OXNARD : Telethon’s Mission Is to Aid Homeless

Andy Anderson had spent most of his life drunk and high and selling drugs. The day before he began his stay at the Ventura County Rescue Mission, he had sold amphetamines to a young girl who injected too much and almost died in front of him.

That night he got drunk and slept in a ditch in Santa Paula. The next morning Anderson hitchhiked to the Rescue Mission.

“My life got to the point that I had only one choice to make: Change my life around or die,” Anderson, who now works as an assistant chaplain in the Rescue Mission, said at a news conference Monday.

The conference was held to promote an upcoming telethon to raise money for the mission, which provides temporary lodging for up to 82 men a night and serves 9,000 meals to the homeless each month. It will be broadcast from 8 p.m. to midnight Monday on KADY-TV.

Anderson, 46, has spent the last 2 1/2 years at the Rescue Mission in Oxnard. As part of his job as assistant chaplain, he counsels men who are in a situation similar to what he was once in. Volunteers throughout the county are organizing the “Homeward Bound” telethon to raise funds for meals, lodging, clothing, counseling, rehabilitation and job training.