The first time I met Wendy Grove was on a cold day in January 2014. She was helping as a volunteer for Snohomish County’s annual count of homeless people. Walking downtown streets that day, Grove mentioned her dream — to open Everett Recovery Cafe.
The second time I met Grove was last September. Over coffee, we talked about the progress she and others had made toward that goal. Established as a nonprofit organization, Everett Recovery Cafe had community backing and solid plans to create a welcoming haven for people who have struggled with drugs, alcohol addiction and related challenges.
The third time I met Grove was Friday morning. She opened the door to a freshly renovated house at 2212 Broadway in Everett, across from a Walgreens. The place is her dream, the new home of Everett Recovery Cafe.
It will open for the first time at noon on March 20. Rather than a formal treatment center, the cafe will be a place to find social support, a good lunchtime meal, weekly meetings to help maintain sobriety, and learning opportunities. Each person being helped will be expected to give back, by working in the kitchen, cleaning or doing other chores.
“It’s a learn-as-you-go model,” said Grove, who lives on Whidbey Island.
The Everett Recovery Cafe is affiliated with, but financially independent of, Seattle’s Recovery Cafe, which opened in 2004 and serves about 150 people daily at 2022 Boren Ave.
Grove taught at Machias Elementary School in the Snohomish district for 10 years, but after leaving education she volunteered and later worked on the staff at the Recovery Cafe in Seattle.
On Friday, she and three members of the Everett Recovery Cafe’s seven-member board talked about their vision for the new facility. It faces Broadway but sits above street level and is surprisingly quiet and cozy. The house isn’t furnished yet, but will soon have a complete kitchen, tables for meals and games, and couches and chairs for meetings and conversation.
“It isn’t just for chemical dependency, but for homelessness and mental health issues,” said board member Sharon Gunnerson, of Everett. “I like to say we’re all in recovery from something.”
That notion of shared humanity — that we have more in common than we have differences — may be the secret to success for their mission. There will be rules, but acceptance is high on the list.
People served by Everett Recovery Cafe will be members, but membership doesn’t mean paying a fee.
“It’s a low bar to come in. We ask that people be 24 hours drug and alcohol free,” said Bill Kluin, another Everett Recovery Cafe board member and a former development director of Safe Harbor Free Clinic in Stanwood.
“Anyone can walk in the door and be our guest for a day, to see if this is a good fit,” Grove said. The next time they come, they’ll participate in an orientation. They will learn that to be members they must join in weekly peer support meetings. “And everybody contributes,” said Grove, referring to the requirement that people being helped also work at chores.
Those jobs may include cleaning up the alley behind the leased house. “We want to be an asset to our community,” Gunnerson said.
Grove said financial support has come from a $5,448 capacity building grant from United Way of Snohomish County and the Greater Everett Community Foundation to open Everett Recovery Cafe’s doors and hire a floor manager; from two Tulalip Tribes grants, one for $6,000; from a smaller city of Everett grant; from contributions made by more than 100 people who attended an October fund-raising breakfast; and from donors pledging to give monthly.
The Everett Recovery Cafe will be open to people 18 and older. Board member Jennifer Minifie, who lives in the Kirkland area, shared a memory that points to the critical need of some young adults to find help.
“I was a psychiatric nurse for many years,” she said Friday. Minifie said she got to know a young man, a teen at the time, who was treated repeatedly in a hospital where she worked. He had several suicide attempts. After he turned 18, she said, “he disappeared to us. People assumed he probably had died.”
About 10 years later, the first time Minifie visited the Recovery Cafe in Seattle, “he was there,” she said. “He was working as a greeter, an important job at Recovery Cafe. He had found a place.”
A place. That’s what Everett Recovery Cafe will be — a safe, drug-free, welcoming place to begin life anew.
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com.
Cafe opening
Everett Recovery Cafe will open for the first time noon-4 p.m. March 20 in its new home at 2212 Broadway. The cafe, run by a nonprofit organization, aims to be a safe and supportive place for people seeking lives free of drugs, alcohol and other problems that lead to homelessness. Training for people interested in volunteering at the cafe is scheduled for 1-3:30 p.m. March 17. To learn more, volunteer or donate, go to www.everettrecoverycafe.org or email: info@everettrecoverycafe.org
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