Fred Stephens walked through the door into this little-known space along Eau Claire’s Graham Avenue on this unusually cold March morning, momentarily free from the troubles that often haunt him.

 

Wearing a worn baseball cap, Stephens, 59, greeted a grizzled, grim-looking man donning a cowboy hat, one of a handful of people gathered in this spare space on this late-March Sunday morning.

 

“It was another cold one out there last night, wasn’t it?” Stephens said to the man, whose repeated, raspy cough filled the room.

 

After asking the man how he’s doing, the amicable Stephens strode across the room to get himself a cup of coffee, greeting a husband and wife along the way. Then he settled into a chair, enjoying the warmth of his coffee and the room, warmed by a large heater at its rear.

 

A sign above the door to this nondescript room inside an otherwise unremarkable building listed this site as “The Garage.” The space, home to tables and chairs, is a hangout for Eau Claire’s homeless residents and anyone seeking a warm escape from winter’s cold. The Garage found plenty of takers this past winter, a winter that tied with the winter of 1903-04 as the coldest recorded in Eau Claire.

 

On this morning, Stephens and his colleagues were especially grateful to share this warm location.

 

“This winter, it’s been so hard on people,” Stephens said, noting he has been lucky to afford to live this winter in a hotel. “I’ve watched these people on the streets wear down. Bit by bit, (winter) has sapped the life out of them.”

 

Stephens knows all too well about hard times and homelessness, about dashed hopes and trying to cope with mental illness. After three years in the Army in the mid-1970s, Stephens landed in Minneapolis, where he was often homeless, playing his guitar as a street musician. He performed frequently along Hennepin Avenue, a street where nearly anything and everything happened.

 

“It was right after the hippie movement and there was all kinds of stuff going on there, all kinds of drugs and crazy things,” Stephens recalled.

 

Stephens said his drug use was rampant during his time on the streets of Minneapolis. He smoked marijuana and took LSD and just about anything else he could get his hands on.

 

“I took hundreds of acid trips,” he said. “I did so much stuff I can’t remember a lot of it.”

 

Stephens doesn’t take drugs for the fun of it, he said. He ingests illegal substances to quiet the fears that sometimes whirl through his mind like dark shadows. Drugs shut out the awful memories from his childhood, dulling the sexual and physical abuse he said he endured. They quiet the verbal assaults people dish his way, words that cut his sensitive heart to shreds. They help him escape feelings of inadequacy, failure and self-doubt.

 

“I take drugs to medicate myself,” Stephens said. “Sometimes I imagine that I’m in a different world and I don’t want to come back. It’s tempting to have the security of that other world and not come back to this life.”

 

Tired of the hectic pace of life in the Twin Cities, Stephens later relocated to rural Phillips in northwest Wisconsin. He enjoyed the solitude of his new life. He relaxed by hunting and fishing in nearby lakes and streams and listening to birds’ songs. He delighted in staring at stars that lit the night sky above him. He especially appreciated having a house of his own. He hadn’t had one of those for a long time.

 

Then came a summer day in 1999 when Stephens found himself staring down the business end of a rifle aimed at his head. Stephens was operating a sizeable marijuana growing operation in conjunction with Milwaukee drug lords. Authorities uncovered it and busted Stephens. He was headed to jail.

 

He was also headed to treatment. As part of his sentence, Stephens was ordered to undergo drug and alcohol counseling. He saw a psychologist who diagnosed him with multiple mental health issues in need of attention.

 

“Getting busted for dealing drugs was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Stephens said. “It started me on the path to living a better life.”

 

That doesn’t mean the last 15 years, most of it spent in Eau Claire, have been smooth sailing for Stephens. His story is one filled with more ups and downs than a roller coaster ride, more twists and turns than a soap opera plot.

 

He has been in and out of alcohol and drug treatment more times than he can recall. He’s had more psychological evaluations and counseling sessions than he can count. He’s had continued run-ins with law enforcement as he struggled to keep on the straight and narrow. In January he violated terms of his probation when he was disorderly with police who found him in possession of marijuana.

 

For much of the past decade-and-a-half, Stephens hasn’t had a roof over his head. He estimates taxpayers have spent roughly $1.5 million for his care during that time.

 

“That weighs on my mind,” Stephens said. “I wish it was different. I wish I had made some better decisions in my past. But now I’m trying to change that.”

 

To do that, Stephens pees into a vial regularly, part of court-ordered monitoring to ensure he remains drug-free. One slip-up and he’ll find himself back in jail. He continues rehab and outpatient treatment, an effort to ensure he is receiving proper medication and counseling for his mental health problems.

 

“I’m taking this seriously,” he said. “I don’t want to screw up again. I’m getting too old for that kind of thing and I'm running out of time.”