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Consumer becomes first part-time employee
with SERV’s maintenance department
Greg stands outside a group home in Middlesex County,
where he is working on painting the dining room. He is the
first SERV consumer to be hired as a permanent part-time
employee with SERV's maintenance department.
Dressed in his
navy blue Yankees hooded sweatshirt and jeans, Greg H. is not too concerned
about getting drops of pink ceiling paint on them.
In fact, he
remains free of any splatters as he dips the long- handled roller into the pink
paint and applies it to the ceiling of the dining room at SERV’s group home in
Middlesex
County. He explains that while the paint looks pink in the bucket while wet, it
will turn white as it dries on the ceiling. This makes it easier to see if you’ve missed any spots.
Painting is just
one of his many jobs as a part-time maintenance worker for SERV Behavioral
Health System, Inc. Greg, the 37- year- old
who once was good enough to play baseball with the minors, today is happy to
have permanent part-time employment doing the same work he did as a “resident maintenance
helper” for 18 months with SERV. 
While some SERV resident
consumers take on temporary/transitional maintenance-helper positions designed
specifically to prepare them for the job market, Greg is the first consumer to
become a permanent part-time employee with SERV’s maintenance department. He has been in the position for nine months now
and is considered “part of the family” by full- time SERV employees Isaac
Johnson,
Middlesex
County
facilities manager;
and Glenn Gorski and Joe Sowa. “He is like alittle brother instead of just a
co-worker,” says Johnson, who notes that Greg is quick to learn any new skill.
Greg has been a consumer with
SERV
Centers
Middlesex
County
since June 2004, when he left
Trenton
Psychiatric Hospital, where
he was being treated for paranoid schizophrenia. With the help of proper medicine, Greg is now
able to ignore the voices that come into his head. “When I’m busy and I’m
working, I don’t pay much attention to (them),” says Greg, who spends a minimum
20 hours a week doing fix-it jobs at
SERV
Centers
’ and
SERV
Achievement
Centers
’ group homes and
apartments for individuals recovering from a serious mental illness or coping
with a developmental disability.
Amanda Lowe,
Greg’s Residential Program Manager (RPM), says Greg has become much more
mature, responsible and confident since he interviewed for the position and
began work with the maintenance team. “He has formed a good relationship with
his co- workers and they are good role models for him,” she says.
Greg learned much
of what he knows about maintenance work from his father, Jerry, who built his
own car and a house. “I helped him out
so much (as a young man), that when I started work at SERV, I knew what NOT to
touch,” he says, showing his ever-ready sense of humor.
It was Greg’s
father who said to him, “You’ve got to do something with your life,” when Greg,
then in his mid-20s, came home to Metuchen after spending a couple of years in
California working and getting high on marijuana.
“It was a party,”
says Greg, who tried to rid the voices in his head by smoking pot. “I heard
nothing when I was high. When I stopped,
the voices started.” He pauses and says
wryly, “Well, I might have heard them, but maybe just forgot.”
His earlier
college years at
Delaware
State,
Labette
Community College
and the
University
of
Central Arkansas
were focused on baseball,
not his studies. “I never made it to
class … I majored in baseball,” he says with a laugh. He was promised a spot as a shortstop with a
minor league baseball team in
Florida
if he made up his classes, but he chose to give it up. “I knew I wasn’t going to the majors. I was
like 140 pounds. I had a good run (with
college baseball) and was pretty satisfied with it.”
Back at home in
Metuchen, he entered a psychiatric hospital in the area because he became
suspicious of people around him, thinking they were conspiring against him.
Once out of the
hospital, he continued to take the prescribed medicines, but had a bad reaction
to them. He managed to live with the voices as he worked toward an associate’s
degree in electronics technology at DeVry Institute in
North
Brunswick. After
graduation, he got a job in
Manhattan
, where he
plied his trade at companies on
Park Avenue
and Wall Street. But the voices “became too much.”
“I saved up money
and took off to
Mexico. At the time, I figured if I got out of
America, the
voices would go away.” He smiles and says
with a chuckle, “That didn’t happen. Plan A was scrapped.”
He spent two
months in
Tijuana,
all the while smoking pot and drinking. “I was waging war on the voices, which
were there to point out my insecurities.”
When he ran out of
money, he came back to
New Jersey
and entered
Trenton
Psychiatric Hospital, where he became
stabilized on a medicine that worked for him.
Able to manage the
voices in his head, Greg began his life with SERV.
“Now, (I) don’t have to respond to the voices
… that might say, ‘Don’t drive today.’ So, I’d be like, I’m going to drive
because you told me not to drive.’ You
just hear them and go about your day. Nowadays, I’m just so used to it; it’s a part of life.”
When Greg came to SERV
in 2004 he stopped taking drugs. “My
mom always says that I was blessed when I came to SERV. She said they would take care of me.”
Today, Greg enjoys
watching all sports on television in the supervised B- level apartment he shares
with two other SERV consumers. As far as
participating in sports, an occasional wiffleball game with other residents might
start up outside the apartments. And
then there is the occasional round of golf when he visits his father in
Delaware
. “I beat him the last time out,” he says.
All three
residents are responsible for the cleanliness of the apartment. “We’ve got this thing,” Greg says. “If you mess it up, clean it up.”
Greg also is
learning from his RPM, Amanda, how to budget his work money, though he clearly
would rather leave the details to her. He smiles when she reminds him how
capable he is in handling his finances.
Greg’s goal is to
one day be on his own; he is on a waiting list for Section 8 Housing in
Perth Amboy
. “He has worked so hard for his independence,”
Amanda says.
But in the
meantime, Greg is happy to be in the Residential Program at SERV, while also
working for SERV. “When everything was
going crazy, SERV had the answers to give me. They offered some type of consistency and sanity. And, I like (working)
because it’s not in one place all day. Time goes by real fast because I am always busy. Before you know it, you look up at the clock
and it’s time to go home.
“It feels safe
here.”
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At SERV we share our experience, support and guidance with children, adults and families as they work to
recover from and cope with mental illness, addictions,
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