Working to stay clean: with a workforce of felons and addicts, Kevin McDonald is building businesses--and rebuilding lives--in Durham.

• Author: Otterbourg, Robert K.
• Position: FEATURE - Triangle Residential Options for Substance Abusers Inc. - Occupation overview

Kevin McDonald moves around the main campus of the nonprofit he founded in Durham with the confidence of someone coaching a championship team. Nearly 6 feet tall and built like a linebacker, the president and CEO of Triangle Residential Options for Substance Abusers Inc. greets everyone by name, discussing their work and chatting them up about how and why they joined his team.

Numbering about 400, TROSA residents surrender much of their freedom for two years hoping to recover from long-term addiction--15 years on average. Bound into a tightly knit therapeutic community, they try to lead one another to new lives through intense therapy, self-examination and mutual support akin to 12-step programs. But McDonald's playbook includes something else: a job.

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He believes that hard work--and the sense of self-worth that comes with it--is redemptive. "My first job at TROSA was to teach the work ethic to people with little to no successful work experience," McDonald, 62, says. "To do this, we needed to show residents the importance of dressing neatly, being punctual for work and working hard--traits most never learned before."

Everybody works, whether it's preparing thousands of meals a day for residents, repairing its vehicles, maintaining the program's 30 buildings or pitching in at one of its businesses. Along with grounds maintenance--including cleaning up after the State Fair--catering, Christmas-tree sales and other retail operations, TROSA operates the Triangle's largest independent moving-and-storage company, all with a team assembled from unlikely recruits. Half of the residents never finished high school. Something like 90% have criminal records.

TROSA is North Carolina's largest residential therapeutic program, with revenue (including grants, donations and in-kind contributions) of about $10 million a year. Competitors grumble that it wins business with low-ball bids. That's not the case, insists Michael Keene, vice president of business operations. "We're not the most expensive, nor are we the cheapest, and we don't sell our services as a charity." But there's no denying that TROSA has a competitive advantage: Though it has a paid staff of 51 and an annual payroll of more than $2.3 million, its workers receive no wages. "Besides providing the basics of life--food, shelter, clothing and health-care services--we offer a safe haven," McDonald counters. "For many residents, it's the first time in their adult lives where street violence does not exist."

One...