Schoonover pitches for rehab, not jail

By Mannix Porterfield

CHARLESTON — First, he lost an arm about six years ago when an all-terrain vehicle flipped inside a Summersville forest, pinning Randy Schoonover for 32 agonizing hours.

Second, he lost his sobriety, succumbing to “Mr. Cocaine” and a full menu of narcotics that he peddled on the streets while keeping enough to stay high.

Now, at 55, after completing a rehabilitation program at FMRS in Beckley, the former state senator is preaching against drugs in a myriad of settings and taking a full load of classes at Mountain State University in Beckley.

And he’s also delivering a strong sermon to lawmakers: Alter the sentencing code so that non-violent offenders get treatment, not time behind bars.

That approach is one that can save lives of individuals and dollars for the state, Schoonover told the Legislative Oversight Committee on Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority in Monday’s start of December interims.

“I used coke, meth, smoked crack — the whole nine yards,” Schoonover said.

His wife departed and the former state senator had a brush with the law. A judge in Upshur County sentenced him to rehab, and Schoonover can’t say enough how her order changed his life.

“I thank the good Lord every day for it,” he said.

“I’m back to normal now. It’s been a long way back. I guess God has really been good to me.”

As lawmakers seek means of easing crowded prisons and jails, Schoonover told the panel that as many as 60 percent of everyone in jail is there as a non-violent drug criminal.

“It’s eating our system alive,” he said, noting it costs about $70 a day to keep someone in prison, and $47 to house a regional jail inmate.

“I’ll be around the Legislature this session,” Schoonover said.

“I’d like to help educate you about the world of addiction. I spent every nickel I had. I walked for six months. I gave away my car to ‘Mr. Cocaine.’ I bought quite a bit of prescription drugs off senior citizens who couldn’t pay their utility bills. That happened quite a bit.”

The politician in him paid off handsomely, it appeared.

“I was really good at going to any doctor and getting just about any medication I wanted for pain, narcotics, because I’ve got an arm gone,” he said.

“I was smart enough to do it, even though my mind was sick.”

Once he got enrolled in rehabilitation, Schoonover said it took three months to admit his addiction.

“If it weren’t for a certain judge in Buckhannon, I don’t know if I’d be standing here now,” he said.

“I’d probably be in my coffin. I was bad.”

Schoonover spent 14 months in a federal prison following his 1999 guilty plea to taking $2,275 in bribes from a towing firm in Summersville eyeing business on the West Virginia Turnpike.

“I did a lot of ‘doctor shopping,’” he told Sen. Walt Helmick, D-Pocahontas.

“I went to several doctors.”

Once, he used to fetch 90 OxyContin pills a month and turned them into a street value of $1 per milligram. And this is common place among users and peddlers, he said.

“Believe me, that happens so much it’s not even funny,” he said.

Schoonover told the lawmakers the drug addict isn’t the stereotypical under-the-bridge hermit.

“There were a couple of lawyers I used to get high with, a lot of teachers, nurses and a few people under the bridge, too,” he said. “This disease takes everybody.”

Few addicts actually work, he said, and they know how to use the Internet to identify accommodating doctors.

“It’s a big industry,” he said.

Schoonover said he usually sold half of the pills he got through prescriptions, but as time wore on, his tolerance level was raised and he needed more to get high.

Schoonover hopes his story will sway lawmakers into revising the criminal code so that the emphasis is put on rehabilitation.

“Run them through a rehab program,” he advised.

“It will let them clean up their act. You’re not going to capture all of them. But you’re going to capture a lot of them.”

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