Lindsey Bolar saw her walking in his neighborhood in Bond Hill, a young woman drained of color. She was addicted to heroin. He knew it. He approached her on that cold, January day in 2018.

"She's 28 and she is ready. I'm going to keep her with me until I can get her into a program," Bolar said.

He understood her plight. Bolar was once certified as an alcohol and drug counselor.

But it was more than that.

Bolar knew Penny's pain because he had been addicted to heroin for nearly 40 years.

But he had found a way out. And he figured she could, too.

He was always the helper. Little Lindsey ran around his Avondale neighborhood when he was 9, pulling trash cans in and out of 90-year-old Miss Benton's house, going for walks with Mr. Alexander, who was blind, and babysitting kids when he wasn't changing diapers and fixing bottles for his own siblings.

"I was a very loved boy outside that house," he says.

Precocious and independent, he landed his first real job after he turned 10, at the old Dollin’s Pharmacy on Reading Road.

The pharmacy was where young Lindsey Bolar entered an unwitting relationship with opium.

"At 11, I was stealing and selling paregoric," Bolar says. Back then paregoric was an over-the-counter remedy for diarrhea, a liquid medicine with a tincture of opium in it. His price, "75 cents a bottle, 16 milligrams."

It was just another job to Lindsey. In the early 1960s, Reading Road was a hub of drug addiction and prostitutes – "I was fascinated by it," he recalls – and some were his customers.

Soon he picked up more cash shining shoes across the street at Lubo's Record Shop.

It would be a life-changing move for a boy of just 12: It was there at Lubo's that Lindsey first experienced heroin.

"I was turned out by Sadie B," he says. She was a street prostitute, he recalls, and he says he was spying at her through the keyhole of the shop's restroom. She saw him and ordered him into the bathroom.

"I was half-scared for getting busted," he remembers.

"She put that needle in my arm and pushed that poison in my arm, gave me oral sex for the first time," he says. "I threw up all over the pop machine."

In that moment in 1963, Lindsey Bolar became part of a fairly distinct population of heroin users in the United States.

A different era of heroin

Unlike today, most users then were likely to start with heroin, not misuse prescription pain pills first. It was an era when people in urban centers, often minorities in the northern U.S. cities, and some Vietnam veterans, were the primary heroin users, with men far more likely to use it than women.

It was a time, too, when the then-Federal Bureau of Narcotics did not have enough agents, nor had medical science figured out treatment, to tackle heroin, according to Jill Jonnes, author of "Hep Cats, Narcs and Pipe Dreams," published in 1996.

And unlike today, "there was little public outcry for concerted action. As one retired narcotics agent and a former high-level (U.S.) Treasury official expressed it in the exact-same phrase, 'No one gave a shit,' " Jonnes wrote.

Lindsey knew nothing of the outside world and had minimal understanding of what had happened that day with Sadie. He says he knew two things: "I did wrong." And he wanted to do it again.

Bolar blames himself to this day, at almost 68, for making "those choices," even though the man he has become would never blame a child for an adult's transgressions.

"By the time I was 14, I was a seasoned addict," he says.

As a teenager addicted to heroin, Lindsey got himself into a lot of trouble, he says. But no matter what happened on the streets, he was hurt more deeply at home.

He calls it horror, the way his stepfather treated him.

A younger sister, Vanessa Slater, remembers the abuse her big brother suffered.

A licensed child-care provider for 26 years now, Slater remembers traumatic family dinner times: "I had too much food, more than I could eat." Lindsey was given none.

She describes peering down a hallway as her father relentlessly beat a screaming Lindsey.

Conversely, Bolar recalls nothing agonizing about heroin until he was 14.

"My first experience with withdrawal was at school track practice," he says. He felt an unbearable searing in his abdomen. "I fell from the pain."

He was taken to General Hospital (the predecessor of University of Cincinnati Medical Center in Corryville) by ambulance.

"I still remember the doctor's diagnosis," he says. "He said I was a junkie."

"When the doctor revealed that to my mother, we both asked, 'What's a junkie?'"

Bolar says his stepfather Julius Washington's reaction was flat-out rejection.

"Long story short, my stepfather gave my mother an ultimatum: 'Either he leaves or I leave,'" Bolar recalls.

Mary Washington loved her son, but she had younger children. She called her brother and asked for help.

Addiction takes control

Uncle Wallace moved Lindsey, at 14, into the Central Parkway YMCA for $26 a month.

"From there," he says, "my addiction went on a ride."

He'd use on the streets when he could. He'd also sneak into his family's basement to use heroin with friends.

"My baby sister told me she used to watch me come and do them doggone drugs," Bolar says, shaking his head. He was referring to Cassandra Fowler, now 60 and a state juvenile probation and parole officer.

Slater saw, too.

"Some of the things they did, it was like that had no value system," she says. "But I also felt that, for most of them, it was because they were trying to escape something."

Bolar did not finish high school.

On March 28, 1972, the 20-year-old Bolar was sent to an Ohio prison, convicted of robbing then-Kennedy Heights Savings and Loan, on Kennedy Avenue and Montgomery Road.

He got 30 years to life.

Slater has a memory of being at court for her brother when she was 13 years old. The timing fits with the robbery sentencing.

"I didn't understand. It sounded like forever," she says.

But the sentence was suspended two months later, on May 22, 1972, according to a handwritten note at the Ohio Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

"With Momma at the helm," Bolar says, "Judge Gilbert Bettman reversed my sentence and released me under shock parole."

Bettman was a Hamilton County judge for more than three decades. In 1992, after he'd retired, he told The Enquirer, "The mood of the country has been, 'Lock 'em up.' " But he believed prison should be "a last resort."

Bettman said many judges "could not empathize with black defendants." He did.

The deal required Bolar to move to Hollywood, California, for five years to stay with his father, Edward Vaughn.

But when Bolar arrived, Vaughn told him the family did not accept felons.

The War on Drugs begins

He hit the streets again. With no treatment, he continued using heroin. And before the end of 1972, Bolar was arrested for having needle marks on his arm from injecting it.

This was a year after President Richard Nixon declared the "War on Drugs," calling drugs "public enemy no. 1," increasing funds for federal drug enforcement and proposing stricter sentencing.

But there were "profoundly unequal outcomes across racial groups, manifested through racial discrimination by law enforcement and disproportionate drug war misery suffered by communities of color," according to the Drug Policy Alliance.

Even current U.S. Department of Justice data show that African Americans are six times more likely than white Americans to be imprisoned for drug convictions even though they're no more likely to use drugs than are white Americans.

Bolar knows he was a victim of it all, yet he really wasn't sure at the time just how affected he was by the political mood of the country.

He headed back to Cincinnati as soon as he could, and eventually fell in love with a woman and had two children, Lindsey Jr. and Ebonie.

Then his father asked him to return to California to make amends and work for him.

Again, Bolar went.

And again, the deal did not pan out.

His life was survival: heroin and homelessness, sometimes a job, other times crime, and for a while, caring for his children.

"I don't even know how I made it," he says.

California prison records for that time through the 1980s show that Bolar was convicted of possession of marijuana, forgery, loitering, trespassing and possessing cocaine.

Then came an indeterminate life sentence of 999 years, the prison records show, for, of all things, kidnapping for extortion.

It's a strange story. Bolar was caring for his children, then aged 5 and 7, in an apartment and had rented a room to a man for extra cash. The man did not pay up, Bolar says.

Court records from Van Nuys, California, in April 1991, show that David Reisman, the victim, said he was "forced into the car," that he feared for his life, and, "I was threatened to have my glasses pushed back in the rear side of my head."

Asked in court who was responsible, he pointed to Bolar.

Reisman told of a stop at a U.S. Postal Service office and some check-cashing places where Bolar forced him to try to get his Social Security check cashed.

The jury believed Reisman. Bolar was sent to prison.

There, Bolar continued to use heroin, even selling it in Calfornia's Corcoran prison. It was black tar heroin from Mexico, often sold west of the Mississippi River at that time.

Bolar says he had privileges at the prison. He had no gang affiliations.

And once, in late 1999, he was sweeping the "day room" when a Mexican inmate asked him to pass a kite to another inmate. After a few favors, Bolar agreed to arrange a way to get heroin into the prison.

With isolation comes understanding

He got caught in April 2000 and was isolated from the other inmates.

“Somebody threw a book under the door,” he says. It was about addiction.

“That was the first time in my life, honestly, I ever even took my attention to addiction. About the behavior. About the lifestyle," he says. "About me."

He was 49. He’d used heroin for 37 years.

“Clarity came," he says.

When he left isolation, Bolar went to Narcotics Anonymous meetings, initially because he was required to do so.

“Before you know it, I ended up being the chairman of the NA program and running the program – 600 prisoners every Thursday night."

Bolar was in recovery.

“It was tough inside of prison,” he says. “I had to watch people use drugs every day.”

His nickname in prison was "Cincinnati," or "'Nati" for short, and a neighboring inmate sometimes called out, "Hey, Cincinnati," and showed Bolar the dope.

“I had to navigate all that," he says, shaking his head and laughing.

He was eventually transferred to California's Solano State Prison.

The chance of a lifetime

While Bolar was at Solano, Tom Gorham, a member of the National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Counsel, was pitching a program to certify inmates for drug and alcohol counseling to the California prison system.

Gorham, program director of his wife's treatment center in Berkeley, an outfit called Options Recovery Services, brought the Offender Mentor Certification Program to the nearby prison.

"It was an all-star lineup," Gorham says of the trainers.

About 270 inmates applied to the program, 80 were interviewed and 50 enrolled.

"Lindsey is one of those 50 faces," Gorham recalls.

"Lindsey always sat in the front row. He participated a lot," Gorham says. Like most inmates, he says, Bolar was skeptical.

Each prospective mentor would have to complete 315 hours in class, then spend nights studying, Bolar recalls. Then there were another 255 hours of counseling experience for a total of 570.

One trainer was Paula Wold, a faculty member at University of California in San Diego who'd been a civilian instructor and adviser at the U.S. Navy Alcohol and Drug Counseling School.

"My job was to reach in there and find the good guy, and then teach them how to be a counselor."

Bolar stood out, Wold says.

"He was a character. Very charismatic," she says. "He was challenging."

She believes it was hard for Bolar to let go of who he thought he was. He was self-aware and self-protective – survival instincts, she says.

Eventually, though, Bolar let go.

"I would start to see this vulnerable side of him," Wold says. "He started to trust more. I started to see who he really is: This nurturing, caring guy."

It is no simple task to pass the certification exam, Wold and Gorham say. But Bolar was among 38 of the inmates who did. (None of those paroled have returned to prison.)

Bolar became impassioned about his work. He urged young inmates to stay drug-free, to continue their education, get a trade, work on behaviors that led them to prison, a prison report notes. He told them to look toward a life outside the walls.

Before long, Bolar got that chance himself.

He was stunned when he was paroled. He was on his cot when the news came.

"They said, 'Cincinnati, if you wanna go home, be ready at 8:30.' "

Bolar was released from prison on Jan. 27, 2010. He was dropped off at Options Recovery with no advance notice to Gorham.

"I see this tall, African American guy roll in the door," Gorham recalls, chuckling. "He had no family. No money. He's wearing these ill-fitting, gymnasium-gray sweats."

Within 24 hours, Bolar had a room and a job working with addicted clients.

He loved it and he proudly told a reporter with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for a June 2011 prison story, "I am not part of the problem anymore. I'm part of the solution."

In 2012, Bolar enrolled at Berkeley City College to study public and community health.

"He was a charmer," says Gail Pendleton, assessment coordinator at the college.

She hired him to assist her and watched as Bolar grew.

"He helped a lot of people along the way," Pendleton says. "He was a big inspiration."

Bolar's time in California ended in 2014, when a parole officer said he could leave the state.

He was ready to return to Cincinnati.

He left with certificates of recognition from the California Association of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors, Vaca Valley Adult School, the California State Assembly and the Orange County Department of Education, among others.

His sisters waited for him at the Greyhound Station.

For the first time in more than two decades, all five of Mary Washington's children would be together. Their mother had died in 2003. "She always believed he would come home," Slater says.

She fixed up a room for her brother so that he could share her Bond Hill home and printed a sign that's still stuck to the door: "Welcome Home."

Back home

Bolar did not know until he returned to Cincinnati that opioid addiction had become an epidemic, and Ohio was crushed with 2,110 overdose deaths in 2013.

He was glad to learn that the developing idea was to decriminalize addiction and instead offer treatment.

"It used to be that an addict was the lowest thing," he says. "That's how they talked to us: We're not people. We just become items. It was rough."

Bolar got various jobs and has maintained work since he returned. He started reaching out to young people with addiction, and he continued working on his own recovery.

Then, in 2016, Bolar found himself a victim of this new opioid epidemic. He relapsed after he was prescribed pain pills for a foot injury.

"That was a hard moment for me," he says. "It became real about this epidemic."

He sought treatment, saw how some people got "trapped" in pain pills, and told his story in meetings in an attempt to help others with addiction.

And he has been drug-free ever since.

Bolar works as a janitor at Yeshivas Lubavitch Cincinnati. He works out at the same YMCA where he went to live as a 14-year-old addicted to heroin.

He often thinks about the array of individuals who decided to take a chance on a man who'd been, basically, homeless since he was a child, addicted to heroin. A man who'd spent most of his life on probation or locked up or on parole.

When he remembers their early conversations, he laughs and chokes up a little.

"They saved me," he says simply.

And he longs to save others.

"He is an extraordinary man," says trainer Wold.

So when Bolar saw the broken young woman in his neighborhood last year, he felt compelled to try to help her.

He comforted Penny. He drove her to an addiction center, where she was redirected to a hospital. He took her to the hospital and walked her inside. He spoke on her behalf. He waited for her when she was getting a test. Learned she did not have Medicaid. He waited with her more. Hours went by and Bolar stayed with her only to hear that there was no place that could take Penny. She could try again on Monday.

"I dropped off Penny. She did not want to leave," Bolar said that night. "She cried. I feel so bad for her. I feel the pain."

"We need a safe house for women like Penny," he said. "A place where they can get their paperwork together, their ID, whatever they need to be eligible for treatments."

Bolar looked for Penny that Monday and watched his phone for her call.

He waited and watched. But, no surprise to Bolar, Penny was gone.

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