PublicSource – The opening of a 40-bed recovery center in the Mon Valley caps the 33-year career of First Step’s founder and marks the rebound of an organization that clashed with the mayor and scraped bottom financially.

An addiction recovery group that was struggling, in 2021, to keep the lights on has opened 2025 with a new 40-bed facility in McKeesport.

“It’s like the phoenix rising from the ashes,” said Keenon Mikell, chief operating officer of First Step Recovery Homes, at a Dec. 19 open house for the new building on Olive Street.

Three years ago, PublicSource reported that First Step was barely able to pay utility bills. The 33-year-old organization reported a $53,000 deficit that year. Its Executive Director Keith Giles sparred publicly with McKeesport Mayor Michael Cherepko over a bill the city sent after its contractors demolished one of the five buildings then owned by First Step.

“I couldn’t even pay my light bill, you know?” Giles recounted. “And there’s been a great turnaround.”

With 33 years of recovery work under his belt, Giles, 75, is edging into retirement with First Step in the black, its new centerpiece open and its mission as important as ever amid an ongoing addiction and overdose crisis.

Mikell said Giles never doubted that better times were coming. “They could’ve come with a foreclosure or something and he’d have been like, ‘Yeah, we’ll be all right tomorrow,’” Mikell joked.

A clash and a fire

Giles entered recovery half a lifetime ago and dedicated himself to helping others in their struggles with substance abuse. He eventually modeled his program after the Delancey Street Foundation in San Francisco in which residents in recovery are treated as an extended family, housed sometimes for years, and helped toward better health, education and jobs.

“We look for, once the men are here, that they get a job, a well-paying job, find housing and remain drug-and-alcohol free,” Giles said, surrounded by supporters at the open house. First Step also helps its clients with basic hygiene and health care, plus counsels them on repairing relationships with family.

Mikell, 48, joined the team shortly after he left prison in 2013, and in 2023 completed his master’s in business administration at Penn West California. He’s poised to lead the organization.

Even as an estimated 2,200 men have come through First Step, Giles has struggled to reach his dream of being able to house and help 50 men at a time. Years ago, his agency bought a building on Shaw Avenue, but couldn’t manage the needed repair work, so the city tore it down. Another building flooded. Yet another caught fire in 2023.

COVID also hurt because First Step could only place one man in each of its rooms and had a tough time placing them in jobs. Employed residents pay a fraction of their salary in room and board.

As financial troubles mounted, Giles clashed publicly with Cherepko in 2021 when he went before McKeesport City Council and alleged that the mayor was dodging his calls for a meeting about First Step’s request for a sliver of the city’s federal aid. The mayor maintained that he couldn’t help First Step until the city was reimbursed for the cost of demolishing the Shaw Avenue building.

“You don’t get to come into a council meeting, embarrass me, and ask for help,” the mayor fumed after their council meeting clash. “You do that, I’ll shut you out forever.”

Instead, the city’s leadership and First Step reconciled.

“Whenever that turmoil happened, it allowed both sides to be able to say their perspective, but it also allowed us to have a spotlight,” said Mikell. “So though it was tumultuous from the beginning, it allowed us to kind of even be seen and heard.”

When the 2023 fire damaged one of First Step’s recovery homes on Penny Street, Cherepko showed up in person, in the rain.

“It wasn’t about being political,” said Mikell. “The media wasn’t there. It wasn’t about being seen. It was about actually caring.”

Ending with a dream

The fire slashed First Step’s capacity to house men and, therefore, to bring in revenue.

But then John Lovelace — a senior advisor to UPMC Health Plan — learned that social service organization Familylinks had a McKeesport building it wasn’t using, and First Step needed new space. He suggested that the two organizations talk.

Lovelace said he’s kept in touch with First Step for decades. “They do a credible job with a tough population of people,” Lovelace said. “They certainly have their heart and soul in the business. And lots of people who have graduated from there have done well for themselves.”

The Familylinks building — a former school — needed work to address water damage. But it had already been converted to dormitory-style housing, and could sleep 40. Familylinks agreed to lease the building to First Step until such time as the latter can finance a purchase. From July through September, First Step went through city permitting and worked with local contractors to repair, paint and carpet the three-story building.

“Everything went wrong that could go wrong,” Mikell said, but by early October, First Step was able to start moving men in.

Combined with First Step’s other buildings, the Olive Street location pushes capacity above 50.

“So my dream has come true,” Giles said. “And, you know, right at the end — you never know when it’s going to happen — but right at the end, because I’m really trying to retire.”

A grim tide and a lifeboat

Giles prepares to leave the stage after the apparent crest of the opioid overdose wave, but at a time when substances are still disproportionately killing Black men.

Until 2015, McKeesport would usually see single-digit numbers of fatal overdoses annually, according to Allegheny County Department of Human Services data. The increasing prevalence of fentanyl in the drug supply that started pushing up local overdose deaths around a decade ago drove OD deaths in the Mon Valley city steadily upward, to a peak of 33 in 2022. McKeesport’s OD toll dipped to 29 in 2023, and the 2024 count isn’t complete.

First Step doesn’t just serve McKeesport or even the Mon Valley, receiving referrals from other recovery organizations across much of Pennsylvania. Its impact, though, is most concentrated in nearby communities, according to Judith Wilson, a case manager at First Step.

“I’ve worked with lots of different populations. I’ve done everything from domestic violence to welfare reform to homeless [people], geriatrics,” said Wilson. “But this here is really giving to the community because drug addiction and alcoholism affect all of us in the community.”

When men recover, return to health and find jobs and long-term housing, she said, “they take care of their children, they stay out of prisons. … So if we can take care of the whole man, we have a better chance of protecting our community, enhancing his life and helping his family along, too.”

As fatal ODs were peaking in McKeesport and First Step stood on the fiscal brink, the Jefferson Regional Foundation* reached out, according to Mikell. The foundation focuses its giving on the Mon Valley.

“They basically gave us a lifeboat and it started with just a great conversation with them and just revisiting what our vision was,” Mikell said.

First Step identified a fundraiser, DeOrio Strategies Group, and Jefferson Regional helped foot the bill — part of $145,000 in grants the foundation awarded to the recovery home since 2022. Jefferson Regional also made connections and served as a sounding board, according to the foundation’s CEO Trisha Gadson.

“First Step had strong outcomes for people with addiction. They are embedded in the community,” said Kelleigh Boland, the foundation’s director of grantmaking and strategy. They also had an ongoing contract with the Allegheny County Department of Human Services, ensuring revenue.

The Staunton Farm Foundation*, The Pittsburgh Foundation* and PNC Charitable Trusts have also been generous, according to the First Step team.

“With the larger space, they will expand services and increase capacity,” said Joni Schwager, executive director of the Staunton Farm Foundation, which granted $98,600 to support First Step’s services. “They get many referrals, so filling the beds is not a big concern. They expect this new facility will put them on the road to sustainability.”

The City of McKeesport is even kicking in. “The mayor actually came and gave us a $10,000 check,” said Mikell.

The funding, according to city spokesperson Jen Vertullo, came from the Mayor’s Nonprofit Relief Fund, created from federal American Rescue Plan Act allocations.

The mayor has also pledged to match, up to $50,000, future fundraising by First Step toward buying the Olive Street building.

“There is no question that First Step is providing a much-needed service for men from across Allegheny County who are struggling with addiction or navigating the judicial system,” the mayor said in a written comment to PublicSource. “This organization is making significant progress in the field of human services, and we are working to get their commitments to the City of McKeesport in order.”

Seeking sponsors and alumni

Mikell said First Step has poured pretty much all of the money it has into the renovation.

The organization still needs to furnish many of the rooms it has refurbished, and Mikell said he has some creative plans to raise the money. He’d like donors to pay for specific items — beds, wardrobes, vanities, whatever. That way they’ll know that their dollars are going to tangible items that will be part of the lives of men in recovery.

Giles would like to seek support from some of the thousands of men who have been through First Step. “If we get all of our alumni to give $5 a month, you know, we would be able to maintain.”

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