Ex-drug user Red Cross' best friend

Nine years ago, Vito Fontana motored down McHenry Avenue for an evening of Dumpster diving, with goodie stops planned behind See's Candies and a local bakery. After that, he planned to head over to City Tire Sales to see what marketable items those folks tossed into their garbage bin.

"I had a regular route," he said.

Suddenly, lights flashed in his rearview mirror. He pulled over and a Modesto police officer approached. The reason? Expired plates and an illegal lane change, Fontana said.

The officer, Rafael Vega, found Fontana's fast-paced speech and movements to be consistent with someone under the influence of drugs. He arrested Fontana, who tested positive for cocaine and methamphetamine.

Some things simply need to happen, Fontana said. That illegal lane change ultimately triggered a total life change.

Given the option of a drug program or jail by Stanislaus County Superior Court Judge Donald Shaver, Fontana is now one of the Drug Court's success stories. He's stayed clean, but isn't satisfied with merely existing. He volunteers with the American Red Cross for disaster relief, going wherever they need him and leaving a trail of new friends in his wake.

It wasn't until the September 1999 traffic stop, though, that Fontana began to admit that drugs controlled him. His daughter already had told him that unless he got clean, he could forget about seeing his grandchildren again.

When he went before Shaver, Fontana realized he was fooling only himself.

"I did a big line of crack (cocaine) before I went to court," Fontana said. "When Judge Shaver called my name, I jumped up like I'd been shot out of a cannon. He said, 'Sir, you've got a problem.' "

Of course, like any self-disrespecting addict, Fontana denied it. Shaver had vast experience in dealing with drug users. He ordered Fontana into custody.

A couple of weeks later, Shaver gave him the opportunity to enter a court-controlled drug program. Fontana took it, and discovered how difficult ending addiction can be -- admitting your addiction to strangers, albeit with the same problem, several times each week.

"I did that a week or two, and then I decided I'd just spend my time in jail," said Fontana, 70.

Robert Hess, a drug counselor, talked him into staying in the program. Fontana soon replaced cocaine and methamphetamine with drug treatment classes.

"We were supposed to attend three or four sessions a week and I was going to 10 to 15," he said.

He's been clean and sober since early 2000, and looks back on the debris field the drug use made of his life.

"My wife, my family, material possessions -- you lose it all," said Fontana, who once owned two homes (in Ceres and Salt Lake City) and a bevy of toys that included a motorcycle, a ski boat and a 35-foot motor home.

"We owned it, too. There were no bills," he said. "Now, it's all gone."

So are the family trucking business his father sold in 1985 and the used car lot Fontana owned until 1991. He eventually found himself rummaging through Dumpsters to find things he could sell to maintain his drug habit.

"He went from riches to rags," said Sue Moniz of Ceres, his daughter. "He struggled with it. He has lots of regrets even to this day with my mother. They were married 37 years and were divorced because of the drugs."

Yet today, you won't meet a more upbeat person than Fontana, a man who never drank, smoked or took drugs until he was 45, an age at which many users already have dealt with their problem.

"I hooked up with a coke dealer out at the lake (Modesto Reservoir, in the early 1980s)," he said. "At first, it was just fun on weekends. Then it went from weekends to all week."