“When there is food in the refrigerator, it’s yours. Hot dogs from a barbecue cooked days before attract a small crowd. The lucky few stop to enjoy the leftover meal while sitting on a yellow, threadbare couch.

People come and go, sometimes several times a day. Each person, new or familiar, gets the same greeting. A hug. In recovery, a hug is hello.

Welcome to the Reality Alumni Center. The small space, made up mainly of an office, meeting room and hallway, is connected to a complex of Stanislaus County buildings in Modesto. It’s operated outside of county control, entirely by volunteers.

Inside you’ll find many of the volunteers wearing laminated nametags hanging on lanyards. Name tag or not, you can’t miss Manuel.

“How you doing, kid?” he hugs a new arrival.

As he talks, his fingers move in a constant twitch. He rubs them together like he’s salting a dish when deep in discussion. He opens and closes them like firecrackers when making a point.

Manuel Gonzales is in the house and he means business. The 48-year-old is always working on something, anything that might help the center. This place isn’t just his second home, it’s his new obsession.

His old obsession was crank. To quit, he spent 28 days in Modesto’s Reality Program, the county’s only residential drug program. When he left at the end of November, he joined the Reality Alumni Association. Then he got bored.

He went home to Turlock and sat around. His Narcotics Anonymous meetings were at noon and 8 p.m. In between, there was nothing.

“I used to do my drugs in the morning,” he says. “So from the time I got up to noon, that is when I needed help.”

Then, in mid-January, the Reality Alumni Center opened. He found it shortly after. The drop-in center is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.

“This place is like an eight-hour meeting,” he says. “You could put a microphone in the middle of the room and all anyone would talk about is addiction.”

At noon, five days a week, Reality graduates, current clients and anyone else seeking help can attend the Big Book meeting. The main room fills with chairs. A poster of the 12 steps looms over the proceedings. Once the meeting starts, the scene is exactly like all those after-school specials.

“Hello, my name is … I am an addict.”

“Hi,” chants the group.

Except these stories are real.

A woman in sweat pants tells how she used to pray everyday for God to take her when she was using. Now that she has found out she has Hepatitis A, B and C, she no longer wants to die.

“I have a 5-year-old daughter,” she says. “I want to live.”

A man comes to the realization that to stay clean he must give up certain things:

“I can’t go fishing with my brother no more.”

Everyone listens. Sometimes, after a speaker finishes, another person offers consolation or solutions. Usually, they just move onto the next person.

At the end of the meeting an empty tin goes around. Coffee money. People dig into pockets and purses. Most don’t just throw in lose change.

Then everyone stands, joins hands and begins:

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

In unison they pump their arms to emphasis the next point.

"Keep coming back, it works if you work it!”

The meeting ends.

“If anything will keep us clean, it will be this place,” Manuel says.

Frequent drop-in Jackie Crowe has slowly come to realize this. After graduating from Reality in late February, he went out into the world alone. A week later he came back. He had relapsed.

He went through detox, again, and left, again. But he didn’t go far. Around the corner he stopped at the Reality Alumni Center.

“I’ve been talking with Manuel and I’m involved with Reality,” he says. “If you get people clean and sober but they don’t have no school, no job and don’t know how to get it - they’re just going to start right back.”

At 41, Jackie wants to go back to school. He is considering classes at Modesto Junior College. But even if that doesn’t work he knows the one thing he must do to keep clean.

“Stay busy,” he says. “And keep coming here.”

Manuel and the other volunteers are trying to hook Jackie up with grant programs to pay for the classes. Connecting recovering addicts with resources is one of Manuel’s favorite things.

That, and talking about his latest idea. There is always a plan, program or project under way for the center. A teen dance. Grants to cover college or job training. A collaboration with local unions.

One of the more ambitious programs he helped start is TARGET (Tough, Assertive, Reaching, Goals, Everlasting, Tenacity). The outreach program is an aggressive attempt to get more graduates of Stanislaus County drug programs into the alumni association. Basically, it’s calling and cajoling. But for their own good.

“The reason that people fail a lot when they get out is that they don’t stay together anymore,” Manuel says. “This keeps us clean, coming back here.”

Manuel’s own recovery is unapologetically intertwined with the drop-in center. But it’s not just the connection and sharing that keeps him coming back..

“I can’t fail,” he says. “Being around these people …I can’t let them down.”

-- By Marijke Rowland