SAM PEREZ: Sam Perez is a multi-skilled journalist for WLTX-TV News 19 and the author of Deviate From Denial. Her book describes how her parents, Rob and Diane Perez opened DV8 Kitchen, where the staff are all persons in recovery. Sam and her dad Rob will talk about breaking the stigma around substance use disorder, second chances, and hope. From sam-perez.com:

"I wrote this book because the opioid epidemic is affecting millions of lives and I know that somehow, we have to work together toward a solution. I am inspired by my parents, who opened a restaurant that hires people in recovery from substance use disorder. Through their business, I have met so many incredible employees with really touching stories and I knew that telling their stories and starting a conversation about addiction was the best way I could help. My hope for this book is to share about just how many people addiction affects. We have a big problem on our hands, and in order to try and fix it, we first need to erase the stigma surrounding addiction, which we can only do if we try to understand it."

ROB PEREZ: Rob Perez is the owner and co-founder with his wife Diane of DV8 Kitchen in Lexington (the other one, in Kentucky). DV8 is a restaurant and bakery that is known for its second chance employment of persons in recovery from substance use disorder. This hits close to home for Rob. At age 28, he entered a treatment center for his harmful use of alcohol. Rob shared this story about DV8 with the Kentucky Senate:

"We had no idea how to validate that our employees were in recovery, how to motivate them and our customers were basically afraid of us. So, over the next couple of months, we took a hard look at what we were doing and tried to learn from our mistakes. We learned two big things:

"One, you do not need to be a social worker to employ people with a past. However, you can have recovery experts on your team. People with a past do need more than a job to be successful. They need housing, therapy and case workers. So, we forged relationships with residential living facilities. These centers validate our employees are staying in their program and provide the support they need to arrive at DV8 ready to work.

"Secondly, you don’t need to lower your standards to employ people with a past. In fact, you should raise your standards. So many of our people shared 1 thing: SHAME. It was both a cause of their substance abuse, and a result of it. We realized work was PERFECT place to build them up. We decided to set a higher standard because, not only are our people capable of meeting it, but they also needed to see that they could."