San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
CEO STAYING FRONT AND CENTER
At 89, Mcalister Institute leader Jeanne Mcalister cherishes personal connections with people seeking recovery
Jeanne Mcalister oversees a nonprofit with a $30 million budget, almost 400 employees and 27 programs that serve about a third of the people seeking recovery treatment through San Diego County’s Behavioral Health Services department.
But when her phone rings in her El Cajon office, the CEO of the Mcalister Institute suddenly seems more like a hands-on case worker.
“Sorry, do you mind?” she said of the interruption as she picked up her mobile phone. “Hi Art, did you find your guy?”
“I have the guy, but I don’t have a bed for him,” a voice at the other end said. “I need a detox bed.”
“Have you talked to Darlene?” Mcalister said. “I’m going to have Darlene give you a call.”
In another moment, Mcalister has made another call and connected a person in need with a facility that can help him.
A CEO of a large organization typically might not step in to help a single client, but the interaction was typical for the head of the Mcalister Institute, which has offices from Oceanside to South Bay.
“This is what I do,” she said after the call.
Mcalister, who has appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and Sally Jesse Rafael’s TV show and oversees a popular Walk for Sobriety each year, often is recognized in public following her decades of work throughout the county.
“It’s not unusual for me to go into a store, and if I say my name they’ll say, ‘Thank you for giving me my daughter back,’ ‘Thank you for giving my son back,’ ‘Thank you for saving my life,’ ” she said.
Despite her local semi-celebrity status, Mcalister insists on being accessible, freely giving out her phone number, as she did in a 2020 op-ed she wrote for The San Diego Union-tribune. Her piece ended with the line, “People needing help can reach out to me, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at (619) 987-6393.”
Mcalister celebrated her 65th year of sobriety in November, and on July 19 she’ll celebrate her 90th birthday.
She doesn’t have plans to retire anytime soon, but does enjoy weekends at home playing Texas Hold’em with friends after cutting back from a seven-day work week. Her granddaughter, Marisa Varond, has worked with her for 10 years and is executive director of the institute.
Mcalister drives from her Santee home to her El Cajon offices around 8 a.m. each day, usually wearing high heels and always with her dogs, Joey and Oliver, who make up a pack of 10 that roam the hall
ways. She sometimes stays until 8 p.m., working after hours to do paperwork after a long day of staff interactions from her open-door policy.
The San Diego native who has helped the recovery of countless others faced her own sobriety in 1956, a time when addiction and alcoholism often were misunderstood.
“I went to my doctor and asked, ‘Do you think I drink too much?’ ” she recalled. “And he said, ‘No, you’re only 24.’ People were really in the dark about alcoholism.”
A mother at 16, Mcalister said she was always able to care for her daughter as she struggled with her addiction.
“I slept on boats, I slept in cars, because it takes you there,” she said about alcoholism.
Mcalister lived in a downtown San Diego residential hotel where she worked as a cocktail waitress. A man she was interested in dating invited her to a meeting across the street, where she found people discussing their recovery.
She thinks her date may have suspected she had a drinking problem after she went to his room and passed out on his bed, she said with a laugh. They later married.
Mcalister found the meetings interesting, but nothing clicked for her until she heard someone’s story that she could relate to.
“It just made sense to me, like when you’re in bed in a room by yourself and the light bulb is hanging down from the ceiling, and all of a sudden it goes on,” she said. “It’s called a miracle. I got sober right away.”
Years passed, and Mcalister worked as a bookkeeper for her husband before her marriage ended after he was convicted of a tax charge. She never remarried.
In the 1970s, Mcalister became interested in what was called the human potential movement and led what she now calls “touchy feel groups.”
“I was doing all those groups on the weekends and was really good at it,” she said. “I had lots of people come and share their feelings.”
Mcalister said she had discovered she liked working with people while undergoing therapy, and she studied drug and alcohol counseling at UC San Diego in the early 1970s. She became intrigued by someone who was working in recovery and known to be “avant-garde,” and tracked down psychiatrist Dr. David Rusk, who soon offered her a job.
“He believed people who had life experience were much more effective than people in his profession, so he asked me to come to work for him,” she said.
Rusk decided he did not want to continue working with the county, but Mcalister wanted to stay on. In 1977, she was awarded a county contract to open the Mcalister Institute for Treatment and Education, a drug and alcohol recovery program for indigent people with offices in Escondido and Carlsbad and a staff of 15.
In the 45 years since, the institute has expanded to include recovery programs specifically for women who need child care, outpatient services, prenatal programs, residential treatment programs, withdrawal management, homeless outreach, adolescent outpatient services, a safe haven for women and children and a program for women and men who are getting out of prison.
“I just get up every day and put on my suit and say, ‘What do you want me to do today?’ ” she said about how the institute has grown.
Most programs are funded by the county, some are funded by different cities, and a bingo game and thrift store run by the institute cover gaps in services that aren’t funded.
Piedad Garcia, deputy director of San Diego County’s Behavioral Health Services department, said about a third of the 15,000 clients who receive drug and alcohol recovery services through the county each year go to the Mcalister Institute.
“To this day, she often joins our meetings,” Garcia said. “She’s a luminary in her work, a trailblazer.”
Garcia said Mcalister developed a person-centered approach based on life experiences, which many professionals in the field do not have.
“In my mind, when you speak of Jeanne, she’s very inclusive, very motivated, very committed,” Garcia said.
Steve Allen is chairman of the Mcalister board of directors,
and also a graduate of one of its programs.
“I was in the throes of an addiction,” he said. “I got into a place where active addiction takes people, and I knew I couldn’t do it alone.”
Allen remembers looking up the institute in a phone book and making a call that changed his life. He checked into a detox program and stayed about a week, and then began attending recovery meetings.
On May 13, he will be 38 years sober, and Allen sees his work on the board as giving back.
“Jeanne, well, she’s a miracle,” he said about Mcalister. “She has incredible energy and the ability to reach out to people and be so accessible. I think one of the strongest suits of Jeanne is she’s so forgiving and understanding. She knows people don’t get it the first time. She’ll give people a second chance.”
Mcalister is the face of the institute, but she is quick to credit her staff with doing what she calls the heavy lifting. As she reflects on what she is most proud of, Mcalister thinks of small but meaningful encounters with people who turn to her for help.
Like the woman whose dog was taken away from her when she was unstable and hospitalized.
“She called and said, ‘I have a place to live but don’t have a dog, and last week I felt like killing myself because I felt so lonely,’ ” Mcalister said.
A Mcalister homeless outreach worker knew someone on the street whose dog had puppies that needed a home. Mcalister rescued a puppy, and maybe did the same for the woman who took it in.