WestCare of KY Marks One Year With Celebration
By Justin Mullis, Reporter, The Medical Leader by Pikeville Medical Center
October 4, 2006

ASHCAMP, Ky. - As you drive along Kentucky Route 194 through Elkhorn City, then make a right onto Elkhorn Creek and follow the road all the way to Ashcamp, Kentucky, you realize that it is a long road; a curvy road; a narrow path by which you travel through some of the most scenic parts of Pike County into a community which has embraced an organization which is still relatively new to Kentucky.

The road is symbolic. Both figuratively and literally, that road leads to recovery. The description of the route is much like the description that recovering drug addicts would use to detail their path to sobriety.

For so many residents of Eastern Kentucky who have fallen into the grips of addiction, there was no road to recovery. Without a large sum of money to check into a private facility and nowhere locally to turn so many who realized they needed help continued with their behavior simply because they had no choice.

But one year ago, a completely non-profit organization invited everyone to make the journey down Route 194 to Ashcamp, where a facility donated by local lawyer Gary C. Johnson had been renovated and turned into a place of refuge for those struggling with drug addiction.

On the afternoon of October 1, that organization celebrated its one-year anniversary, by naming the building after the man on Capitol Hill who made the Ashcamp facility a reality.

Several WestCare officials, state officials and many local community leaders gathered in the gymnasium at WestCare to witness the unveiling of the sign officially dedicating the building and naming it the Hal Rogers Appalachian Recovery Center.

Congressman Rogers seemed almost shocked by the gesture but continued on with his speech about his office's efforts to thwart the regions drug epidemic.