Star Tribune
Ramsey County substance abuse court celebrates 20 years of sobriety support
Vilye Yang knows how the Ramsey County drug court works. He counts himself among the hundreds who veered off the dangerous path of addiction thanks to it.
As he stood before the group of court workers and fellow addicts in recovery Friday, Yang, 37, told the story of how he was born and raised in St. Paul as the son of Laotian immigrants. Recreational drug use with friends, he said, ballooned into a decadelong addiction that felt like “a very long and lonely road.”
That road soon landed him in jail, where a representative of Ramsey County’s Adult Substance Abuse Court offered him a way out in return for entering its treatment program. It was there that he learned how to wash clothes, budget his food, care of himself, and most important, stay clean.
“When I was in jail, and when I was in treatment and in drug court, [the] only thing I was thinking about was, ‘Please God, just give me a little bit of normal. I just want to have a normal life,'” Yang said. “I just want to live a normal life, normal job, and just for things to be normal. It took a long time for that to really happen.”
Yang was among dozens gathered Friday in the Ramsey County Courthouse to celebrate the 20-year anniversary of the Adult Substance Abuse Court, a drug court that partners substance use offenders with social workers, probation officers and others in order to help offenders find sobriety.
Old and new graduates gathered for the event, catching up on each others’ lives and to hear testimonials about the court’s effectiveness. Chief Ramsey County District Judge Leonardo Castro said the court is critical for helping people with substance abuse and mental health disorders.
In 2020, he said, more than 91,000 people died from drug overdoses in the United States. In the country’s prisons, 65% of all inmates have a substance abuse disorder, and $80 billion is spent on incarceration annually. He cited federal data that shows participating in treatment court can reduce offenders’ chance of recidivism by up to 26%.
“So it doesn’t matter what angle or what perspective you have as it relates to treatment courts … [they] are necessary, and they work,” Castro said.
Evidence of treatment courts’ success is mounting now, but it was not so easy to prove before.
Joanne Smith, the first woman to be appointed chief judge in Minnesota, said that when she founded the Ramsey County program in October 2002, she did so on “a wing and prayer.”
Hennepin County already had launched a drug treatment court years prior, but many clients were breaking the law again soon after leaving it. It was hard to convince potential stakeholders that the court could be successful, but Smith said she saw many Southern states normalizing treatment courts as way to reduce jail populations.
“And I thought, with my Northern arrogance, what’s wrong with us? Why aren’t we doing this?” Smith said. “When I see an obstacle, I see an opportunity. That grows out of my stubbornness, or my perseverance. We faced many of those along the way, but we never gave up. And here we are 20 years later.”
The court is one of 70 treatment courts across Minnesota, with at least one in each of the state’s 10 judicial districts. Among them are DWI Court, Veterans Court, Mental Health Court and Juvenile Drug Court. The Ramsey County program is designed to provide participants with the opportunity to break the cycle of substance abuse by using assessment, drug and mental health treatment, strict supervision, random testing and regular court hearings, along with immediate sanctions and incentives to help participants stay drug free.
Hundreds of people have graduated from Smith’s court, and it has earned national recognition that has included invitations to mentor other jurisdictions’ courts.
Yang acknowledges that recovery isn’t easy. More than a dozen years later, he still has nightmares of using drugs. But through all that time, he has remained sober. He’s the manager of a manufacturing facility, and in 2016 he bought a house — and a Cadillac. He’s also a proud father of seven children, ranging from 11 months to 18 years.
“Yeah,” he said. “Life is good.”
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“It’s been a huge shift,” he said.
Deqa Muhidin, a former schoolteacher, children’s book author and Somali language heritage program coordinator at the Minneapolis Public Schools Multilingual Department, said the Sing-Again project would be a great addition to what was already in place.
The district’s Somali Heritage Language Program was launched in 2021 and has grown to 270 students in kindergarten through fourth grade.
The program is more than a language-learning program, she said, also teaching Somali culture.
The Somali language has its own cultural insights, which are only spoken by elders, and once they are no longer here, those insights will be lost, Muhidin said. For example, elders might use the phrase, “Look at something in your foot,” meaning run. Or a merchant may tell a customer, “I’m going to close my eyes,” meaning this is my final offer, she said.
An area shuttle service hopes to help ease Freeborn County’s health care woes by offering free rides to local hospitals.
SMART Transit, which operates in Austin, Albert Lea and Owatonna, is expanding its medical ride service for Freeborn County residents next year thanks to a $10,000 grant. The shuttle company will offer free rides to Mayo Clinic hospitals in Albert Lea and Austin for residents age 55 and up, addressing a problem for residents who’ve seen medical services in the region shrink over the years.
“We’re quite ecstatic,” said Chris Thompson, operations manager at SMART Transit. “I can’t even explain how wonderful news it is.”
Mayo Clinic Health System in Albert Lea announced service cuts in 2017, urging people to travel to Austin, about 20 minutes east, for most inpatient hospital visits. Area residents organized to get Iowa-based MercyOne to open a primary care clinic in 2022, but pandemic-related complications and financial troubles led to the clinic closing at the beginning of 2024.
A group of Albert Lea residents approached SMART Transit officials earlier this year, asking for more medical shuttle service and expanded rides to hospitals. SMART has had a free ride program for seniors in Mower County for years thanks to Mayo Clinic grants, but there wasn’t funding to duplicate the program.
Mayo officials worked with SMART staff to secure grant money through the Naeve Health Care Foundation, a local group named after the former hospital that served Albert Lea residents since 1911. The foundation grants money for local health care issues including Mayo program funding; it has donated more than $4 million for community health care.
Freeborn County isn’t alone in struggling to access health care. For decades, hospitals in greater Minnesota have largely joined up with bigger systems or closed as the state’s population shifted to metropolitan areas. Some smaller hospitals have tried banding together to save money, while others find niches in the area to offer better services.
Yet a growing population of seniors means an ever-increasing need to get them to doctor’s appointments, and rural communities are struggling to meet transportation demands. Minnesota’s senior population (age 65 and older) grew from about 680,000 residents in 2010 to almost 950,000 in 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Not all of them have their own transportation.
As a photojournalism professor, R. Smith Schuneman mixed high expectations with a warm manner to launch the careers of a wide spectrum of photographers.
His students at the University of Minnesota, many of whom regarded Schuneman as a pivotal influence in their lives, went on to shoot for National Geographic, Look, Life and numerous other magazines and newspapers, as well as for corporate clients, photography studios and a wide array of film and video productions.
Then Schuneman, who went by his nickname “Smitty” and never by his given name of Raymond, embarked on a second career with the creation of Media Loft , an events and communications agency. He eventually sold the company to his employees before retiring with his wife, Pat, to a lakeside home in Okoboji, Iowa.
“Smitty could be utterly ruthless, uncompromising or unyielding in his goal of making photojournalists out of us,” wrote Richard Olsenius, a former student of Schuneman’s, in a memorial book prepared by friends. “But it was underlied with a deep-rooted concern for what is right and moral. He demanded honesty from our work.”
He died Nov. 24 at age 88 of heart problems.
Schuneman was born in 1936 in Spirit Lake, Iowa. His parents Raymond “Art” and Olive “Bunch” Schuneman ran the local newspaper in Milford, Iowa, and it was there that Schuneman began publishing photos while still in school.
He also ran a side business covering weddings, events and “whatever pictures were needed around the small town,” his wife said.
She remembers seeing Schuneman for the first time when her band director arranged for her to take drum lessons from him. She was 15 and he was 16. She later worked for him at his photo service, processing the film.
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