For Keefe, a 2008 Fordham College at Lincoln Center graduate, her brother’s death was both a painful personal loss and a wake-up call to the systemic failures—criminalization, pharmaceutical profit-chasing, lack of patient-centered addiction treatment—that had contributed to so many tragic endings like Matt’s. In the year following Matt’s death, Keefe moved to Brooklyn and began spending a lot of her time researching addiction issues, leading her to a job at the nonprofit Shatterproof. She also began training for the Brooklyn Half-Marathon. She had been a casual runner before that, but had never run a race that long, and the training offered her an opportunity to find both physical release and a healthy form of repetitive structure—“a connection to both the grief experience and the addiction experience,” she says.

In her memoir, Thirty-Thousand Steps (Prometheus Books, 2022)—a reference both to the approximate number of steps in a half-marathon and to the 12-step addiction treatment model—Keefe pays tribute to her brother Matt’s life, takes a deep dive into the medical and political changes needed to address the addiction crisis, and recounts her half-marathon training as a form of catharsis. She hopes that it will reach others who have lost siblings or peers to addiction.

Keefe recently spoke with Fordham Magazine about her first book, her running practice, and the space for optimism about the future of addiction treatment.

Your parents are in the book a lot and come off as very kind, loving, supportive people. How supportive were they, and how much did you involve them in the process of writing the book?
They’ve been very supportive. It’s difficult for them. Neither one of them read it completely through, but they’ve had friends tell them about it and they’ve been excited and supportive and happy to hear that people like it. I wanted to be clear in the book: This is my story about me and my brother. This is our story. But I didn’t want to pretend my parents weren’t there when they were. They were in the hospital, they were helping him in every way that they could. There is so often that idea that it’s the parents’ fault or whatever, and that was never something I wanted to play into or give any air to—that they were absentee or didn’t love him or weren’t present for him.

But I didn’t want to get too into what their perspective was, because that just wasn’t the story I was equipped to tell. Part of what made me want to write this book so badly is I felt like there’s not a lot of writing for peers, siblings, friends, spouses who have lost people to addiction. We’re losing people at a really alarming rate. I felt like there was a big hole for people like us who are watching someone our own age go through this and thinking, “Why is it them and not me?”

Following Matt’s death, you got a job at the nonprofit Shatterproof, which focuses on addiction issues, and you still do consulting for them. How did your work with the organization overlap with the things you wrote about?
It was a huge opportunity for me to learn from people who are familiar with the policy space, people who are familiar with the treatment landscape, people who are familiar with government institutions that create regulations. That was a hugely eye-opening experience and really helped me synthesize one of the most straightforward messages of the book: that it can’t be overstated how much is known and understood about addiction right now and how little of it is utilized in medicine.

We do know what works, but also, one size doesn’t fit all. There’s no one treatment that’s appropriate for everybody. Addiction is such a specific condition that comes from such a specific psychosocial background of each person. And I think that’s what I tried to show in the book, too, with my brother and I being three years apart, right next to each other all the time, with a very safe, comfortable life, and one of us going this way and the other one going that way.

You can torture yourself trying to ask, “How could this have been prevented?” I think it’s more about if and when this does happen—because it does happen to people—here’s how you can react and here’s how people can get better. When he was sick, I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop the whole time, which is horrible. I wish I had had a better understanding of this being a treatable condition. The nonprofit work that I did gave me such an incredible view into the way that both medicine and government handle this—what they think the approach has been and what the approach should be.

Were there moments when it felt too emotionally difficult for you to push through with the practical elements of research and writing?
I think the way that the trauma manifested for me was not like, “Oh, I can’t look at this.” It was almost like, “I’m looking at this too closely. I’m spending too much time on this.” I think there are a lot of ways that you can react to an event like this in your life. Not wanting to engage with it very much makes a ton of sense to me. And I almost wish that had been my reaction, but I had the opposite reaction, which was like, “I’m so obsessed with this, I must do something.”

It was more a question of, “How do I synthesize all of this raw information into a coherent story? How can I make this intense degree of emotion something that a reader would choose to engage with?” You have to ask some hard questions, like, “Would I choose to read this if this is going to be non-stop suffering? Is this something that appeals to someone for 200-plus pages?”

One way you do make people want to engage with it, I think, is through humor. Along with all the really serious issues you write about, you also tell some really funny stories about growing up with Matt and are able to use self-deprecation when talking about how you grieved. How did you think about the ways you wanted to include humor?
It’s the way that everybody uses humor in their normal life—when you feel like the pressure’s building too much and you need just a little release. That would be when I would try to reach for the humor. And also to let people know that I’m okay—they don’t have to worry about me. I’m describing something that’s very horrible, but I’ve had enough time to zoom out that I can even make a joke. So you can laugh too, it’s okay. We’re all kind of going through this together. But you definitely need the people around you to tell you when something’s working and when something’s not.

How far do you think we have come in terms of treating addiction since you started the project? Have you seen progress in terms of things like safe consumption sites and people knowing more about the issues?
I feel like there’s so much stuff going on that would’ve shocked me five years ago. Fentanyl test strips, Naloxone being in music clubs underneath the bar, being a tool that people are prepared to use or at least theoretically know they should be prepared to use—that’s huge. I didn’t even know what Naloxone was in 2015, when I was living with someone with an active heroin addiction. I think at the very least, now people understand that this is out there.

There’s just a comical amount of unnecessary restrictions on addiction treatment. When you look into what the root of that is, it really is just nothing more than stigma and misunderstanding. There’s an impression that people with addiction have a certain moral character and that might make them riskier to treat. And that’s obviously just not true. And so now, after it was part of the omnibus bill, it’s easier for doctors to prescribe buprenorphine, which is the gold standard medication for people who have an opioid use disorder. So I think that aspect is definitely improving.

The thing that continues to be frustrating is having these little pieces of hope within a larger system that is cursed. As long as we have a for-profit medical model, and as long as addiction is criminalized in the way that it is, these issues will persist. So I think that we’re chipping away at it, and I think that that’s nothing to be diminished, but the overdose rates now are even higher than they were when I started writing the book.

You recently did a reading at the bookstore Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C. How was that event?
It was really great—a full house, a very engaged audience. It was similar to the experiences I would have when I would be representing Shatterproof and going to public places, and you get people that kind of come up to you and put their arm on you and just really need to blab. They need to talk to somebody. And I think when people see somebody who is willing to talk about addiction in a public way, they see that as a way to engage with this thing that maybe they haven’t felt comfortable engaging with before.

Are you still an avid runner? Is that something that you still use to keep yourself centered as difficulties and challenges and tragedies occur in life?
I’m still a very avid runner. I completed my 10th half-marathon in the fall and I did my first full marathon in Los Angeles in the spring. It’s hard to overstate how very important running was to me. And I didn’t even really realize it at the time. It is very much a first line of defense coping mechanism for me. The physical element—I’m a very high-energy, anxious person, so if I don’t have an outlet for that, it’ll be a problem. So that has persisted and definitely continues to be important. Before I ran, I feel like I would roll my eyes at fitness content. So I hope people, even if they’re not into running, they’ll check it out, because the purpose of me including that was to show, “Here’s the power of finding something that works for you.”

Interview conducted, edited, and condensed by Adam Kaufman, FCLC ’08.

In a conversation on Zoom, author Amy Dresner and clinical social worker Joe Schrank, hosts of the podcast “Rehab Confidential,” held a conversation on addiction, the uptick in substance use during the pandemic, and how social workers can help—now and in the future. The exchange, held on Nov. 5, was sponsored by the Graduate School of Social Service with several GSS students tuning in. Assistant Professor Sameena Azhar, Ph.D., moderated the dialogue in conjunction with a class she teaches on substance abuse treatment—a subject she has researched extensively.

“The true fallout to whatever this pandemic has done remains to be seen, but we do know that substance abuse and suicidal ideation have increased,” said Azhar. “We’re self-isolating for longer periods of time and it’s a lot easier to hide your substance misuse, because nobody is looking and everybody is in the same boat of working online.”

Dresner, a former comedian and author of My Fair Junkie: A Memoir of Getting Dirty and Staying Clean (Hachette, 2017), grew up in tony Beverly Hills only to find herself homeless and sweeping up used syringes on Hollywood Boulevard as part of a court-ordered punishment for a domestic violence violation spurred on by her addiction. She has been clean and sober for eight years. Schrank is a Jesuit-educated social worker based out of Los Angeles who liberally peppers his speech with Latin whenever the opportunity presents itself, in particular, cura personalis. He’s been sober for more than 20 years. The two podcasters helped promote the event, which was open to all.

A Growing Online Recovery Community

Azhar noted that most recovery meetings have had to move online to a virtual space. But well before the pandemic there was already a growing digital recovery community, including a thriving scene of bloggers, social media influencers, and podcasters like Dresner and Schrank.

As people continue to cope with the stress of being cooped up at home, there has been a well-documented uptick in substance abuse, making the digital community all the more important because it’s accessible to anyone with a smartphone or computer, Azhar said. She organized the event because she wanted to familiarize GSS students with the burgeoning digital scene.

‘Mommy Drinking’ and More

Azhar asked the hosts what they were seeing on the ground in Los Angeles. In particular, she wanted to know whether people who did not have a prior substance issue are prone to developing one in response to the trauma of the pandemic, social unrest, and the continuous onslaught of negative news.

“Among my friends that are normies [i.e. sober] we know that people are eating more, we know that people are drinking more, we know that they’re drinking during the day, that there’s ‘mommy drinking.’ Drug use has gone up. Porn has gone up,” said Dresner. “Whether these people will come out of the pandemic and have an addiction, I don’t know. Can you drink yourself into having alcoholism? Sure. Just like you can get addicted to pain pills if you take them for too long. You’ll have a physical addiction, whether or not you have a psychological addiction.”

Schrank said that there are few absolutes when it comes to addiction, except for the dangers of being idle and alone.

“We know those are absolutes for any mental health issues, like anxiety, depression, substance misuse,” said Schrank. “So, do something,” he advised, “and do it with somebody—even if online.”

He recalled a recent incident at the supermarket that he feared was becoming all too common. He observed a young person in line with a jar of peanut butter, a loaf of bread, and a bottle of vodka.

“I said, ‘Are those your groceries?’ And he was like, ‘I know.’”

Schrank concurred with Azhar that the mental health issues related to the pandemic are only beginning to surface.

“I think that a lot of people are hiding out. So, if you just have to get on Zoom for 15 minutes with your boss a day, and then back to the couch in your jammies with your peanut butter and bottle of vodka, that’s not going to help,” he said.

Social Workers Can Make a Difference

Azhar said that there are many telehealth options that people could consider when seeking help for a growing problem, but she was also careful to underscore that in-person therapy will remain extremely important in the post-pandemic world. Whether online or in-person, the need for social workers will only grow in the coming years, she said.

Yet some social workers are feeling despondent, she noted, unsure if they can make a difference as the crisis grows. In the chat, one student questioned whether social workers could still have an impact as “lowly clinicians, nurses, counselors.”

Dresner cited her own experience as proof that they do make a difference.

“I’ve been in quite a few treatment centers and the way that you treat… I’m going to cry,” she said, collecting herself before continuing. “A lot of them were like, ‘Here’s your crazy pills.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, that’s not very cool.’ But there was one [nurse]who looked at me and treated me … with dignity and saw me like the person I could become. When I came out of that extraordinarily depressive, alcoholic, self-destructive place—I thanked him.”

It begins in February 2008 with her then-19-year-old son, J.P. Vericker, being handcuffed by police outside their suburban New York home, high on drugs and ensnared in an addiction that made him desperate and sometimes violent. His hand was broken from punching a wall in a rage the day before.

It was not the first time the police had responded to the Verickers’ home because of trouble with their son. As officers restrained J.P. by holding him against the side of the house, an officer gently posed a question. The police department would keep responding as needed, of course, but “at some point, you have got to do something.”

“We have enough on him to arrest him,” the officer said. “What do you want to do?”

And, just like that, the Verickers were face-to-face with a decision they had seen coming but deeply hoped to avoid.

Nancy recounts this story in Unchained: Our Family’s Addiction Mess is Our Message (Clear Faith Publishing, 2018), which she co-authored with J.P., now eight years sober. It relates not only the course of J.P.’s addiction but also its impact on his family, and the spirituality that was a lifeline for both Nancy and her son. “I really did, honestly, feel this sense of calling” in co-authoring the book, says Nancy, a spiritual director and youth minister and a 2009 alumna of Fordham’s Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education.

In it, she charts her journey to accepting a seeming paradox, one that ran against her every instinct as a parent. To help J.P., she had to stop trying to rescue him. As she puts it in the book, “You must surrender to win. You must let go to get your loved one back.”

“My Manzo”

The second-oldest of the Verickers’ four children, J.P. wanted for nothing when he was growing up in their tight-knit family. He was a charming, kind, energetic child known to his mother as her little man, “my Manzo.” When the Verickers brought their adopted daughter, 2-year-old Grace, from China to their Westchester County home, J.P. was the first to quell her tears and make her laugh.

Things changed in eighth grade. He struggled in school and felt listless and depressed, and fell in with a partying crowd during his first year of high school. By sophomore year, he was drinking and smoking pot daily. He grew belligerent, cutting class and staying out past his curfew and getting into trouble with the police.

His parents saw a series of counselors and psychiatrists, looking for answers. They unsuccessfully tried to help J.P. by sending him to a wilderness program and a boarding school. Then, in senior year, he dropped out of their local public high school and started using cocaine and Xanax, sometimes together, a toxic combination that put him in a “manic state,” as he puts it. Mixing a stimulant and sedative, he writes, “can easily kill you.”

Family life moved forward in other ways—the Verickers’ eldest daughter, Annie, was in college and enjoying it; their next-youngest daughter, Molly, was a high-school freshman, making friends and playing field hockey; and Grace was doing well in her new elementary school.

But Nancy’s life was mostly consumed with J.P.’s addiction. Grappling with insomnia and worry, she realized he was stealing from her to pay for drugs. Bitter confrontations ensued, and in February 2008, in a rage, J.P. accosted his parents at home because of money he thought he was owed.

At the end of their rope, Nancy and Joe Vericker moved forward with the option they had been dreading, the one they had warned their son about: They decided to press charges of harassment. As Nancy stood by, distraught, Joe quietly gave permission to one of the officers who had responded to their home: “You can arrest our son.”

Tough Love

In order for J.P. to overcome his addiction, he had to suffer its consequences, she and her husband were told by the treatment professionals they consulted. He had to hit bottom, and they had to let him, counter to their every parental instinct. In addition to letting him be arrested, they had to refrain from rescue efforts like providing shelter and meeting his expenses as he continued to use.

After J.P. was arrested, his parents got a court order of protection and told him to stay away from the family’s home unless he agreed to seek treatment. Viewing it as a vacation, J.P. agreed to go to a treatment center in south Florida, chosen by his parents because of the wealth of post-treatment options in that area.

His story entered a new phase: detoxifications, relapses, halfway houses, flophouses, and homelessness. He struggled toward the realization that he needed help. Today, he has a clear view of his warped thinking from that time.

“Being addicted is like having rabies,” he writes in Unchained, which includes first-person accounts by both him and his mother. “To me, in my addicted mind, my life was normal,” and others were to blame for the strife and altercations in his life.

In lucid moments, he felt a deep yearning to stop using. During a brief trip home from Florida, he broke down in tears for two hours, “flooded with both anger and sadness,” he writes. “I was starting to realize I could not stop on my own.”

Nancy, meanwhile, alternated between hope when he seemed to be recovering and anguish, tears, and sleepless nights when he relapsed. She often didn’t know where he was or what he was doing.

And yet, life went on. Family responsibilities beckoned. She gained solace and strength from family, friends, and community, but also from her degree program at Fordham.

Ignatian Lessons

A former journalist, Nancy Vericker first enrolled at Fordham at the suggestion of her spiritual director during a time when she was tending to the children at home, doing occasional volunteer work, and spiritually searching. She spent more than a decade earning a master’s degree, and the studies would help pull her through difficult times—in part, because of the Ignatian teachings in the curriculum.

“There was this thing that was oppressively suffocating the life out of me and my family, and Ignatian spirituality helped me push back,” she says.

In keeping with the Ignatian view of the soul as a battleground, she fought against feelings of desolation—depression, fear, anxiety—by finding consolation in the joys of family life and moments of grace, holding on to those as a way of building generosity of heart and fueling hope.

“Ignatian spirituality saved me in many ways,” she says.

What also helped her were the relationships built up during the program. When J.P. was homeless, she considered quitting, but she persisted with encouragement from a classmate, Mark Mossa, S.J., who went on to become campus ministry director at Spring Hill College in Alabama.

And she became close to Janet Ruffing, R.S.M., then head of the spiritual direction program. When graduation day came for Nancy, she decided to instead go to her daughter Grace’s First Communion, which fell on the same day.

“I knew how torn she was, having made that choice,” says Sister Ruffing, now a professor at Yale Divinity School. “She was consistently making those kinds of choices for her family.”

So Sister Ruffing drove to the Verickers’ home and brought her the degree, entering the house in the midst of a post-Communion party. “They all screamed,” she says with a laugh. “I just felt she deserved to get her degree on graduation day.”

It was a powerful gesture, Nancy says, because she was in despair at the time. She had her doubts that J.P. would survive.

Refusing him help was painful. During one Christmas season, J.P. was calling home over and over from Florida, saying he was homeless and hungry, asking for money. “You cannot under any circumstances send him money,” J.P.’s treatment program director said. He told the story of a woman who, faced with a similar plea, wired money to her addict son, who then spent it on drugs and died of an overdose.

The Verickers kept saying “no,” even on Christmas Day, a few days after J.P.’s 21st birthday. “We will help you when you are ready to get help for your addiction,” Joe Vericker told J.P. on the phone. “We love you, remember that.”

Recovery

J.P.’s recovery began in a low moment, just after he had been jailed in Florida. “I was fearful for my life if I went on using,” he writes. He surrendered his false pride, his sense that “I knew all the answers,” and reentered treatment and joined a 12-step program.

For many addicts, he says, recovery is like dragging rocks in the beginning because they’re physically wrecked, their lives are in ruins, and drugs offer instant relief from the physical agonies of withdrawal. “Their mind is under the impression that they need [drugs]to survive,” he says.

He overcame these obstacles through meditation, help from a support network, and prayer—a crucial defense in the moments when his addiction was banging at the door.

“It was like alarms were going off,” he says. “I was scared that I was going to be, like, possessed and just pick up drugs and use them, because it felt like what had happened sometimes.” He would instantly stop and pray, over and over, “God, please remove the obsession.”

The stark choice he faced in those days has stayed with him. Any passing temptations to accept a drink are quickly quashed by one simple thought: “I don’t want to die.”

The spirituality of his Catholic upbringing helped him stay centered and clean as he earned a GED diploma and a bachelor’s degree in addiction studies, and enrolled in an M.B.A. program. In his mother, he had someone who could relate to his struggle; nearly three decades ago, she had to overcome her own addiction to alcohol.

“The twelve steps are a bond I love having with my son,” she writes. She and J.P. don’t act as each other’s sponsor, the person who “takes you through the steps and offers guidance based on their own experience, strength, and hope in the program.” But they do “share a love of the fellowship,” she says, “and we can give each other advice—as a mother and son would to each other.”

Today, as a board-certified substance abuse counselor and co-founder of the outpatient Northeast Addictions Treatment Center in Quincy, Massachusetts, J.P. spends his days overseeing the center’s operation and counseling people addicted to opioids that are far more deadly than the drugs he was using. And, since the publication of Unchained, he has joined his mother in spreading the book’s message of hope and recovery and trying to reduce the stigma addicts face.

They shared that message on NBC’s Today show and on the SiriuxXM radio/television show Conversation with Cardinal Dolan, among other programs. Their story has spread through word-of-mouth, and some mothers have contacted her to say “I felt like I was reading my own story,” Nancy says.

“I get up every morning and try to think of ways to get this story out there. It’s just to let people know that help is available. I will answer every email, we’ll talk on the phone, I’ll call people back,” she says, “because I feel like this is part of what I’m supposed to be doing with my life right now.”

“You could just see his life diminish” because of the addiction, said Vericker, a youth minister and 2009 alumna of Fordham’s Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education who lives in Westchester County, N.Y., with her family.

Vericker and her son J.P. tell their story in a new book, Unchained: Our Family’s Addiction Mess is Our Message (Clear Faith Publishing, 2018). They also shared it in a May 3 appearance on NBC’s Megyn Kelly TODAY—she in the studio, he in a prerecorded interview.

Their family of six had always been supportive and tight-knit—“I never longed for anything” growing up, J.P. said. But he went downhill after discovering alcohol and drugs as an adolescent—ignoring homework, letting go of sports and other interests, and even stealing from his parents and taking the car when he wasn’t supposed to, Vericker said.

“His attitude started to get very confrontational,” she said.

The tough love came after the family had tried counselors, support groups, a specialized boarding school, and many other routes in trying to address J.P.’s addiction.

Family members and others “taught us the ropes,” Vericker said. “Once things got really bad at home, we had our son arrested, and we stuck with the charges, and then he decided to go to treatment for the first time.”

Things got harder after he wound up homeless in Florida, where his treatment program and halfway house were located. It was Christmas time, and he was calling every day seeking money and saying he was hungry. As difficult as it was, Vericker responded with “Sorry, ‘click’”—which a close friend in recovery told her was “the most loving thing to do.”

J.P. later turned his life around—getting treatment, earning a college degree in 2014, and co-founding Northeast Addictions Treatment Center in Massachusetts.

Asked by Megyn Kelly what she would say to parents facing similar struggles, Vericker responded that “if I could have seen that those very difficult things that were breaking my heart to do would help him … then I would have done it much sooner.”

“Parents need to have the courage to try to do the thing that they most don’t want to do,” she said. “Because that is the loving thing to do.’

Watch the interview here.

“Everybody thought it was so wonderful, but I knew I didn’t want my life to be about rice pudding,” said the Fordham graduate student. “I felt a calling, but I wasn’t sure where the call was leading me. So I figured I should study theology.”

So Corona sold off the kitchen equipment and started taking courses toward a bachelor’s in theology. It set her on an introspective journey that was, on reflection, a path toward becoming holy.

And then her youngest daughter became addicted to heroin.

“I couldn’t think to study anymore,” she said. “But I didn’t want to drop out.”

Her daughter’s addiction changed the way Corona viewed spirituality and her role in the church. She transferred to get a bachelor’s in studio art as a part of a spiritual journey that helped her cope with her daughter’s illness. “It helped me stay in school, and graduate,” she said.

After obtaining a master’s in spirituality online from Loyola University Chicago and an education certification in alcohol and drug counseling, she enrolled in Fordham’s Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education to pursue a doctorate in ministry. She said that her daughter’s addiction shook her out of an “inwardly focused” spirituality and brought her into the congregation to help others facing down the opioid crisis.

Today, Corona is a certified recovery specialist helping communities to take action, often through reaching out to church laity. She said she doesn’t necessarily blame the institutional church for not addressing the crisis. Indeed, she noted that the Vatican held a conference on the problem of addiction in November 2016. She also hailed the recovery work of many priests and nuns on the issue.

But her focus has been on her fellow parishioners.

Tapping Lay Expertise

“When we’re in the midst of a deadly epidemic and people with addictions are suffering tremendously, and they can’t even turn to the person next to them in the pew because they’re ashamed, then there’s something really wrong with our Christian identity,” she said.

In part, Corona feels that the reluctance of many parishioners to feel available to those in need is due to an inherent deference to the clergy—even when they may have a lay expert in their midst. But first and foremost, she’s set out to battle the stigma of addiction.

She also said that the stigma of addiction often prevents parishes from incorporating programs that relate recovery to church spirituality. In response, she began to offer a four week series that examines addiction through a “bio-psycho-social-spiritual model.” At several Philadelphia-area parishes and retreat centers, once a week, she focuses on a specific aspect of addiction—from biology to psychology to sociology to spirituality. She said that she also developed a community action follow-up workshop this past summer at Fordham in an ecclesiology class.

“I want people to understand that we need to become afire with the spirit,” she said. “Because of my experience with my daughter, I know what people using drugs need. And it’s things that ordinary people can do: Just be there, drive someone, cook a meal, or make some phone calls.”

She hopes that the community action workshop will empower small communities of volunteers in each parish to think about what they can to do address what is a national crisis. And in the process, they can begin to reposition the role of the layperson.

While the opioid crisis has brought Corona to focus on the role of congregants, she said her ideas have theological underpinnings that go back to Vatican II. She cited the Apostalicam Actuositatem (Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity) as paving the way for lay people like herself to “act directly and in a definitive way in the temporal sphere.”

“There are some wonderful priests and sisters who have called me in to talk about the crisis and what we can do as a community, [and]I always say if I had a priest on the ticket I’d be a lot more popular,” she said.

Ministry Over Theology

Despite several priests and professors saying she had a knack for theology, Corona veered toward studying ministry largely because of her activist leanings.

“Theology is just a little too much talk and I’m more about action, so of course I’m drawn to ministry and the Jesuits,” she said.

At first, she was also dubious about online education. But after getting her online Loyola master’s, she said she was hooked.

“I’m very serious about education and I always thought you have to be there and interact, but if you have a school that’s putting out good material with good professors giving you good readings, then that’s what it’s all about.”

She refers to addiction as a “family disease” that affects everyone close to the addicted person—“even those not ingesting substances.” It was in such moments that she said she recognized the role of spirituality and the potential of her fellow parishioners.

“Sometimes I stand in church and I want to say ‘I need you people,’” she said. “I need you to be there, and we need this to be the community we’re supposed to be.”