expensive than commercial, but we know there is not a chance that Vincent will get on an American Airlines commercial flight, change planes in Dallas, wait out a two-hour layover, take one more flight to Phoenix, and then get into a rental car for the drive to rehab. We have to remove as many barriers, as many potential objections as possible. With the private plane, we can take Vinny with us with only a thirty-minute heads-up for the pilots. We are able to fly directly to Phoenix with no change of aircraft, even if it’s three in the morning. The less time Vincent’s body is in withdrawal, the safer we’ll all be in the air.
When Gib and I land in Delray, a car will be waiting for us at the private terminal and then we’ll head toward Vinny’s house. Connie made contact with a local friend of his (we’ll call him Angelo) who knew the location of the crack house where Vinny will likely be. Angelo will drive his car (“The lead car!” says Connie), which we will follow, until we got too close to Vincent’s house for Angelo’s comfort level. He is not interested in being a snitch who gave up the location of Vinny’s crack house.
As we begin closing in on Delray, I get a big dose of stage fright. Without any experience or basic training in interventions, except for watching a Dr. Drew promo on cable, I might as well have been preparing for an exorcism. I don’t know how to do this. What if I say something that makes things worse? What if we fly all this way and Vinny won’t let us in the house? What if the house is filled with drugs and the cops pick that time for their sting operation? Prison time for all, for sure.
“John, Gib, we are about fifty miles east of Delray Beach Airport.”
The Lear PA system is loud enough to restart my prefrontal cortex and end most of my rumination. I have less than an hour to put the finishing touch on my “We Miss You, Uncle Vinny” slideshow. The purpose of the photo montage I’m creating is, if the conversation stalls, becomes awkward, or if guns are drawn, I can pull out the family photo montage on my laptop and show Vincent all the family events and milestones he’s missed. It will be an inspiring distraction that should hijack his mind for a while. I agree with Gib’s strategy that the photo presentation should be our secret weapon that we only activate if talks get stalled. Gib can sense my nervousness and, in typical Gib fashion, he gives me one of his dark, double-edged pep talks.
“Hey, Dada, if Uncle Vinny gets really mad, remember that he probably won’t kill you . . . in front of me.”
“Great speech, Gibber.”
Ninety minutes later, Gib and I are parked just south of Vinny’s driveway, far enough away that he can’t see us.
“Let’s go,” Gib says.
“Hang on a second. I’m not ready yet. Turn on the radio. Let’s sit for a while.”
What happens next is one of Gib’s favorite family stories. I’ve turned the volume up, and I suggest that we guess the name of each song that goes by on the radio. Since it’s XM Radio the song title is displayed on the screen. So I hold my hand over the screen and we each take turns guessing the song. Wink Martindale would have been impressed.
This goes on for twenty minutes until Gib finally says, “Hey, Dada, we just flew across the country on a Learjet. Mom is sitting on pins and needles in Los Angeles, and an entire team of doctors and psychiatrists is counting on us to walk into that house, grab Uncle Vinny, and take him to Phoenix. We can’t sit here forever and play ‘Name That Tune.’”
Gib drags me out of our foxhole and we head for the entrance to Vinny’s home. Along the walkway the smell is overwhelming. There are huge piles of dog poop covering the weeds and patches of grass on either side of the walk. There are four video cameras mounted on either side of the door.
“Who’s there?!”
Vinny is bellowing through his massive front door, covered with four Kwikset deadbolt locks in a vertical array directly above the door knob. No one is getting in to see Uncle Vinny without an invitation or a battering ram.
“Uncle Vinny . . . it’s your brother-in-law, John Tesh, and your nephew, Gib.”
This time I sound like Charles Durning in Dog Day Afternoon. All I need is a bullhorn. I’m reminded why the Navy SEALs actually go through a few weeks of training before a secret mission. Proper planning prevents piss-poor performance, as they say.
There’s silence. Then . . . an explosion of dog barking. And then:
CLICK, CLICK-thwack, CLICK . . . CLICK-thwack.
The door swings open and there, standing before me, is Vincent Sellecchia, cigarette hanging from his mouth, wearing a Yankees T-shirt with the shoulders cut off. It resembles a tank top that’s been mangled in the dryer.
“Tesh! What the hell? And Gib!”
Moving quickly past me, he embraces Gib with a bear hug.
“Gib!”
“Come in. Come in!”
At that moment it seems like German Shepherds are everywhere, barking, climbing, sniffing.
Through the fortified front door to Vinny’s home we have stepped down into a great room that is spartan except for a giant wooden desk in the middle of it. The desk is positioned roughly six feet from a large-screen TV. It resembles Geppetto’s workbench. There’s a soldering iron, some copper wiring, two hot glue guns, bits and pieces of electric motors, a few large magnets, half a dozen screwdrivers, and ash trays. Let’s disregard the Pinocchio reference because what was on Vinny’s desk was eerily similar to the forensic evidence you would discover following terrorist activity.
Vinny’s girlfriend, Kathy, is standing at the kitchen sink. I had met her a few years earlier, but I remember her with a very different hair color. She offers a smile and a nod and turns back to the sink. There is what appears to be a half inch of water covering the kitchen floor. Water or film. I can’t be sure.
A movie, The King of Comedy, is playing on the big screen at full volume. Vinny motions for us to take seats in a BarcaLounger and a bench to the left of the big desk, where he now takes his position. With his ponytail, beard stubble, and hypertrophic arms, Vincent presents as a captain on the bridge of a pirate ship. Behind Vinny there has begun a slow parade of bizarre, slouchy characters. They are moving back and forth down the hallway, in and out of a room I’m guessing is a bedroom or office. The walkers are doing a credible impression of the illustrations you’d find in my The Walking Dead comic books. There are so many of them that it resembles a macabre version of that clown-car gag you see in the circus. Where are they all coming from?! Vinny is not reacting to the scene behind him, so I can only assume that it’s normal crack-house activity. It’s certainly nerve-racking. I’m trying to maintain eye contact with Vinny, while keeping an eye on the cavalcade of zombies. Zeus, one of the three German Shepherds, lays his monstrous head in my lap. Zombies. Wolves. Crack. Hot glue guns. This is the part of the film where you’re screaming at the actors from your seat. Get out of the house! Can’t you see what’s happening? Get out!
I panic. I pull the pin and throw the Hail Mary.
“Hey, Vinny. I want you to see this slideshow I made for you on my computer.”
I glance back at Gib, whose shocked expression is saying, “What the hell, Dada? You get one quick look at the waterboard and you spill your guts?”
I continue, “Vin, I’ve put together a montage of all the photos from our family get-togethers that you may have missed!”
I hit Play on the slideshow. He’s completely into it. The family photos hold Vincent’s attention for a full forty-five seconds. Then my Hail Mary pass is picked off in the endzone. Vinny lifts a three-foot stick off his desk and shouts, “Gib, Gib, check this out,” neutering my feeble “this is your life” movie screening.
“I took this motor here out of a hair dryer,” says Vinny, “and I glued the tongue depressors together to make a propeller.”
He is speaking with inventor’s pride. He goes on to detail how, to complete his invention, he hot-glued the propeller and the motor along with a D-cell battery to the scratching end of a three-foot back-scratcher.
All I could think is, Who has an itch on their back right now?
Now with Gib’s full attention, Vinny flips the power switch on his “miracle back-scratcher fan.” It revs up to deafening weedwhacker buzz level.
“Check this out!” he shouts over the ear-splitting racket. “I’ve invented a battery-powered fan back-scratcher. I’m going to apply for a patent. I want you to have it, Gib!”
Gib is thrilled and immediately takes the opportunity to use the contraption to cool me down. I’m sweating. I’m not sure why I’m so nervous. Oh wait, maybe it’s because this is my first field trip to a crack den. Perhaps it’s because there is a six-foot gun safe over my left shoulder. Or it could be because there is an umbrella caddy next to the gun safe that has four Japanese swords in it. What’s the scenario where you suddenly need a sword? And what are the zombie clowns behind Vincent up to? They look harmless, but I feel like I still need to keep an eye on them.
(Vinny would later tell me that the group of zombies included a guy named Duck who was, at the time I had spotted him and the others, hiding all of the drugs in the backyard. He said it was so Gib and I wouldn’t be in any danger. Vinny said it was a big job.)
“Hey, Kathy,” Vinny yells to his girlfriend, who is still at the sink. “Make my nephew and my brother-in-law BLTs, will ya?”
From the big screen, De Niro declares, “Better to be king for a night”—Vinny joins him—“than schmuck for a lifetime!”
Vincent is in hysterics. “Tesh, do you love this movie?”
“Yes, it’s awesome, Vin.”
It’s now 9:00 p.m. The King of Comedy has gone around one and a half times. Gib is grinning ear to ear and whispers to me, “Are you getting all of this? If we make it out of here alive, we have to write a book. What a scene!”
I’m certain that there’s little chance that Gib and I will be able to make an intervention pitch in this noisy, toxic environment. If we don’t take control of the conversation, this will end up as nothing more than an all-night, one-film movie marathon. It’s clear from the look on Kathy’s face that she knows something is up. She keeps looking us over, while standing in that half inch of kitchen water.
Where did the water come from?
I excuse myself to take a walk outside and place a frantic phone call to Connie to fill her in on our dilemma. After my update, she suggests Gib and I get Vinny out of the house and make the intervention pitch to him one-on-one. I can also tell, by her follow-up questions, that she is very concerned about Gib’s safety. I don’t blame her. I probably should have left out the part about the swords.
It turns out that a venue change is just what we need. It’s now 11:00 p.m. as we grab a table at the only place in town that’s still open. Delray’s Ugly Mugg sports bar.
Generally speaking, anyone who is still in a bar after 11:00 p.m. on a Monday is very serious about being in a bar, and that’s what this crowd appears to be. Serious. Gib and I, dressed head-to-toe in Lululemon athleisure-wear, with $120 sneakers, look exactly like two out-of-town family members attempting their first intervention. Mercifully, now that we’re alone with Vincent, the shadow-boxing and zombie railroad at the house are history and Gib, to my relief, launches into an incredible monologue detailing what Vincent means to the family. I knew that as soon as Gib and Vinny were able to have a conversation, we’d have our best shot at making some serious headway. The odds of success are just not all that great when your brother-in-law shows up and tries to talk you out of decades of drug dependency. It just wouldn’t look good at all on Vinny’s bio:
For decades, I was a hopeless crack addict, but then my brother-in-law took a break from interviewing Pee-wee Herman and came to my rescue!
See what I mean?
I sat quietly and watched Gib go to work. For years, when Gib was in elementary school, he and Uncle Vinny had played chess together over the phone. They had that bond, and Gib speaks of it now. Both Vinny and Gib had always shared the distinction of possessing whip-smart brains and a love of strategy. At the table, Gib continues with his monologue, which now includes hilarious memories of Uncle Vinny attending Gib’s Little League games. In one story Gib, age eleven, was at bat, and from the moment he stepped up to the plate, Vinny was eviscerating the young pitcher. Vinny had brought the Bronx with him: “Let’s go, Gib! This guy’s got nothin’. Home run, baby. Home run!”
First pitch. “Strike one,” shouted the umpire.
“C’mon, Ump, that pitch was way outside,” screamed Vinny. “Go back to LensCrafters and get a refund, you bum.”
By this time, the parents seated in the bleachers were growing visibly uncomfortable, but none were interested in confronting the burly, snarling Italian. The diatribe of trash talk rose with each pitch, now directed, ad hominem, at the pitcher himself.
“You got nothin’, little man, you’re going down. Look, Gib, his arm is like a noodle!”
The pitcher appears visibly shaken and then:
THWACK!
Gib connects with the very next pitch, driving it over the pitcher’s head. It loops into the outfield and he’s headed for first base. That’s it for the pitcher. He bursts into tears. And that’s it for everyone else. The umpire has removed his mask and is turning toward the stands. Two of the dads, now resembling villagers with torches, have jumped to their feet from their bleacher seats and are staring daggers at Vincent. Whispering in her brother’s ear, Connie frantically summarizes the rules of conduct for Little League baseball. This matters little to Vinny, as Gib is now smiling at his uncle from second base and the pitcher is with his mommy. From Vincent’s point of view it was, simply, mission accomplished. He was happy to remain mute for the rest of the game.
As the three of us share the laugh at the Ugly Mugg, you can see the wave of understanding cross Vinny’s face. He misses his family. And so the time is right to make our pitch for rehab. I’m stunned by his swift resignation to our plan, and I have the palpable feeling that he might, indeed, get on the airplane and travel with us. But then Vincent starts laying out all of the obstacles. Basically, he doesn’t see how he can leave his house for a month without putting his motorcycle, the gun safe, and other valuables into storage in the meantime. He’s convinced that without doing this, his valuables will most certainly be sold for drug money (I’m assuming by members of the zombie brigade).
Ultimately, Gib and I agree to rent a U-Haul truck and move his belongings to a local storage unit. Back at the crack house, we grab some blankets and settle into our chairs next to Vincent’s desk-colossus and try to grab some shut-eye before the U-Haul office opens at 7:00 a.m. The King of Comedy blares once more from the big screen. Jerry Lewis is now duct-taped to a chair. Sunrise won’t come soon enough.
With his Harley-Davidson, giant entertainment center, gun safe, swords, and three power washers safely locked away at the Delray Public Storage, the three of us are ready to jump in the rental car and head for the private jetport. I’ll never forget the departure scene and it haunts me to this day. Gib and I are already seated in the rental SUV with the engine running; Vinny and Kathy are in the driveway, locked in a farewell embrace. It is the look on Kathy’s face, as she and I briefly lock eyes, that breaks my heart.
I’m not proud of the fact that, up until this moment, I had operated under the preconceived bias that everyone in that house, other than Vincent, was a crack addict, and as such should be regarded as collateral damage. Kathy was silent for much of our visit in the house. That could have been because she was high or because she was anticipating an outcome that would be bad for her. In any case, the demure woman I saw now was materializing as a loving, caring human being.
What transpired next has been a source of regret for me for nearly a decade. It’s one of the reasons I am today more apt to trust the tug of the Holy Spirit, the nagging human conscience, when faced with a big decision. That day I’m ignoring the tug and we leave Kathy behind. All I need to do, as Gib steps on the gas, is yell “stop,” and we could put Kathy on the plane with us and get her some help as well. Instead, I do nothing.
Gib and I are both nervous. Vinny looks ragged and is chain-smoking. I reach over and hit the child-safety locks on the SUV. I’m sleep deprived and paranoid enough to envision Vinny throwing himself from the vehicle. It’s 7:00 p.m.
We had alerted the pilots, so they are standing by on the tarmac. The Learjet has been fueled and the engines are idling. Vinny grabs a blanket and curls up in one of the seats in the back of the plane. He’s asleep. Like soldiers in a bunker, guarding the front line, Gib takes first watch and I enter the deepest sleep of my life.
Researchers will tell you that it’s nearly impossible to gather data on the success rate of drug and alcohol interventions because there are just too many variables: the type of drugs, the length of the addiction, the relationships that exist between all parties, to name just a few. Psychiatrists are quick to point out that it is even possible to make matters worse and to permanently damage family relationships. Once we got Vinny on the plane, my blind faith and naïveté had me believing, with certainty, that Gib and I had emerged victors and had only to return to Rome and to Caesar (Connie) to be crowned victorious.
Thirty-five thousand feet in the air and Vinny had been in the airplane lavatory for an hour. He would later tell us he was smoking crack one last time before we landed in Phoenix for his rehab. We’re lucky he didn’t start a fire.
Vinny wasn’t in treatment very long. He left New Life’s rehab program after five days. Connie, Gib, and I were crushed. When we got the call from the facility’s program director, it sucked the air out of the room. When we created our plan, we knew there was a very good chance it wouldn’t work. We also knew we would never give up on Vincent, despite the nagging realization that somewhere out there was a family member saying, “I told you this would never work. It never works.”
We proceeded anyway. Our why was bigger than all the noise about the likelihood of failure. Sure, when we looked up at the scoreboard, it showed a loss. But our journey, our planning, our dedication to this intervention drew us closer together as a family. It created an even deeper bond between my wife and me as we joined together to save her brother. That’s now written in our book of life. The journey further connected Gib and me as father and son: gladiators in lockstep for a common fight (while generating hilarious stories that we still laugh about today).
It’s my belief that, as Lin-Manuel Miranda once said on 60 Minutes: “If you pick a lane, and you stay in that lane (with focused intensity over time) you cannot help but produce greatness.”1 However, sometimes we slip on a wet field. The ball takes a bad bounce. You end up in a pup tent in a park. Sure, the losing score is up there in lights, but the score always comes down before next season.
Nearly a year after our intervention attempt, Connie and I received a call from Kathy and Vinny. They said they had gotten sober and asked if we would loan them $5,000 and give them one more chance. They wanted to enroll in truck driving school together and become an over-the-road big-rig driving team. Their thinking was that, since the trucking company had random drug tests, it would be the best way to keep themselves clean and sober. We agreed to give it one more shot, knowing that we might never see the money or Vinny and Kathy again.
At this writing Vincent Sellecchia and his girlfriend, Kathy Banning, have been clean and sober for sixteen years. They’ve remained free of drugs. Their gratefulness for this new life has caused them to start a ministry called Intelligent Kindness. While traveling across the country, they seek out homeless people and veterans and they intervene for them with food and supplies.
We’re not sure what exactly broke the cycle of addiction. Perhaps our intervention wasn’t a failure after all. Maybe it was just enough of an interruption in their cycle of darkness. A show of love. I’ve always thought that our trip might well have sent up a flare that shone just enough light on their path, revealing its undeniable, suicidal ending. Connie, Gib, and I sat down to speak with Vinny and Kathy just prior to this writing. I recalled for them the image that has always stuck in my brain. That ghoulish procession of addicts and drug dealers behind Vinny’s desk. The zombie parade. Vinny set his jaw and looked down at his feet.
“Those people, Tesh? They’re dead. All of them. Everyone that was in that crack house when you and Gib came to see me? They’re all dead. Every last one of them.”