It’s March 17, 1972, and 9,000 screaming fans pack the UW’s Hec Edmundson Pavilion to cheer for John Houston and the Hazen basketball team.

In the raucous atmosphere, the Highlanders pulled off one of the state’s greatest upsets, beating the heavily favored, and previously undefeated, Mercer Island team and advancing to the state title game.

As the fans went crazy and the team celebrated, this was a time to bask in the win for Houston. Take it all in, enjoy himself.

Still, something in the back of Houston’s mind nagged at him. In fact, in this moment of victory, he couldn’t wait to get away.

Get away and get high.

“I played in the biggest stage a high school basketball player can play on and that wasn’t enough for me,” Houston said. “That should’ve been enough, but I had to cover that good feeling up.”

Now, nearly 40 years later, Houston is making sure Renton’s current crop of high school students don’t fall into the same traps. In his first year working with Puget Sound Educational Service District as a prevention intervention specialist at Renton High, Lindbergh and Black River, Houston shares his story as an essential part of the process to keep kids out of trouble and in classrooms.

Still battling guilt

Houston’s experience makes the 56-year-old a rare commodity because he can relate with students. He’s been there, he’s been through it and, eventually, he’s beaten it.

And though he’s on the right path now, he still carries with him guilt from his actions.

One moment from the pre-game warm-ups for the Mercer Island game sticks out in Houston’s mind. As he stood on the free-throw line, his mother stopped and stood under the basket.

“She had a big old smile on her face and I could see how proud she was,” he said. “That’s what she dreamed of… I was her baby. My mom cleaned people’s toilets and houses just so we would have something to eat, and that’s how I repaid her.”

Over the next couple of hours, Houston went on to star at shooting guard for the Highlanders in the upset win over Mercer Island. Hazen lost to Richland 54-53 the next night in the state title game.

But it’s what he did after the game that still leaves him with guilt for his mother who died in 1998. He tries every day to relay that feeling to his students.

“When their mother lays down and gives birth to them, she sees a doctor, a lawyer, a nurse. She sees a president,” he said. “My mom was there for me until the end and I kind of turned my back on her.”

One of Houston’s main points to students is that if they stop using drugs and alcohol, the misaligned, fragmented and chaotic parts of their lives will begin to come back together.

“I ask them, ‘Do you know when your problems started? I guarantee if you stop, the other stuff will take care of itself.’”

Addiction

Addiction is a trap all too easy to slip into for many high schoolers.

Houston spent his early life as the youngest of eight on a 12-acre pig farm in the Renton Highlands. Despite being very poor, his family worked hard and got along.

Then in 1967 the Renton School District condemned his family’s property to build McKnight Middle School. Houston’s parents, George and Rachel, were unable to agree on whether to stay in Renton and they separated.

Rachel started working nights at Kenworth in Tukwila and the at age 13, problems began for Houston.

“I had no one to watch me and that’s when I started,” he said. “There’s a lot of addiction in my family. … When my friends put it down, I kept going. I was addicted right away.”

While using, Houston still played sports and worked. And there was always basketball, a place to get away from all of the troubles that enveloped him. From addiction, to racial issues. Houston was one of just three African Americans at Hazen.

“I talk about basketball because that was my bright spot,” he said. “I could always find my strength on the court. That’s the one place I didn’t have to worry about anybody calling me names or anybody swinging at me. That was the one place that I got respect.”

By his senior year, Houston earned a basketball scholarship to Bellevue Community College. He went for one quarter, but the partying was too much. He soon dropped out.

For the next three decades Houston suffered through a divorce and struggled to maintain the balance of his life while dealing with addiction. He survived through agencies like the Salvation Army and by doing yard work.

Recovery

It’s 2004 and Houston wakes up in the woods. He’s been sleeping here, among the brush and animals. He hasn’t changed clothes for weeks. Is this rock bottom?

Then, the event that saves his life: He is arrested.

“I went in front of the judge and told him my first grandson was going to be born,” Houston said. “I just want to see my daughter while she was still pregnant. For some reason, this judge let me go to California.”

A few days later Houston went to church with his daughter and her family in Oakland and had an epiphany while watching his daughter teach Sunday school.

“I saw my daughter standing there with a big stomach and I said, ‘If you’re going to change your life, this is the time to do it.’ And I haven’t even thought about getting high again.”

In the nearly six years since Houston’s sober date of July 3, 2004, he earned his high school diploma. (He was one credit short from graduating at Hazen.) He went on to Olympic College, graduating as an honors student with a 3.8 grade-point average. He earned an associate degree in arts and sciences and holds three certificates as a chemical dependency professional.

It hasn’t been easy. Houston is legally blind as a result of not treating the glaucoma that runs in his family. Walking from his apartment to class at Olympic, he logged more than 2,000 miles. But it’s all been worth it.

Houston spends each day knowing he can make a direct, positive impact on young lives.

“I live a good life, there’s no pain anymore. My life was all pain,” he said. “I ask God every morning to let me be a shining light in one of these young people’s lives.”

Through all of the class and internships in Tacoma and Whidbey Island, his aim was on returning to Renton.

“It’s my city. I’m back home,” he said. “I always longed to come back but I wasn’t ready. Through a good recovery program and a good sound support system, I was able to come back to Renton with the right frame of mind, clean and sober, and have an idea in my head of what I want to give back to this city.”

Now when Houston wakes up to the sun rising over Renton Hill, he looks at a picture of his mother at the foot of his bed and thinks, finally, she would be proud of her son.

District budget cuts looming

John Houston’s job in the Renton School District is in danger as budget cuts loom.

“When I was at Hazen and McKnight there was no one for me to talk to about drugs and alcohol and tobacco. Our schools need someone who knows what they are going through, not just from some college books, but life experiences.”

According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, 23.3 percent of 12th-graders nationwide reported illicit drug use within the past month. Among eight-graders, 8.1 percent reported using within the past month and 19.9 reported use at some point in their lifetime.