Last Step to Redemption

A few years later, around 2000, the original founders of 1st Step had a falling out. Gary Recht had started using again. And John Williams disagreed with some of Richard Entriken's methods — such as soliciting clients from jail cells and courtrooms. "I was not crazy about having these prisoners in there," Williams says. Some residents, he adds, were complaining that Entriken was keeping them up late at night with stories and chitchat. Williams recalls saying, "Richard, do not come around here because as an owner they feel obligated to listen to you."

If Entriken had a flaw, Williams suggests, it was the way he seemed to play to the crowd. "He loved to see his success," Williams says. "I think he fed off it. He liked to look at someone and say, 'That guy is alive today because of me.' One of the reasons I think he liked to pontificate was to impress these guys. Then you get into that hero worship stuff, which is bullshit. You did the work. I only showed you the way."

Williams says he bought Recht and Entriken out of the partnership, and that Entriken got to keep the 1st Step name.

Until then, Entriken had been helping men find sobriety in his spare time while holding down a sales job at the security firm ADT. But now he was convinced that he should do it full-time. He found a few roach-infested buildings in a rough section of Pompano, lined up new partners, and presented his wife Sandra with this plan: He'd pick up some odd jobs on the weekends, and the family would live off her income until the sober house started to generate a profit.

"I was scared, financially," Sandra remembers. "But I just wanted him to be happy." As he drove her past the target properties, though, she remembers squinting and saying repeatedly, "Are you sure?"

Chris Doherty had been spending a lot of time at 1st Step, helping other men reshape their lives. So Entriken asked him to join the business. Chris explains the principle of giving back, talking as if Richard is still there: "I should be in hell for half the things I've done, just like my partner. Just like everybody here. We've broken a lot of laws, hurt a lot of people in the past. There's wreckage we're constantly cleaning up. Both Richard and I, our service to the community is how we make amends on a daily basis."

Richard Entriken seemed to work around the clock. "I always told him he was gonna die of a heart attack," Sandra says with a dry laugh. She remembers the phone ringing at all hours with residents from the house calling about childish stuff like "my roommate stole my blanket." Richard was like a father to many of them. Some even affectionately referred to him as their "old man."

To show appreciation, those he helped reach recovery might offer him a cigar after an AA meeting. If they were really looking for approval, though, they'd try to follow in his footsteps and take on a leadership role at 1st Step. Those devotees were the equivalent of honors students.

For Richard and his imitators, the duties included showing up at the main courthouse in downtown Fort Lauderdale, perhaps five days a week, in a sharp-looking suit at half-past eight in the morning. Pro bono, they'd strut into six or more court hearings a day to vouch for defendants desperate for time in a halfway house instead of jail. Sure, plenty of those defendants would just be looking to beat a prison rap. But others would truly want to get their acts together. And how could anyone tell them apart?

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Kino Bartholomew caught his first drug arrest in 1996, just a few months after he turned 18. A confidential informant told cops in Margate that Bartholomew was carrying crack in the waistband of his pants. When the officers searched him, they found a plastic Krazy Glue container stashed just above his crotch with 2.5 grams of crack cocaine inside. Bartholomew told the officers that he sold crack as a source of income because he couldn't find steady work. The rocks were going for $10 apiece.

In his first police booking photo, Bartholomew looks like Kobe Bryant when he had big hair. At six-foot-two, maybe Bartholomew could have been a baller. Instead he became a hustler. Bartholomew told the officers that he was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and that he lived with his grandmother in Pompano. Bartholomew got busted with crack two more times that year; Krazy Glue containers seemed to be his hallmark transport vessel for the rocks.

He'd rattle off a different birthplace for each arrest: Fort Lauderdale, Queens, the Bronx, or simply New York City. He picked up street names such as "Slim" and "Holdem." He sported gold teeth.

In April 1999, Bartholomew fouled up big-time. He was parked in a beige 1980 Chevy outside a seedy Motel 6 just east of the Turnpike in Pompano when two Broward Sheriff's officers pulled up. Bartholomew, a felon, made a U-turn to avoid them. In an affidavit, Officer Byron Dickerson said that when he asked the young man for his driver's license, Kino pulled a silver revolver out of his right front pants pocket. "I then grabbed the defendant's hand, at which time the defendant was forced to drop the gun," Dickerson wrote. In Bartholomew's left front pocket, Dickerson said, there were 11 crack rocks inside a Krazy Glue case.

For his actions that night, Kino Bartholomew was looking at a maximum jail sentence of 35 years. The prosecutor on his case offered him 85 months. Standing before Judge Stanton Kaplan in 2000, Bartholomew asked to be considered a youthful offender. The judge said no. Bartholomew said he had a drug problem, and asked for leniency. "I'm wondering if you can take into consideration that I — I have a family out there that needs me," Bartholomew said in open court. "I just had a little girl, you know."

At that point, Judge Kaplan's patience seemed to be wearing thin. "You have told me this already," he replied. "I'm not going to take the blame. Stay away from guns, stay away from drugs, stay away from driving while your license is suspended — and then you don't need to go to jail."

Kino Bartholomew got out of jail in August 2006. The following January, he caught the first of several new drug charges. He hired defense attorney Bill Gelin to represent him. Gelin got the impression that Bartholomew genuinely wanted to straighten out and that 1st Step could help; over the years, Gelin had recommended perhaps a hundred people to 1st Step. He had also gotten to know Richard Entriken at the courthouse. Richard would regale the lawyer, who was 20 years his junior and fascinated by '60s counterculture, with tales of his days of rubbing elbows with musicians who played Woodstock.

"As soon as you met [Richard], you knew he was the real deal," says Gelin, who remembers Entriken wearing Jerry Garcia ties to court. "He'd been there. His words were weighted down with experience — you could hear it in his voice,"

Again, Kino Bartholomew went before Judge Stanton Kaplan. Richard Entriken and Chris Doherty made court appearances on his behalf, asking to have him tossed their way. The judge released Bartholomew to 1st Step in June 2007, before Bartholomew's case even went to trial. In October, Gelin wrote in a motion for alternative sentencing that Bartholomew "has a sincere desire to attend and complete a residential treatment program." Bartholomew was sentenced to complete six more months at the halfway house. That meant three AA meetings a week. Curfews. Rent. For men living without rules or responsibilities, being at 1st Step felt like boot camp. And Richard Entriken was their drill sergeant.

Chris Doherty says that, at first, Kino Bartholomew was playing in bounds. But then he dropped the ball. He'd show up late. Spend nights at his girlfriend's place in Dania Beach. "Everything with Kino was a negotiation," Doherty says. "He just didn't want to be here anymore. Richard and him had gotten into it a few times, and when Richard got upset, he was like a bull in a china factory."

Bartholomew got kicked out of the program in November. Doherty informed his probation officer of the suspension, and the judge issued a warrant for Bartholomew's arrest. Even though Bartholomew had fallen out of 1st Step's graces, though, he kept dropping by. In retrospect, Doherty believes Bartholomew was casing the place out. (Kino Bartholomew, who is being held in the county jail without bail declined to be interviewed by New Times.)

Doherty fumes at the alleged betrayal. "We both gave of ourselves for him — we would battle for anybody — but Kino turned out to be a fucking monster."