Double redemption: One man’s battle with alcohol
- Joe Connor doesn’t believe in giving up on people even after repeated relapses.
- Joe Connor has been where those he tries to help are going.
Joseph P. Connor Jr. wanted to die.
His lawyer had called him in D.C. Connor was wanted by State Police and needed to get back to Delaware.
Connor knew why: he had signed and deposited a credit card check that didn’t belong to him.
He had been sober for 16 years, but was drinking again. The downturn in the economy had ruined his real estate business.
As he drove, he swigged from a vodka bottle and looked for a way to kill himself.
When he got to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, he stepped out of his car and walked to the railing intending to jump over the side. But after being yelled at by another driver for blocking traffic, he got back behind the wheel and drove away.
He considered driving off the Indian River Bridge embankment. But he never made it that far. Still drinking, he ended up on Del. 26, swerving, leading police on an 80 mph chase, running vehicles off the road.
He was only looking for one thing – the right tree.
He never found it.
He finally ran off the road, was hospitalized, then spent more than a year in prison.
Today, he has turned his life around yet again. He has been sober for seven years and is back selling real estate.
He is also helping people get out of the darkness with which he is so familiar.
Joe Connor’s story is one of redemption, of second and third chances. A story of backsliding after 16 years of sobriety. A story of having everything and losing it all and then rebuilding a life dedicated to helping others.
And that, it turns out, is a good thing for people like Diann Jones.
Jones’ daughter is addicted to opiates. And it is Connor who is there to lift the young woman from the depths of her addiction – even when she slips and uses again. He knows where she’s been, what she’s going through. He’s been there himself.
“There is never any judgment on his part, Jones said. “And he doesn’t tell me what I want to hear. He tells me what I need to hear.”
He describes his road to 16 years of sobriety as “plain vanilla.”
He had it all during those years of sobriety – a successful career in real estate; a family, a home in coastal Sussex County, investment properties. He served on committees. He ran for public office. He co-hosted a radio talk show.
“I lost all of that,” said Connor, who is divorced. “I relapsed after 16 years. Sixteen years.”
And now he realizes his lesson is an important one for others trying to recover from addiction.
The take home message for the people who drink or use drugs again, Connor said, is, “you had a bump, let us help you.”
He doesn’t believe in giving up on people even after repeated relapses because, he said, there is always hope.
The downward spiral
In 2006, the Sussex County real estate boom was on the skids. New construction was off. Home sales were down.
And Joe Connor’s life was falling apart. He started drinking again – hiding it from the people in a position to help him the most.
One night, he recalled, he was having dinner in a Philadelphia restaurant. He was drinking even as he was on the phone helping someone else get into an addiction treatment program.
He makes no excuses for his slip back into alcoholism.
“You can’t blame one thing on another thing,” he said.
His secret was revealed on Aug. 13, 2006. He was drunk, driving home from northern Delaware, when he ran through a red light at U.S. 40 and Del. 896.
“I was just drinking one night,” he said. “I knew I shouldn’t be driving. It was a really bad idea. I almost died. I spent three weeks in the hospital.’
Connor blew though a red light and a truck driver plowed into Connor’s driver’s side door.
Connor was charged with driving under the influence and was granted first offender’s status.
“I got back into the program,” he said.
But it didn’t last.
A lesson learned, he said: “You can’t go up until you stop going down.”
He kept going down. His financial troubles escalated. Then came the May 2007 phone call from his lawyer, John Brady. Brady told Connor, who was in Washington, D.C., that he had to get back to talk to Delaware police about the check he deposited.
“I got in my car – I was clean when I got the first call – and I started drinking on the way back to Delaware,” Connor said.
He drove to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
“I pulled over my car and I walked up over to the rail,” he recalled.
He planned to jump but he was blocking the travel lane and a guy started yelling at him to move his car.
An impatient driver saved his life.
“I got back in the car and thought, I’ll go back to Delaware to the Indian River Inlet Bridge . . . I’ll drive up on the pile of dirt, gun the engine and drive off,” he said.
He never made it there. He bought more vodka and kept drinking and driving He said he had his wits about him.
“I remember everything that happened that day.”
According to the police report from that late Thursday afternoon on May 17, 2007, someone called police to report a vehicle on Del. 26 traveling into oncoming traffic numerous times with a driver who was “possibly intoxicated.”
Delaware State Police officer Michael Trestka pulled over at Clarksville near St. George’s Chapel to wait for the driver to pass.
Connor’s blue Ford Explorer approached and Trestka pulled in behind, put on his lights and tried to stop the car.
Connor, behind the wheel, continued east on Del. 26.
He increased speed, passed cars and ran oncoming traffic off the road.
Trestka, turned on his siren. He estimated Connor was going 60 miles per hour in a 35 mile per hour zone.
Connor turned south onto Del. 17 and sped up. By Trestka’s estimate, he was going 80 to 85 miles per hour.
“The entire time . . . he was running vehicles off the roadway,” Trestka wrote.
In Selbyville, Chief W. Scott Collins was waiting.
As Connor approached, Collins, according to the police report, deployed stop sticks.
The two front tires on the Explorer went flat. But Connor kept driving, at 65 to 70 miles per hour.
He sped into Selbyville at 60 miles per hour, came into a turn, careened off the road, went airborne and landed in a ditch.
Hours later, Trestka drove to Peninisula Regional Medical Center to talk to Connor.
“He stated he was sorry for what he did and deserves what ever punishment he gets,” Trestka wrote.
Connor told him he had one goal: “He was attempting to kill himself and he was looking for the right tree to strike so he could do so.”
When Trestka searched Connor’s car, there was an empty pint bottle of vodka on the driver’s side floor.
The next morning, Connor had another visitor.
The man asked him a question: “Everything’s changed. What are you going to do now?” Connor recalled. “The mask was off. The veneer was off. I was pretty messed up. I had some time to get clean.”
In the four months between his accident and his court date, “somebody actually gave me a job,” he said.
He knew that his future “wasn’t going to be that good.” He was facing prison.
“But of all the bad things that happened in my life, that was not the worst of it.”
The charges against Connor were combined into one case. He appeared in court on Sept. 21, 2007 and pleaded guilty in a plea agreement. He was 55 years old and facing one year and 60 days in jail. His fines totaled $11,036.25.
Turning it around
When he got out of jail, he moved to Wilmington.
He’s been clean and sober seven years.
His real estate license was restored. He spends his time selling property and working at Connections Community Support Programs. He also serves on the board of the Addictions Coalition.
But mostly, said New Castle County Executive Tom Gordon, he helps other people in addiction get the help they need.
“I get a lot of calls” when people don’t know where to turn, Gordon said.
He picks up the phone and calls Connor. “He’s placed them. He’s dedicated. He really is that person. He’s been on the brink and he’s a very happy man.”
He never gives up, no matter how many times a person stumbles and needs help, Diann Jones said.
“There are people that didn’t give up on him so he doesn’t give up on other people,” said Cathy McKay, founder and CEO of Connections.
McKay, who has known Connor for two decades or more, said “he believes that people can get help, that they can have second chances and third chances and 10th chances.”
The reason: because he is one of those people, she said.
He had it all: Success, money, political and social status and he lost it, she said.
Other people, especially men who had similar experiences, relate to that, McKay said. His story hits home with many who are still struggling to get clean or sober.
Connor doesn’t put much stock in divine intervention.
“I’m fairly cut and dried about coincidences and circumstances,” he said.
Instead, he said, he lives each day.
And he shares the story of his old life and his new one.
He looks at that day in May – the day an inpatient driver interrupted his jump from a bridge, the day he couldn’t find the right tree to run into – as bad and good.
“The bad news is that it happened,” he said. “The good news is it was the last day I drank. ... I’ve been very, very fortunate.”
Reach Molly Murray at 463-3334 or mmurray@delawareonline.com. Follow her on Twitter@MollyMurraytnj.
Alcohol Abuse in Delaware
It is a story that is all too common in Delaware.
The cost of excessive alcohol consumption in Delaware is enormous – $805 per capita, according to a 2006 Centers for Disease Control report. Only a few states had higher per capita costs. In neighboring states it is less: Maryland, $743; New Jersey, $680; Pennsylvania, $675.
The Delaware State Police 2012 Annual Traffic Statistical Report shows that alcohol was involved in 6 percent of all traffic crashes – 1,272 out of 21,202. But of the 110 fatals, 44 percent were alcohol related. Statewide, in 2012, there were 3,127 arrests for Driving Under the Influence.
A recent national study that followed 1,200 addicts found that over the first year, about two-thirds will relapse. If they stay clean and sober a year, less than half use drugs or alcohol again. After five years, the chance of a relapse is 15 percent.