Wine Country Times

Although the Women's Recovery Services (WRS) addiction rehabilitation center is located in Wine Country, its board raises money without offering the wine and cheese fare considered standard in their locale. 

“The annual fundraiser used to include wine but it just didn't seem appropriate to be using wine to ask for donations so it was abandoned and now the event that we do is a bike ride,” said Mike Neering, a member of the WRS Board of Directors.

More than 425 wineries operate in Sonoma County, where WRS is located in Santa Rosa, and yet the residential treatment center is unique in that it specializes in treating drug addiction in mothers and pregnant women.

“The money we raise means a huge amount,” said Neil Martin, treasurer and member of the board of directors for WRS. “We rely heavily on private fundraising in order to be successful because the money we receive from local and government sources does not cover all of our annual expenses. So, without additional fundraising, we would not be able to operate as an organization.”

Typically, the Sea-to-Sierra three-day, 300-mile bike ride raises about $40,000 annually, but due to limitations created by COVID-19, the amount collected this year has been cut drastically by 50%.

“A lot of cyclists are riding outside but in a socially distanced manner,” Martin told Wine Country Times. “They're riding with one or two other friends and not getting too close so what we decided to do is just allow riders to do their own rides over a weekend and then self-report to us how many miles did they ride.”

The annual Sea-to-Sierra fundraiser has also been renamed.

“This year we called it Road-to-Recovery because we didn't ride from Santa Rosa to Lake Tahoe like we normally do,” Neering said. 

In addition to providing pregnant women, mothers and their children a safe place to live and recover for four months, WRS creates a case plan that includes helping them navigate state agencies that often require residential treatment, such as Child Protective Services, the courts or the probation department.  

The yearly budget is an estimated $1 million, according to Martin.

“Funding from the county and state is about $600,000 to $700,000 so this is probably 20% to 30% of what we need to secure through fundraising,” he said.

Both Neering and Martin became associated with WRS through the United Way.

“I retired recently from a high tech company that participated in United Way,” Martin said. “For many years, there would be a day that they would encourage the employees to go and work in the community. It was just by chance that I happened to be assigned to work at WRS for various projects because the facilities are quite old and there's always a lot of maintenance required.”

Neering was recruited by co-workers who had discovered WRS through the United Way.

“The reason I got involved in more fundraising is because I was asked if I wanted to go on a bike ride,” said Neering. “During the bike ride, I learned it was a fundraiser and I got hooked pretty soon because I was working on a solution and making contributions to a good cause.”