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JULY 1, 2021
13
‘Staying clean requires honesty’
RECOVERY continued
from front page
have a conscious recollection of the
early part of her life, the trauma of
abandonment would play a huge
role in her addiction story.
“When I was 14 years old, I stum-
bled across some paperwork about
my life, and got really confused
and angry,” she says. “Soon after,
I began using drugs. My adoptive
parents were wonderful people, but
they had no idea about the issues
they would later come across. No
one did at that time, really.”
Before her discovery, Plummer
had known little about her birth
parents or circumstances leading
to her adoption.
“My parents tried to shelter me
from everything bad,” she says. “I
went to a Christian school. I never
learned anything about drugs in
school and we didn’t have any sex
education. We went to chapel. I
never felt like I fit in there. I didn’t
know who I was mad at, exactly,
only that I was very angry.”
After experimenting with mari-
juana, she tried meth and became
involved with older men.
“I liked doing drugs at first,”
Plummer says. “It was an escape.”
As her addiction evolved, Plum-
mer learned to change the groups
of people she associated with de-
pending on how deep she was in her
addiction in an effort to feel better
about herself when comparing the
things she did with their behaviors.
“I was partying with older men
and went back and forth to my par-
ents’ house,” she says. “I got pretty
tangled up in some bad situations
at a young age. It was easy for me
to get the drugs because the people
I was around were pretty big (in
the drug scene) so it was easy for
me to get it. I didn’t have a problem
with access, so I never had to do
anything too bad.”
After a tumultuous year, Plum-
mer told her parents she wanted
to quit Salem Academy and get her
GED after she finished her sopho-
more year of high school.
“I did what I said, and then got
my GED and had a job working at
Taco Time,” Plummer says. “The
only trouble I got into was being out
past curfew. Looking back, what I
put my parents through was sad.”
After her 18th birthday, Plum-
mer began to search for her birth
parents. After calling the Siletz
Tribe and getting nowhere, someone
suggested she contact Grand Ronde.
Unbeknownst to her at the time, her
biological aunt Margo George was
the Tribe’s enrollment clerk.
“I’ll never forget what she said
to me,” Plummer recalls. “She told
me, ‘I’m your aunt Margo and we’ve
been looking for you.’ ”
Soon after, she connected with
her birth family, learned her birth
name was Tonia George and be-
came close to brother Marty George.
She also met her first ex-husband,
became pregnant and was a mother
at 20.
“I wasn’t doing much drugging
during that time,” she says. “But
Smoke Signals seeking
recovery stories
Have you struggled with alcohol or drug dependency? Have you
been able to find help through abstinence-based programs, medica-
tion-assisted treatment, behavior modification therapy, or a combina-
tion of things?
If so, Smoke Signals would like to hear your story. Reporter Dan-
ielle Harrison is writing a series on addiction and recovery, and she
would like to talk to Tribal members who are in various stages of the
recovery process.
What has worked for you and why? What services do you wish
were more readily available? What are misconceptions people have
about those who struggle with drug and alcohol misuse?
Your story is important and we would like to hear from you, no mat-
ter where you are in your recovery journey.
Please contact Danielle Harrison for more information at danielle.
harrison@grandronde.org or call 503-879-4663. We also have a
private Recovery Stories subgroup on the Smoke Signals Facebook
page if you would like to join and share your story there.
my marriage only lasted a short pe-
riod of time. My ex would disappear
with my son and weeks or months
would go by until someone would
finally tell me where they went. We
didn’t have a custody arrangement
so I would have to track my son
down. My old lifestyle crept back
in. It never completely left, really.
It became the life I knew. I felt like
I fit in there.”
However, Plummer also felt con-
flicted.
“I had been brought up a cer-
tain way, with values that were
deep-rooted from going to church,
that God could see everything I was
doing. There was always a twinge of
guilt when I used. It became hard
to walk that line.”
Plummer continued on that path
for a few more years and had a
daughter in 1994. A custody battle
ensued a few months later between
her and the baby’s father. That
went on until 1997, after her second
son was born and tested positive for
methamphetamine.
That incident is what began a
14-year entanglement with the
Oregon Department of Human
Services and Indian Child Welfare.
Both children were removed from
her care. Her daughter was placed
with her father and her youngest
son with foster parents. Plummer’s
oldest child already lived with fam-
ily members in Portland.
“After my (youngest) son tested
positive for meth, that was when
DHS and the Tribe got involved,”
she says. “That was also when I
first was confronted with having
a drug problem. It took me a long
time to understand the depth of the
problem. I did what they asked and
got my baby back. I would eventual-
ly fall into that lifestyle, but I had
a job and my house was spotless. I
was a fairly functioning addict for
a while.”
Plummer’s pattern with men
didn’t change.
“I had horrible relationships with
them until I met my current hus-
band,” she says.
Eventually, her choices led to
being sentenced to three-and-a-half
years at Coffee Creek Correctional
Facility in Wilsonville in 2009.
There, with plenty of time to
reflect, Plummer reached out via
a letter in Smoke Signals. That
letter connected her with Tribal
Elder Steve Bobb Sr. and his wife,
Connie, who began writing to her.
“Meeting them was a lifesaver,”
she says.
Plummer also began to see how
the root of her addiction began with
childhood trauma of abandonment
and other unresolved issues.
“I could have just blamed my
ex-husband because he was abusive
and say that I didn’t have a choice
and had to sell drugs in order to
pay the rent and feed the kids, but
I needed to get honest with myself,”
she says. “I had to stop fighting.”
When she was released from pris-
on in 2011, Plummer stayed with
the Bobbs.
“It was a blessing,” she says. “I
knew that I didn’t want to get out
of prison and move back to the same
town I had lived my entire life.”
Then came the toughest moment
she had faced: During a 2011 hear-
ing to determine if her parental
rights would be permanently ter-
minated, Plummer was advised by
her lawyer Todd McCann to give
guardianship of her two youngest
children, who were still minors, to
their foster parents. After she had
achieved sobriety, a place to live and
a job, her lawyer said they would
petition the court for custody.
“I immediately got to work,”
Plummer says. “Regardless if I got
them back, I needed to be present.
I needed to be clean. I wanted to
at least be available to them. It
was my own choices that led to
this. It was painful, but it was also
freeing.”
Plummer began working for the
Tribe in the temp pool, then applied
for a job as the Housing Depart-
ment receptionist. She then found
a place to live. By the end of 2013,
she had been given sole custody of
her children.
“My kids did a lot of suffering at
the hands of my choices,” she says.
“I feel so blessed because of the
amount of unconditional love my
kids have given me throughout all
of this. They saw me work hard and
then fall down, but they loved me.”
Plummer is also grateful to the
Tribe.
“I didn’t have a great experience
with state DHS, but am thankful
for the Tribe and the chances we
are given,” she says. “They really
want to keep families together.”
After regaining custody, next
on her list was getting an educa-
tion. Plummer attended Portland
Community College, then went on
to complete a bachelor’s degree in
management and organizational
leadership from George Fox Uni-
versity, then a master’s degree in
business administration from East-
ern Oregon University, and is cur-
rently enrolled at Tulsa University,
where she plans to earn a master’s
of jurisprudence in Indian law.
“Recovery has not been easy, but
it is simple,” she says. “You have
to make a decision. It has been 10
years now, so I don’t think about
it anymore. My hard work is going
to work every day, being a good
grandma to my four grandkids and
going to college.”
Plummer adds that her grand-
children are “the light of my life.”
“If I was loaded, I wouldn’t get to
be a grandma,” she says. “I wouldn’t
be able to work with my daughter
in the Housing Department. I con-
sider it all a blessing.”
One program that was key to
keeping a connection with her chil-
dren while she was in prison was
the Family Preservation Project.
There, families eat lunch together,
bond and do activities, all without
the watchful eye of a guard the
entire time. Plummer is a speaker
and advocate for the program, and
has testified several times before
the Oregon Legislature in favor of
keeping it when budget cuts threat-
ened to eliminate it.
“The recidivism rate for the wom-
en who were involved in the pro-
gram when I was is zero,” she says.
“We get together every year and
all are still doing OK. They have
dedicated their lives to this cause.”
And her advice for Tribal mem-
bers who are struggling with sub-
stance misuse?
“Staying clean requires honesty:
Brutal, painful honesty,” Plummer
says. “It is hard work and you have
to change everything, including
the people you hung around with.
Sometimes, it’s a family member.
You have to have boundaries. Will
power ain’t gonna do it.”
Plummer says it is the first time
she’s shared her recovery story in
detail, but she hopes telling it will
help others.
“I believe stories of recovery are
the hope that we give to the addicts
who are still suffering,” she says.
