Last Step to Redemption

After he returned stateside in 1968, he lived the rock 'n' roll lifestyle in Greenwich Village. He grew his hair down to his shoulders, set up a basement space where musicians could jam, and made crazy money dealing drugs. To let potential partiers know he could hook them up, Richard wore a gold charm around his neck the size and shape of an aspirin with the number 714, representing Quaaludes, engraved on it.

Richard may have gotten high with the hardest of the hard drug abusers during the drug revolution of the 1960s and '70s — Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison — but he sure didn't talk much to his brothers about it. "He didn't tell us about anything he was doing when in the company of drug customers," Buck says.

Rocky, a straight arrow, worried more about his baby bro's illicit activities than Buck, who felt like everyone at the time was doing drugs. But Richard was deep into it. He could have been a wiry, white character in the 1972 movie Super Fly. He had made so many trips to Colombia that he had to insert extra pages in his passport to accommodate all the immigration stamps. Soon enough, one of his mules got busted with coke at JFK Airport in New York. Richard was indicted in 1975 for trafficking cocaine. "I thought he was a lost cause," Rocky remembers.

Buck went to Richard's apartment on Bleecker Street hoping to find a way to help his brother get out of jail. At the apartment, Buck got a phone call that put his brother's cocaine cowboy role into perspective. "A Colombian guy, his Bogotá contact, called and said, 'We've got a couple pounds coming. Hope you're ready.' I said, 'Holy mackerel!'"

Richard served two years in Tallahassee Correctional Institute. When he got out, he joined his mother in Fort Lauderdale. And kept partying. He was styling hair at a salon in an Oakland Park strip mall in 1980 when a customer named Scott Miller sold him out. Miller had been busted by Fort Lauderdale police for allegedly trying to sell a pound of cocaine. In an attempt to wriggle into a reduced sentence, Miller told police that, while cutting his hair, Richard had mentioned he could supply dope in quantity.

According to court documents, Miller then told Entriken that some acquaintances visiting from out of town were looking to purchase a kilo of cocaine. Could he hook them up? Miller's "pals" were actually two undercover cops. Officer Scott Israel said in a sworn statement that Entriken sold him a gram of powder cocaine for $60 outside the now-defunct Press Box Lounge in Wilton Manors. It was a taster. Israel added that Entriken agreed to deliver two pounds of coke in four-ounce increments worth about $8,000 each. But after two weeks, Entriken hadn't made the drops, so Israel decided to arrest him for selling the gram. It was a felony, but Entriken got a reduced sentence of community service and probation.

A few years later, in 1983, Entriken met his wife-to-be. Sandra showed up at the salon for a haircut. At six feet, Richard towered over her five-foot-five frame. Sandra is dainty and soft-spoken; Richard was sturdy and garrulous. Sandra shies away from the spotlight; Richard thrived on being the center of attention. There's a photo in the Entriken house of Richard kissing a woman wearing a brown paper bag over her head. The woman is Sandra, who hates having her picture taken.

Richard cut Sandra's hair several times before they started dating. "He was a little wild, fun. I didn't think it would be a permanent thing," Sandra recalls. They married in 1984, the same year the first of their two daughters was born.

Until she became a mother, Sandra thought Richard's drinking was manageable. But sitting at home with a newborn while your husband is out partying is dispiriting. Sandra noticed that Richard always seemed to have alcohol around, even when he was working or mowing the lawn. He was a functional drunk, though, able to hold a job and provide for his family. Then Richard got arrested for a DUI on January 17, 1992. Sandra bailed him out of jail and told him, "No more. I'm done. Finished."

In AA terms, it was Richard's moment of clarity. A cousin took him to his first AA meeting, and Richard Entriken never took a sip of alcohol again.

But he still had to deal with the DUI. So Entriken hired Fort Lauderdale attorney Mark Skipper. "He was a hurtin' cowboy," Skipper remembers.

Both men were trained paratroopers, and their wives were from the same part of Ohio. They seemed to have a lot in common, and much to talk about. "I thought, man, I wish this guy wasn't my client because I would like to hang out with him."

Before long, Entriken would become the kind of guy all sorts of respectable types would want to befriend. He would become a fixture at the Broward County Courthouse, where he advocated for addicts in court. And instead of wearing a gold Quaalude tablet around his neck, he now flashed a diamond-studded triangle inside a circle — the AA symbol.

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Alcoholics Anonymous formed in 1935 when a small group of addicts realized that they could actually help each other stay sober. Part of the self-treatment, they believed, involved paying it forward by continually sharing those helpful lessons with others — free of charge. As former selfish lowlifes, they had incurred a debt to society; volunteering to help other addicts seemed like the best way to chip away at it. They'd even walk into a courtroom and ask a judge to release a problem drinker into their custody after a bender.

In Broward County, the first AA group formed in 1943 and met in Fort Lauderdale. Courthouse veterans remember an old-timer named Danny Foley working the court alcohol program several decades ago. Foley was a merchant marine in World War II who became legally blind and started drinking heavily. He sobered up, though, and concentrated on helping others abandon alcohol. "People would open up to Danny," Mark Skipper remembers. "He had this disarming way about him. He could manipulate people into realizing that they were addicts."

By the time Richard Entriken came around, the chain of alcoholics helping one another was well-established in Broward County. One night early into his recovery, Entriken heard John Williams speak at an AA meeting. Williams was 12 years his senior and had been sober since 1975. Entriken liked what he heard, tapped Williams on the shoulder, and asked the older man to be his sponsor. Williams took him on.

A few years later, in 1996, Williams, Entriken, and a friend named Gary Recht started a halfway house in Pompano. It was the first incarnation of 1st Step, and it was a bumpy ride. The three made a pact that, if any of them began using again, they'd be cut off. They bought a duplex that could sleep eight at a time and spread the word that lost souls could come there to get sober.

One of 1st Step's early projects was Chris Doherty, a 33-year-old father who was on the verge of getting sentenced to 17 years in jail as a repeat drug offender. Mark Skipper was representing Doherty, but the defense attorney was at his wit's end. He felt like the young man was incorrigible, like there wasn't a chance in the world he could get sober. Every time Doherty finagled out of a drug charge, he hit the streets looking for crack. He had stolen from his boss, hocked his own electronics, lied to his wife, and even brought his two-month-old daughter out on drug runs. Skipper stopped representing him.

Skipper referred Doherty to Richard Entriken, who still saw a glimmer of hope for the young man. Entriken showed up at his sentencing and pleaded with Judge Richard Eade to turn Chris Doherty over to the 1st Step Sober House rather than send him to jail. The judge relented.

"I didn't know how to stay clean," Doherty says. "I thought I had bad luck." Richard Entriken gave him hope, somehow teaching him how to live without drugs or alcohol. Chris Doherty shocked the hell out of people by getting clean. Doherty, now 43, points to a framed certificate hanging inside the 1st Step office that attests to his graduation from the program. Bruce Springsteen's "Glory Days" plays on the radio.

"I'm class of '97. OK," Doherty says. "That was one of Richard's biggest things — he'd ask for alumni, and class of '97 reporting in. He loved that. I'm one of his greatest success stories. I was able to reinvent my life."