Arizona man will swim in shackles – on purpose

Michael Murtaugh will snap on a set of leg shackles and jump into San Francisco Bay. Then he will swim from Alcatraz to the mainland shore.

Later this week, Michael Murtaugh will snap on a set of leg shackles and jump into San Francisco Bay. Then he will swim one and one-half miles through the chop, from Alcatraz to the mainland shore.

It will be a test of endurance, a celebration of sorts.

One man’s statement – to himself and to those who so desperately need to hear it – that amazing things can happen when you resolve to change your life.

“I’m going prove to people you can break the chains of addiction,” he told me, “and that when you do, anything is possible.”

It won’t be the 54-year-old Cave Creek resident’s first time in restraints, though this time he’ll be wearing them voluntarily, cuffed by a retired Phoenix police commander who also has battled addiction, though in a different way.

Murtaugh knew drugs from an early age

It’s safe to say Murtaugh didn’t have an ideal childhood.

He grew up on the rough side of Allentown, Pa. While his father was away fighting in Vietnam, Murtaugh and his older and brother and sister were left to fight for themselves with a mother who, to be blunt, wasn’t much of one. Murtaugh won’t criticize her other than to say she “had her own afflictions,” which apparently included a live-in boyfriend and a house full of drugs.

By the ripe old age of 4, Murtaugh knew what it was to have a drug-induced hallucination. He knew what it was to be molested and to dine on dog food laced with protein powder. It was either that or nothing.

Later on, he had a few decent years living with his grandparents. But all too quickly they were gone and Murtaugh was left with an alcoholic father, home from the war, and way too much time on his own.

By 11, he was smoking pot. By 14, he’d added cocaine, methamphetamine and alcohol to his repertoire. By 16, he was arrested for burglary.

After jail stints, he moved to Arizona

He didn’t graduate, except to the streets. He was 18 when his father kicked him out and from there he bounced from state to state, from dealer to dealer, from jail cell to street corner.

He couldn’t hold a job for long. Whatever money he made went straight into his arm or up his nose.

By 22, he was homeless in Oceanside, Calif., with several arrests for various driving, fighting and drug-related offenses.

By 23, he was in jail in Vista, Calif., and sick of himself. He cut down on his

drug use but not the drinking. Alcohol, after all, wasn’t a drug. Was it?

He moved to Arizona and began pushing a broom at the Arizona Biltmore, gradually working his way up until eventually he became the resort’s purchasing director.

A go-getter by day but at night and on the weekends, a raging alcoholic with an occasional weekend binge on massive quantities of booze and drugs.

The day in 2010 when everything changed

Having a son didn’t spur him to change. Two divorces, one bankruptcy and a foreclosure didn’t spur him to change. Two DUIs in two years and an upcoming 30-day stay in Tent City didn’t either.

It was one Monday morning in 2010 when everything changed. Murtaugh, by then 45, had just come off a binge weekend and his carpool buddy – his own driver’s license was long gone – could no longer look the other way.

One look at Murtaugh and his friend flatly told him he couldn’t go to work that day.

Maybe it was the look on his friend’s face. Maybe it served as the look in the mirror Murtaugh sorely needed.

“All I can tell you is I was sick and tired and I was embarrassed at what I’d become,” he said. “I used to hide it from everybody. But the last year of my addiction it started to come out. I started to get exposed.”

While Murtaugh was drinking, thenPhoenix Police Cmdr. Kim Humphrey and his wife, Michelle, were busy raising their two sons, Sean and Andrew, and generally living the dream — not on the rough side of Allentown but on the good side of Glendale.

Until that night when the mother of one of 15-year-old Sean’s friends called to warn them their son was headed toward an overdose.

“We go from the perfect (life) to your son is going to overdose,” Humphrey told me.

“It was so ridiculous my wife told her she’d called the wrong number.”

She’d hadn’t. A drug test proved it.

Humphrey oversaw Phoenix’s DARE program

Humphrey was shaken. When he was a sergeant, he oversaw Phoenix Police Department’s DARE program. He could spot an addict a mile away, just not across the room in his own home.

It started with one lousy Percocet, just one, and it built into a raging addiction for painkillers, whatever Sean could get his hands on.

I’m told a parent who hasn’t been through it can’t really understand the devastation that comes with a child on drugs — the guilt, the isolation, the absolute determination to get him back into the pretty scene you’ve pictured since the day he was born.

There is no Christmas, there is no vacation. There is no rest, no solace. There is only heartbreak and embarrassment and fear and frustration that the child you would die for is destroying himself and You. Can’t. Fix. It.

The Humphreys got their son help. He got worse. They got him more help. He got worse.

They spent tens of thousands of dollars on hospital stays and therapists and treatments and he got better ... at hiding his drug use. Then he moved on to heroin and methamphetamine.

But, he discovered, both of his sons were addicted

Eventually, the Humphreys discovered Parents of Addicted Loved Ones (PAL), a Phoenix support group started by Michael Speakman, a substance abuse counselor. The program is aimed at helping parents through the nightmare, which for the Humphreys became a double feature as their younger son, Andrew, later dropped out of college and became an addict.

Eventually, after years of dashed hopes and smashed dreams, the Humphreys learned they couldn’t fix their sons.

But they could fix themselves. They learned they had to stop riding to the rescue of their sons, who by then were in their 20s and living in a park in the city their father was in charge of policing.

“One day I got a call from a friend in the department,” Humphrey told me. “He said, ‘We have your sons in custody and it’s serious. Technically, I can release them. What do you want me to do?’ I told him to do what he thought was best.”

The sons went to jail, then they got out and nothing changed.

Finally, tough love saved those boys

It would eventually take the toughest kind of love to break through to their older son — a late-night call from a hospital that he was in a bad way and an anguished decision not to run to his side. Never mind how much they desperately, desperately wanted to.

That decision, one that would shock most parents, made the difference as their son realized what he had lost.

“That was the day he got sober,” Humphrey said. “He realized he had lost everything and he wanted his family back.”

Sean got into treatment – his choice, finally, after 12 years of addiction – and six months later he brought along his brother, Andrew.

The Humphreys were lucky. Opioids kill more than 130 people in this country every day, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse. Add in illegal drugs and we’re losing 70,000 people a year. (Think Flagstaff, gone.)

The Humphrey sons were not among them.

It’s been five and a half and five years since they reclaimed their lives. The oldest, 31, has found sweet redemption, with his financée, Dana, and their daughter, a 4-year-old beauty named Norah. They’ll be getting married soon. The younger, at 27, owns his own home and has a great job in IT.

For Murtaugh, a shot at redemption

For Murtaugh, it’s been nine years, two months and 23 days since he had a drink.

Instead of going to work that day in 2010, he went to the hospital where his blood-alcohol level measured 0.45. He sobered up and at long last wised up.

He would spend the next 38 days in Calvary Healing Center, drying out and facing the cold, hard reality that if he, at 45, didn’t change, he would likely die. Maybe in a jail cell, maybe in an alley. Instead, he decided not to.

His recovery, he says, has come with hard work and the help of God, taking small but intentional steps toward healing by offering himself in service to others. First, it was little things like setting up coffee hour at church. Later it was taking breakfast and Bibles to homeless guys he would find on the streets.

These days, Murtaugh is the purchasing director for the Four Seasons Resort. But most every weeknight, you will find him out there somewhere, running a recovery program at his church or telling his story to addicts and those who love them, offering hope however he can to show that there is a better way to live.

In November, Murtaugh will celebrate his seventh anniversary with his wife, Stacey. His 23-year-old son, Connor, is his best friend.

Why they’re swimming – and how to help

This will be Murtaugh’s third year racing in the Alcatraz Escape from the Rock Duathlon, a 1.5-mile swim and 7-mile run. A race for recovery, he calls it. The first two years, he raised $38,000, money used to send three addicts to rehab at Calvary Healing Center.

This year, he’s teaming up with Humphrey, who retired from the Phoenix Police Department in 2014 and now is executive director of PAL.

I can’t imagine swimming across San Francisco Bay. And the idea of swimming with your feet hobbled by cuffs attached to a 13-inch chain? It’ll be a miracle if he makes it. Or, as the clean and now-sober Murtaugh sees it, another miracle.

Whatever they can raise through the Aug. 10 race will go to benefit PAL, which has expanded now into 34 states with room, unfortunately, for virtually unlimited growth given this nation’s opioid epidemic. If you’d like to donate, go to palgroup.org/2019raceforrecovery or mail it to PAL, 11225 N. 28th Dr. Suite B102, Phoenix AZ 85029 and mark the envelope for Race for Recovery.

At the end of next week’s swim, the retired police commander will remove the recovering drug addict’s shackles, though really, they came off nearly a decade ago when Murtaugh decided to change his life.

Now, he’s changing other lives, one addict at a time. “It’s a purpose,” he said. “It’s a real purpose. When I die and go to heaven, God’s not going to ask what my title was. He’s going to ask me what I did with the gifts I was given.”