Amber Stepp grew up in poverty.
“We really didn’t have much at all and life was pretty hard,” she said of her early years in Cumberland, Ky.
School offered no reprieve, either, as classmates teased and bullied her every day.
She was a 9-year-old 4th grader when she said she realized a change in friends could offer her protection.
“I wasn’t bullied anymore,” she said. “But it led me into a crowd of people I shouldn’t have been with.”
By 12, she was smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol on the weekends.
By 14, she was taking prescription pain medicine.
“And when I was 16, I tried Oxycontin and fell in love,” she said. “I just didn’t know it would take hold of me like it did.”
The details of the decade that followed are unique to Stepp. The story’s theme, however, has become common in a region plagued too long by poverty and drug abuse.
“I met a boy whose dad was a drug dealer,” Stepp recalled. “He had the money, the house, the cars. He had all the things I wanted, and I said, ‘this is how to get that.’”
Stepp, who by then had moved onto IV drugs, began trafficking.
“I would drive to Georgia and bring Oxy back to Kentucky,” she said.
Things went smoothly for about a year. That’s when the police intervened as they were set to make a delivery.
“There were three of us in the car and we all got charged, but I was the driver,” she said. “That was the first time I went to jail. I was 18 and that started the revolving door.”
Stepp was in and out of jail over the next few years but picked up where she left off each time she was released.
She detoxed and tried treatment a few times but nothing stuck.
Then she hit rock bottom in June 2016.
“I was in a hotel with people who were all getting high,” she recalled. “A girl had done a shot of meth and started nodding out. I didn’t know her name but I took her outside so she could get some fresh air. That’s when she fell out and started having a seizure.”
Those who had been in the hotel room began to flee the scene and advised Stepp to do the same.
“But that wasn’t in my heart,” she said. “They all left, and I called 911.”
Stepp could have been like the others who left the scene, but said she felt something, or someone, tell her to stay.
“Something in my heart told me she would have died if I didn’t do something,” she said. “I didn’t know it then, but now I know God stopped me. God told me to stay.”
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Stepp was 26 years old and serving 3-to-5 years in the Harlan County Detention Center when her life changed – though it
wasn’t a change she wanted or one she even believed possible at the time.
“I was angry and confused about why I was there,” she recalled. “I just wanted to do my time and go back out.”
A guard named Patricia, however, wanted something more for Stepp’s life.
“She’d come in and ask what I was grateful for that day,” Stepp said. “I’d say, ‘What do I have to be grateful for? I’m in jail.'”
Patricia did not relent, however, and regularly reminded her she was safe, sober and well fed.
“She said, ‘When is the last time you had all that?’” Stepp recalled. “I was mad at first but then it started registering.”
One day, Patricia stopped in with a copy of The Bible and asked Stepp if she’d ever read it.
“I told her I didn’t believe in God,” she said. “I wasn’t raised in church, and I made fun of people who ‘found God in prison.’ We called it jailhouse religion and I wanted nothing to do with it.”
Patricia left The Bible in Stepp’s cell, anyway, and suggested she take a look.
“I walked in circles looking at that book but then I finally picked it up and read a story about a man named Saul who was out there murdering people for his faith and what he believed to be true until God blinded him, and he turned his whole life around,” Stepp said, becoming emotional.
“Patricia asked me if I thought I could be a Saul who could turn into a Paul.”
Stepp has been sober since the day she was arrested outside that hotel, but that’s not the day she chooses to celebrate.
“I count my sobriety date almost two years later, on March 12, 2018, the day I found God on my knees in a jail cell and made the decision to change my life.”
She gives credit to God for everything since that day – even things she didn’t immediately understand.
“I started praying and He had me sent from prison to a jail, where I attended church and a substance abuse program,” she said.
Two weeks before her release, however, she was sentenced on two old drug charges.
But instead of receiving more jail time, Stepp was ordered to participate in a drug court program.
“I’d been praying and reading The Bible and doing everything right, but then here come these other charges,” she said. “I was mad at God at first, but then I realized He knew I couldn’t go home. He knew I needed to be in a completely different environment in order to stay sober.”
Stepp’s caseworker helped her find faith-based housing in Harlan.
“The women there, Jane and Tina, were a blessing,” Stepp said. “They gave me clothes, makeup, jewelry and hygiene products. I was confused at first because no one had ever been so nice to me without wanting something.
“Finally, I realized they didn’t want anything from me except for me to do good for myself.”
For the first time in her adult life, Stepp began learning how to perform basic tasks such as grocery shopping and bill paying.
Finding a job, however, proved difficult.
“I went to restaurants, retail stores and convenience stores, but I had a record,” she said. “No one would hire me. No one would even call me.”
Drug court workers encouraged her to press forward despite the setbacks and, in time, she was hired at Huddle House, where she worked until it closed because of Covid.
Though disappointed, she said that setback was a Godsend as her next step – a job with Southeastern Kentucky Rehabilitation Industries (SEKRI) – put her future in motion.
“Misty Dean is another angel,” Stepp said of the woman who would become her supervisor at SEKRI.
“When I went in for the interview, Misty had a stack of papers on her desk and I remember saying, ‘I know what those papers say about me and what I’ve done, but If you give me a chance, you won’t regret it because I’m not that person anymore.’”
Her “angel” didn’t hesitate, as Stepp said Dean told her, “‘I will enable you to succeed. I will not let you fail.”
Dean held true to that promise and more, as Stepp said she encouraged her to become certified as a peer support coach.
And just 10 days after she received her certification and was offered a position as a peer support specialist at a nearby recovery home, it was Dean who took Stepp shopping for new work clothes.
“I wore cutoff shorts, combat boots and a side ponytail every day,” Stepp said with a laugh. “I didn’t know how to dress professionally so Misty bought me clothes.
“It was like ‘Pretty Woman.’”
Stepp had been on the job for just over a year when she learned of a new program at her local hospital.
“When I heard about ARH’s Reverse the Cycle program, I felt in my heart that it was something I needed to do,” she said. “I really felt like this is something I need to do to try to help others.”
As part of the program, ARH places Peer Recovery Coaches – individuals in long-term recovery – in each of its 14 hospitals. The coaches receive referrals through patient screenings, provider requests, and consultations from nurses, social workers and discharge planners.
Stepp, who works at Harlan ARH Hospital, speaks to patients struggling with addiction, providing them with support and resources they might need to help turn their lives around.
And her support extends beyond the four walls of the hospital, as she makes weekly visits, delivering Narcan, food, clothes, information and emotional support.
“I just want to help as many people as possible,” she said. “I want people to know recovery is possible. No one is too far gone until they’re dead. Where there’s breath there’s life and where there’s life, there is hope.”
Stepp said she’s paying forward the blessings she’s been given along her recovery path.
“It’s Patricia and Tina and Jane,” she said. “It’s drug court and Misty Dean.”
And ARH, too, she said, tearing up as she talked of the importance of being treated like everyone else.
“ARH trusted me from the beginning,” she said. “No one has ever asked me about my criminal background. They know but they don’t talk about it. They don’t question me or make me feel like I’m being watched.
“I constantly hear that I’m doing a good job and that I’m appreciated,” she continued. “It’s special.”
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Though jail isn’t a place Stepp ever wishes to revisit, she said it’s the place where her life turned around.
“My favorite Bible verse,” she said, “is ‘Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.’
“I didn’t want to go to prison,” she continued, “but it saved my life. Now I’ve just gotta keep trusting God and walk where he tells me to walk.”
