’Million Dollar Makeover’ upgrades life for addiction-haunted moms and their kids

That indoor spaces were worn and cramped at the tucked-away Women’s Recovery Services in Santa Rosa was less bothersome to the moms and kids who are helped there to heal their addiction-bedeviled lives than to the caring types who run the place.

Though it’s a constant challenge to find sufficient dollars to treat the women and to shelter them and their children, volunteers on the nonprofit’s board and building committee resolved to bring in about $1 million for a construction project to make the treatment and common areas more spacious, inviting and uplifting.

They succeeded. Tapping into the caring of the community, volunteers of the 45-year-old Women’s Recovery Service between 2016 and last year secured donations of $934,000.

Under the leadership of executive director Linda Carlson, the organization has now completed the construction of a treatment building and is well into the transformation of an old space into a new kitchen, dining room and the center’s first-ever family room.

Key to the success of the ambitious capital-improvement project were eight volunteers, six of them men, who serve on the nonprofit’s building committee. Among them are an architect, a general contractor, a retired civil engineer and an attorney.

They used personal and professional connections to bring to the undertaking a great many donated or discounted services and materials. Dollars for everything that had to be paid for came from donors that include Vic and Karen Trione, the Ernest L. and Ruth W. Finley Foundation, the G.K. Hardt Trust, Ken Martin Family Fund and others.

The main beneficiaries of what Women’s Recovery Services is calling its Million Dollar Makeover are the mothers and pregnant women being helped to right lives derailed by substance abuse and its accompanying health, mental health and behavioral issues.

To learn more about Women’s Recovery Services, or to donate to its services for mothers and children, go to the nonprofit’s website: https://www.womensrecoveryservices.org/