Tess travels to Nevada for residential rehabilitation

Tess Henry’s journey from a local hospital to residential treatment in Nevada in February 2017 was a precarious passage through a care system where a ready bed, transportation, identification, money, and treatment rules all had to align at once. The transfer was assembled by her mother, Patricia Mehrmann, and volunteers with the Hope Initiative during a brief opportunity to move Tess into care. Its immediate promise was real, but so were the obstacles that had repeatedly interrupted treatment and would continue to shadow her recovery.

Earlier Treatment and Unequal Access

Tess’s Nevada trip followed an earlier attempt to stabilize her life during pregnancy. After leaving jail in June 2015, nearly seven months pregnant, she lived with her mother for a month and tried to make a relationship with her baby’s father work. The arrangement proved unsuccessful. Her family then found the Life Center of Galax, one of the few Virginia facilities that accepted patients using medication-assisted treatment. Private insurance covered most of the $20,000 cost, while her father paid the $6,500 deductible from the remainder of her college-savings fund. Tess was taking Subutex, a buprenorphine medication used in some cases during pregnancy.

By early 2016, buprenorphine helped Tess feel normal, and insurance paid 80 percent of the medication’s cost. But seeing her addiction doctor required cash: $700 upfront, followed by $90 to $100 per visit, potentially as many as four visits a month. The cost of the appointments sat alongside a wider shortage of care. Federal rules then limited a certified medication-assisted-treatment doctor to 100 patients, while waiting lists kept treatment out of reach for many people. Tess’s experience made the distinction between a medication being covered and a sustainable course of treatment being affordable starkly practical.

Her path was also complicated by the social meaning attached to medication. Tess had attended Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, but she felt stigmatized because she was taking buprenorphine. Although Narcotics Anonymous officially accepted medication-assisted treatment, longtime members asked to sponsor or mentor her declined. That rejection narrowed a potential source of support at the same time she was trying to maintain sobriety and care for her young son.

The Hospital Window and the Transfer

By the time Patricia spoke publicly about Tess’s experience, Tess had returned to a psychiatric ward at a local hospital. Hope Initiative volunteers Jamie Waldrop and Terrence Engles worked to arrange a long-term treatment placement in Nevada. The timing mattered: they needed a bed available as soon as Tess left the hospital, and the family still had to find $12,000 for treatment. Patricia considered asking her eighty-five-year-old father to release part of the inheritance he intended for Tess, reasoning that the money would be useless if Tess died.

The urgency became personal when Patricia visited Tess with her grandson. Tess had not seen her son for ten months, and she brightened at seeing him. Patricia understood the visit as part of a dangerous, uncertain moment, not a resolution: the family and volunteers still needed to get Tess from the hospital to the airport and into treatment. Jamie Waldrop believed that without a car waiting to take Tess to the airport, she would not make the trip.

Tess had lost her identification. A hospital employee who was also a notary public helped create a makeshift replacement so she could board a plane. On February 26, 2017, Terrence Engles coordinated her transfer from the hospital to a cab, which took her to the airport. Each practical step—the temporary ID, the ride, the available placement, and the money—was necessary to turn an intention to seek treatment into an actual departure.

Treatment Conditions and Early Progress

The Nevada facility did not accept patients on medication-assisted treatment. Tess had stopped taking Suboxone months earlier, after losing her Medicaid coverage when her son was removed from her care. By the time of the transfer, she was mostly using crack and heroin. The placement therefore offered residential treatment, but not continuity of the medication that had previously helped manage cravings and withdrawal. Her case illustrates how eligibility rules at a receiving facility could shape the treatment a person actually received, even when family and volunteers succeeded in arranging admission.

Tess became the Hope Initiative’s fifth person sent into residential treatment. The number marked a concrete achievement for the volunteer effort, but not a predictable outcome: Jamie described watching the process with hope while recognizing that no one could know whether this attempt would be Tess’s last. The journey was not a simple move away from drugs; it was a transfer between institutions with different requirements, reached through a narrow interval in which Tess could be moved safely and a place could be secured.

After an initial difficulty, Tess transferred during her second week to a smaller nearby women’s facility, the We Care House, because she felt the first placement was not a good fit. A month into treatment, Patricia reported that Tess was doing well and was expected to move into aftercare. Her grandfather provided the early inheritance, contributing the $12,000 toward treatment. These developments offered a short-term sign of progress, while the planned transition to aftercare remained another stage to be negotiated rather than a guarantee of lasting recovery.

Significance and Later Outcome

The Nevada transfer demonstrates both the value and the limits of the Hope Initiative’s referral work. Its volunteers had spent months building a spreadsheet of thirty-six rehabilitation and aftercare providers, matching possible placements to patients’ finances and the availability of beds. In Tess’s case, a referral became a real journey only after relatives and volunteers addressed the gaps between hospital discharge, transportation, identification, payment, and admission. A treatment opportunity could disappear if any one of those links failed.

The outcome was not settled by Tess’s early progress at the We Care House. Later, Warren Bickel learned that she was homeless in Las Vegas and still using illicit drugs. That later condition does not erase the efforts made to get her into residential care, but it shows why a successful transfer and a favorable report after a month could not stand in for sustained treatment and support. Tess’s journey to Nevada was a hard-won opening in a longer course of illness and care, not a conclusion to it.