Rick Cafferata doesn’t just work with the homeless population in northern Sonoma County; he once was part of it. The 59-year-old now spends his days as street outreach worker at Reach for Home, the Healdsburg-based nonprofit that helps locals find stable housing and achieve self-sufficiency. Before he connected with the organization, however, Cafferata spent the better part of 30 years homeless and addicted to drugs.
“Addiction took me to places I never thought I’d go,” he says, looking back. “It also has led me here.”
Cafferata’s trouble with drugs began sometime between age 10 and 13. Meth was his drug of choice, and it got him in all sorts of trouble, time and time again. He drifted in and out of homelessness. He simply couldn’t stay clean.
In 1985, after years of not knowing which end was up, Cafferata drove up the 101 to stay with a friend in Cloverdale, where he had visited with his family in his younger years. The friend convinced Cafferata to go to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting in Fellowship Hall at the United Church of Cloverdale. It was the first of many experiences with NA. None of them seemed to work for more than a few weeks.
Cafferata’s free-fall continued. Finally — mercifully — in 2010 he found himself back in Cloverdale and he went back to the NA meeting. This time, it stuck.
“I went to Fellowship Hall and realized I was sitting in the same exactly place I had sat in 1985,” he remembers, acknowledging the poetry. “This time, I listened to what they were saying. I got a sponsor. I worked the steps. I did what they suggested, and it changed my life.”
Once he got sober, Cafferata got a job working the showers at Wallace House Community Services, a Cloverdale organization that helps the homeless there. About a year later, Colleen Carmichael, executive director at Reach for Home, offered him a job in Healdsburg.
These days, Cafferata works with 20-25 members of our community who are chronically homeless, as well as those who have special mental or physical needs and need help remembering to take medication or getting to appointments.
He meets his clients every morning at McDonald’s in Healdsburg — connecting with them in person, over breakfast. He makes sure they show up for court dates. He helps them with Social Security. He even connects them with Reach for Home’s laundry service, providing transportation to and from a local laundromat on Thursday mornings.
Cafferata now lives in a home in Santa Rosa. On July 17, he celebrated eight years sober.
Later this month, Cafferata and the rest of his colleagues will volunteer at Reach for Home’s annual “Dinner in the Vineyard” fundraiser, which takes place from 5 to 9 p.m. Aug. 25 at Alexander Valley Hall in Geyserville. Tickets for the event are still available; for more information, visit reachforhome.org/fundraisers.
Looking forward, Cafferata says he can’t really picture himself ever doing anything else. He describes his current situation as a “calling, not a career,” and notes that his number one purpose in life is to help others.
“Throughout all the years I used, there were a lot of times I shouldn’t even have survived,” he says. “There’s no explanation for it. I’m still here. I’m still able to help people. The way I see it, if I can do it, anybody can do it. For that reason, I believe this is what I was meant to do.”
Matt Villano is a writer and editor based in Healdsburg. His column spotlights good people in the community doing great things. To learn more about him, visit whalehead.com.
