At night, when Stephen Elliott can't sleep - a consequence of years of shooting heroin - he leaves his mattress in the barn and walks to the pen where five spindly-legged goat kids live. They crowd around him, jostling for a scratch behind the ears, and sometimes Princess and Jasmine settle into his lap. He strokes their heads and thinks about the unlikely journey that brought him here.
After years of drug abuse and months of homelessness, he has found solace, perhaps salvation, among a family of goats. Thanks to them - and their owners - Elliott, 47, has enjoyed his longest period of stability in years.
Since early June, he has lived in a barn behind the Reisterstown home of Deanne Callegary and L.R. Wagner, volunteers at the shelter where he stayed during the winter. He shares meals with the family, helps around the house and tends to two nanny goats and the endlessly inquisitive kids that now prance behind him, nibble his buttons and eat tree branches from his hand. For the first time in years, he actually feels hopeful.
Little did he ponder the consequences when tried heroin at a party 30 years ago. The youngest of seven children raised by a single mother in Hampden, Elliott was bright, but shy and eager to fit in. Afraid to inject himself, he asked a friend to do it.
His squeamishness around needles didn't last long. Soon, he was sticking needles in his veins without a second thought. He was hooked, the pursuit of heroin his sole preoccupation.
"The dope makes your life really simple," he says. "Every day you've got one problem - how to get the dope."
At 23, Elliott married, which, he says, prompted him to quit heroin. He and his wife had a daughter and son and stayed together for 14 years. After they split, Elliott picked up a needle again.
"When I went back, it felt like it had been yesterday," he says.
He says he was a functional addict who managed to work. But he contracted hepatitis-C, spent most of his money on drugs and was far from an ideal father.
After more than a decade, Elliott managed to kick heroin again and began a methadone program. His life appeared to be improving until, he says, a group of kids attacked him on Halloween 2006 and injured his leg. He lost his job and couldn't pay rent. A few days after last Thanksgiving, he was evicted and lost most of his belongings. His son, now 16, went to live with his 21-year-old sister, but there was no room for Elliott. He was homeless.
