Heather James has been promoted to general manager of a restaurant in Russellville, something she never dreamed she’d do when she was homeless and on drugs.
“It’s really mind-blowing,” she said.
She and her husband, Frank, have both served prison time on drug-related charges, and they lost custody of all six of their children because of their lifestyle.
Heather said they had already stopped using drugs when a friend told them about Stand Ministries in Conway. Previously called Stand Together and No Drugs, or STAND, it was for women only. The Jameses were the first couple accepted into the program, said Shenel Sandidge, interim executive director.
“They moved out and have been flourishing ever since,” Sandidge said.
The residential program teaches life skills and money management, she said.
Heather got a job as a waitress at Long John Silver’s in Conway after riding her bicycle in “the pouring-down rain” to the
interview. She was promoted to shift manager and started last week as the general manager at the location in Russellville, and the couple moved to Russellville.
“I worked my way up, just working extra shifts, doing what I had to do. I think I was [at the Conway restaurant] about three months, and I got promoted to a shift manager,” she said.
She said she had sent in hundreds of applications before that, but as a convicted felon, it was hard to get a foot in the door.
“I was open and honest about everything from the start because I want everybody to see how God’s worked in my life. [Long John Silver’s] took a chance and gave me a job,” Heather said.
Frank has his own tree service and is a painter for seven Long John Silver’s locations.
Frank, 43, and Heather, 38, both said Stand helped them stay on track and learn some much-needed skills.
“It is kind of like being in a safe house away from everything; that way you can kind of reflect on yourself,” Frank said. “You don’t worry about what you’re going to eat, how to pay the electric bill. You can concentrate on what you need to concentrate on to get back on your feet.”
And the couple had been to hell and back before getting on their feet.
They grew up in the small town of Hohenwald, Tennessee. Heather said her childhood was chaotic, and she went to live in her first foster home when she was 13.
“My mom and my stepdad were alcoholics, and they were fighting all the time. I started getting in trouble when I was 13, I guess — just not going to school; I went to school drunk one day; fighting,” she said.
Frank said he lost his father early in life, and he started smoking marijuana at a young age.
“I smoked marijuana most of my life. I can remember in school, I was the only one smoking pot,” he said.
He said several of his aunts and uncles died in one year, all of cancer, and it hit him hard.
“When I lost all my family, I just went wild,” he said.
Heather said she had smoked marijuana, too, “but as far as anything hard, I didn’t get on the hard stuff until we got together.”
She said Frank had reduced his drug use when she met him, but they were a volatile combination.
“When we got together, we went crazy with it,” she said. “Cocaine was really bad. We shot coke. We’d just do whatever, and a lot of it. He always worked; we lived day to day to get high. I never worked.”
Heather got arrested in 2002 for selling drugs and was in prison in Memphis until 2007.
“It was good; I always thank God now for it because I was diagnosed with mental illnesses my whole life, and until I got to prison, I never got help,” she said. “It gave me a time to get away from drugs and work on myself. I used my time wisely.”
Heather said she earned her GED and certificates in painting and commercial cleaning, as well as landscape and
excavation.
The couple moved to Lonoke in February 2008 for a new start, but their lifestyle didn’t change much.
“As soon as I got out of prison, I went back to drugs. That’s all I knew,” Heather said. “I think I thought I couldn’t live my life without it. I was always looking for whatever false sense of whatever it gives you.”
The Jameses lived in a house without electricity or running water, and Frank made repairs on the home for the owner.
Frank’s drug habits sent him to prison in 2012 until 2014, in Lonoke County and Malvern, after he was arrested on drug-related charges. When he was paroled, he entered the Phoenix Recovery Center in Conway, but he didn’t stay the required 60 days.
Before he went to prison in 2012, the state took their five children, Heather said.
“We lived in the woods (in Lonoke County) for about six months, hiding from the law. It was awful,” she said.
Heather said she got pregnant again, and she had to give up her parental rights to that baby, too.
“It was like getting a death sentence,” she said. “Now I see that it was a blessing to them because God did it for them. We weren’t the best for them. It took me a long time to see that. I would never want to hurt them; I wasn’t right
for them.”
One couple adopted the five younger children, and Heather said she knows the couple provided what she and Frank never could have.
“Even if I hadn’t been on drugs, we wouldn’t have known how to give them a childhood they deserved,”
she said.
The couple’s dysfunctional relationship took its toll, and they separated a few times.
“We blamed each other, which we don’t now, but we did,” she said. “We handled it in different ways; he was more open to talk about it versus me. I reacted in anger toward everybody.”
Frank said it was devastating to lose custody of their children.
“The only way we got over it … you have to forgive yourself. We have a lot of good people around us,” he said.
Frank said their oldest child, who is almost 18, contacted them about a year ago, and they have seen her.
A friend told the Jameses about Stand, which was started as a ministry for women coming out of jail. It has housing in the Glen Echo mobile-home park in Conway, and has a program that includes classes and community service. Stand’s former executive director went to prison for violating her probation, and Sandidge, a board member, took on the responsibility of directing the ministry. Sandidge is also executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Faulkner County.
Heather said they went to live at Stand on Oct. 15, 2015, which was a godsend, “because we had nobody; we had no family here. The only people we knew weren’t trying to help.”
“Shenel definitely came from God,” Heather said of Sandidge.
Frank said Sandidge cares about people, and it shows.
“Shenel is a sister a to me — not only a good friend — she’s a sister in Christ,” Frank said.
Heather said she has come to realize “that we have to allow God to work in our lives. If you give him control, he is going to do things that are unbelievable, things you would never imagine.”
She also said she learned to take responsibility through the Stand program.
“I had the thought, ‘I am going to go here, and they are going to do all this stuff for me.’ You have to do your own footwork; you can’t sit on your butt. You have to get up and do it for yourself.”
The couple took a money-
management course and performed community service by working with Habitat for Humanity of Faulkner County.
Heather participated in fundraisers for the Women’s Build project, which will begin construction in July. Frank was a team leader for a construction project in partnership with AmeriCorps in the fall, and Heather participated, too.
“This just touched me so much — we were able to work on Habitat houses with the AmeriCorps group that came in,” she said. “God can always use anyone.”
Heather and Frank said they aren’t tempted to use drugs anymore.
“We know where we come from, don’t get me wrong, but that desire’s not there,” Frank said. “I give God all the glory.”
The recividism rate for felons is 77 percent, said Cody Hiland, 20th Judicial District prosecuting attorney.
“Do you know how rare that is?” he said of the couple excelling as they have.
Heather said one of her goals is to continue to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity of Faulkner County and give back to the community.
As far as in her career, she wants to improve the sales at the Russellville restaurant.
“I want to bring our customer-satisfaction surveys up and bring the store back up to where it should be,” she said. “I’m so excited.”
Frank is staying busy doing maintenance on the restaurants, as well as operating his tree service.
“Our goal is whatever we make in this year, half goes to God,” Frank said. “We made that vow during Stand. We’ve been keeping up with it. We try to stay ahead of that. We got in a real good church — we’ve just got to put him first.”
Frank also said he plans to continue to volunteer with Stand to help the program become even more successful.
Sandidge praised the couple’s commitment to the program.
“They came in and worked the program, and therefore they finished early,” Sandidge said. “It was a rough start, but they went on and pursued it, and they saw where it could benefit them. We taught them to crawl before they walked, and they took hold of the program and made it work for them.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.