Ex--Addict Outruns His Demons

I love stories like this, and there are thousands of them out there. People often just need a chance and a goal and someone to believe in them to get them to a point where they can be successful in their lives.

Like every runner hoping to endure 26.2 miles in Sunday's Colorado Colfax Marathon, Stephen Scannapieco is asking himself some jittery pre-race questions.

Will the weather be a help or hindrance? Will his feet remain unblistered? Will his knees hold up?

But Scannapieco has no questions about handling the pain. Pain is something he is already outpacing.

"Running this marathon will be hard, but getting sober was harder — the hardest thing I've ever done," he said.

At 36 he's a recovering alcoholic and addict, sober nine months. He's one of 40 teammates from the Denver Rescue Mission and Urban Peak battling similar problems.

The team is the brainchild of Nick Sterner, who outran his own demons and led 15 mission runners in last year's Post-News race. "This group has really been committed to its goals," he said of the team.

Sterner is founder of the AIR Foundation — Activity Inspired Rehabilitation. It's a nonprofit intended to help people like Scannapieco, whose story is at once unique and all-too-familiar.

Twenty years ago he was a schoolboy soccer star in Massachusetts. But in high school, booze and cocaine arrived. "After that, those dreams were over," he said. "Addiction just took over my life."

In August, Scannapieco's wife ordered him out. He boarded a bus bound for Colorado, hoping his mom in Thornton would take him in.

She did, on one condition: He would enter the addiction treatment center run by Denver Rescue Mission. Desperate and despairing, he agreed.

"I had hit rock bottom and figured I'd just drink myself to death because I felt I had nothing to live for," he said. "I didn't know how I could dig myself out of the hole I was in. But they've helped me turn my life around."

Soon after entering the program, Scannapieco faced another challenge. Sterner asked him to train for the marathon.

"I thought, 'No way you're getting me to run a marathon after 20 years of abuse,' " Scannapieco recalled. "But he really inspired me."

The Denver Post