July 24, 2026
Alisha Lucero
By: Richard K Winter
There was a time when Alisha Lucero believed she had only one way to survive. She grew up surrounded by addiction, instability, and dysfunction. Childhood wasn't a place of safety or innocence. Instead, it became a place where she learned to navigate chaos long before she was old enough to understand it.
As the oldest child, she carried responsibilities that were never meant for a little girl. "I had to raise my brothers and sisters," she says. "I didn't have a chance to be a kid."
Like so many people living through trauma, Alisha searched for a way to quiet the pain. She found heroin. She found methamphetamine. And for a while, she found something else. Control.
Selling drugs gave her something she had never experienced before. It gave her money. It gave her status. It gave her a feeling of power that seemed to fill the emptiness she had carried for so long.
"I loved the hustle," she remembers. "It made me feel like a God." But that feeling never lasted. Instead, it became a cycle that seemed impossible to escape. Prison. Release. Home.
Back into an environment where addiction surrounded her once again. Family members would ask her to find drugs. She would return to dealing. Then came another arrest. Then another prison sentence. Five times, the cycle repeated. By the sixth time she entered prison, something inside her had changed. She was tired.
Tired of surviving. Tired of repeating the same story. "The sixth time I was in prison, I told myself I had to try something different." Those words became the beginning of a new life.
After her release, Alisha entered treatment at Seventh Street. This time, she didn't simply complete the program. She embraced it. She began doing the work of healing—not only from addiction, but from the childhood wounds she had carried for decades.
For the first time, she allowed herself to process the pain she had buried for so many years. "I was able to process my relationship with my mother," she says. "I realized how much of my childhood I had lost." Recovery became more than sobriety. It became freedom.
Soon after completing treatment, Alisha joined the staff at Seventh Street, first working overnight with residents who were beginning the same journey she had just completed herself. As people recognized her compassion, commitment, and leadership, she took on additional responsibilities, eventually serving as an admissions and medical coordinator while also supervising the night shift.
Helping others wasn't simply a job. It became part of her own recovery.
Today, Alisha serves as a Certified Peer Support Specialist with Jacky's Recovery Support Services through the Familiar Faces Program, walking alongside individuals whose lives often look remarkably similar to the life she once lived. She understands incarceration. She understands addiction. She understands trauma. But more importantly, she understands hope.
Attending the 2026 Utah Peer Conference reminded Alisha just how far the peer support movement has come. As she listened to presentations about expanding peer services into correctional settings and helping people find housing and employment after incarceration, she couldn't help but think about her younger self.
"When I was younger, I had such a hard time finding housing and getting a job because of my background," she says. "I think these changes are going to change so many lives and help stop people from coming back into the system."
She knows what that kind of support could have meant. She also knows what it can mean today. Every day she has the opportunity to stand beside someone who feels invisible, hopeless, or forgotten. And every so often, she witnesses a moment that reminds her why she does this work.
The moment someone begins to believe in themselves. The moment hope replaces fear. The moment recovery becomes possible. "When it finally clicks," she says, "it makes me happy knowing someone can finally see in themselves what I've been able to see in them all along."
Perhaps that's what peer support is at its very heart. Not fixing people. Not rescuing people. Simply holding hope for someone until they are ready to believe in it themselves.
Alisha knows what it feels like to live in darkness.Today, she spends her life helping others discover that there has always been light waiting for them.
Sometimes, all it takes is one person willing to help them see it.
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July 24, 2026
Amy Campbell, Finding Balance, Finding Purpose
By: Richard K Winter
For as long as Amy Campbell can remember, mental illness was part of her life. It wasn't something she learned about in school or encountered as an adult. It was woven into the story of her family long before she understood what it meant.
Growing up in northern Minnesota, Amy watched people she loved struggle silently. Mental illness affected both sides of her family. Tragically, she lost both her father and her brother to suicide. Those losses would forever shape her life, but they were not the beginning of her own story.
"I can remember being in seventh grade and not wanting to be alive," she says.
For years, those thoughts stayed hidden. Not because they weren't real. Because she didn't believe they could be talked about.
Amy grew up in a family where strength often meant silence. Emotions stayed private. Pain stayed buried. Questions went unanswered.
"My family was very stoic," she says. "You didn't talk about emotions."
So she learned to keep moving. She worked hard in school. She earned multiple college degrees. From the outside, life appeared to be moving forward. Inside, however, she found herself riding emotional highs and lows that became increasingly difficult to manage. For years, she resisted the idea of medication.
Like many people living with mental health challenges, she wondered if she should simply be able to push through. Eventually, nearing the age of thirty, she decided to try something different. That decision changed her life.
"It was a game changer," Amy says. "For the first time, things felt more consistent. I finally felt stable."
Medication wasn't a cure. It was a foundation. It gave her the stability she needed to begin healing in other ways. Therapy became another part of that journey. What started as occasional counseling in her twenties gradually became a regular commitment to caring for her mental health. Even today, Amy is honest about her experience.
"There are still good days and bad days."
Recovery she has learned isn't about perfection. It's about learning how to navigate life with the tools, support, and self-awareness that allow you to keep moving forward.
Before finding her place in the behavioral health field, Amy experienced seasons of uncertainty that tested her hope. After college, meaningful employment proved difficult to find. As rejection letters piled up, the hopelessness she had fought for so many years returned.
"I was in a dark place," she remembers. "I looked ahead and saw nothing."
Instead of giving up, she reached out for help. A college counselor encouraged her to keep looking and helped her explore new opportunities. That conversation led to a position as an Opioid Response Coordinator with a recovery organization in Duluth, Minnesota. It was work she hadn't expected. But it quickly became work she loved.
"I found it fascinating learning why people use substances," she says. "Recovery isn't one story. Everyone's path is different."
Working alongside people in recovery changed her understanding of resilience. She witnessed heartbreak. She witnessed healing. Most of all, she witnessed hope. Those experiences eventually brought Amy to Utah, where she began training Certified Peer Support Specialists.
As she listened to hundreds of people share their lived experiences, something became increasingly clear. Recovery is built on connection.
"You hear these heart-wrenching stories," she says. "Then you see the recovery side of them, and you understand. There is so much wisdom and so much love in the recovery community."
Today, Amy serves as Utah's Peer Support Program Administrator, helping strengthen and expand peer support services across the state. Her work allows her to advocate for the profession, support organizations, and help ensure that lived experience continues to have a meaningful place within Utah's behavioral health system. She believes her own lived experience with mental health has made her a better advocate.
"I have that perspective," she says. "It helps me understand the importance of peer support and advocate for it."
Every year, one event reminds her why this work matters. The Utah Peer Conference. For Amy, it feels less like a conference and more like a reunion of people who share a common purpose.
"I see so many people I've had the privilege of training," she says. "There's so much excitement. I get to reconnect with old friends and welcome people who are just beginning their journey."
Looking back, Amy knows there was a time when she believed she had to carry everything by herself. Today, she knows something very different. Healing doesn't happen in silence. It happens when people are willing to ask for help. When they find support.
When they discover that recovery isn't about pretending life is perfect—it's about finding balance, building connection, and believing that hope is stronger than despair. That is the message Amy now carries forward every day. And through her work, she is helping thousands of others discover it for themselves.
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July 24, 2026
Andy Torgersen
By: Richard K Winter
Learning to See the Person He Could Become. Sometimes recovery begins with a simple question. Not a question about what went wrong. Not a question about mistakes or consequences. Just a question about possibility.
For Andy Torgersen, that question changed everything.
In his twenties, addiction slowly took hold of his life. Like so many others, he found himself caught in a cycle that left him feeling disconnected from himself, from his future, and from the person he once hoped to become.
There were days when hope felt impossibly far away. The one thing that kept him moving forward was his daughter. Even in his darkest moments, she remained a reminder that life could still hold something worth fighting for.
Then, during a stay in a psychiatric unit, an unexpected conversation shifted the course of his life. A behavioral health technician sat down with him and asked a question Andy had not heard in a very long time. "What are your dreams?" "What are your goals?" The questions caught him off guard.
No one was asking about his addiction. No one was asking about his failures. Someone was asking about his future.
As he reflected on those questions, something inside him began to awaken. For the first time in years, Andy stopped thinking about the person addiction had made him believe he was. Instead, he began wondering about the person he could still become.
"I started thinking about the highest version of myself," he says.
That moment became the beginning of his recovery. It wasn't a dramatic transformation overnight. It was a decision. A decision to stop simply surviving and begin intentionally rebuilding every part of his life.
"I started taking a different approach," Andy says. "I started thinking about my mental, emotional, and spiritual health."
Recovery became more than abstinence. It became personal growth. Instead of allowing old habits and negative thinking to define him, Andy leaned into the work. He embraced therapy. He built healthier routines. He surrounded himself with people who challenged and encouraged him.
He found community at Fit To Recover, where physical wellness became another part of his healing journey. He built friendships with people who understood recovery. Little by little, hope turned into confidence. Confidence turned into purpose.
About ten months into his recovery, someone asked him another question that would shape his future. Had he ever considered working in the recovery field? At first, Andy wasn't sure. He didn't see himself as an expert. He simply knew what recovery had done for his own life.
Then an opportunity appeared. A mentor at Brighton Recovery Center encouraged him to apply for an opening. "I had no idea what I was doing," Andy laughs. "I just shared my own experience and tried to show up with passion." It was enough.
Working as a case manager, Andy discovered that his greatest qualifications weren't found on a résumé. They were found in his lived experience. He understood what it felt like to believe there was no way out. He understood what it meant to start over. And because he had walked that road himself, people trusted him.
For a while, Andy wondered whether he should pursue a different career. Sales seemed like it might offer a new direction. But every time he imagined leaving recovery work, something inside him pulled him back. "I had a very strong feeling that I should keep working on my recovery skills and keep sharing them with other people."
That calling eventually led him to become a Certified Peer Support Specialist and a Peer Recovery Coach with USARA's ARCHES program. Today, Andy walks into hospitals where people are often experiencing some of the hardest days of their lives. He recognizes the fear. The uncertainty. The hopelessness. Because he remembers feeling all of those things himself.
Now, he has the privilege of sitting beside someone and offering something that once changed his own life. Hope. Not false promises. Not easy answers. Just the possibility that recovery can become real.
Attending the Utah Peer Conference has become another meaningful part of that journey. He first attended in 2025, before becoming certified, eager to learn from others and build relationships within Utah's peer support community.
When he returned in 2026 as a Certified Peer Support Specialist, the experience felt different. "I loved those days so much," he says. "I filled pages with notes because I wanted to keep learning how to better help other people."
Looking back, Andy often thinks about the conversation that changed his own life. One person. A few thoughtful questions. A belief that there was still something worth hoping for.
Today, Andy has the opportunity to offer that same gift to someone else. To help another person look beyond addiction. To imagine a future, they may not yet believe is possible. Because sometimes, the light that changes a life doesn't come from having all the answers.
Sometimes it begins with someone who simply believes in the person you can still become. And once you've found that light, the most meaningful thing you can do is share it with someone else.
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July 24, 2026
Ashley Cameron
By: Richard K Winter
Sometimes life gives us a choice. For Ashley Cameron, that choice came after years of decisions that had slowly taken her further away from the life she wanted to live. Eventually, the consequences caught up with her, and the justice system placed two paths in front of her.
She could go to prison. Or she could enter Drug Court and commit to treatment. Looking back now, she doesn't hesitate when she talks about that moment. She chose treatment. What she didn't know then was that one decision would change the entire course of her life.
Like many people entering treatment, Ashley wasn't sure what recovery would look like. She simply knew she couldn't continue living the way she had been. Then something unexpected happened. About six weeks into treatment, she felt a shift.
"Six weeks in, I knew I wanted to get sober and stay sober." It wasn't just about stopping substance use anymore. It was about building a new life.
Ashley embraced everything recovery had to offer. She completed treatment, attended meetings, surrounded herself with people who believed in her, and slowly began building a recovery community that became one of the strongest foundations of her new life.
She is the first to say she didn't do it alone. "I needed treatment. I needed the meetings. I needed the people."
Recovery taught her something she had never fully experienced before. Healing happens in connection. As her confidence grew and her life became more stable, Ashley began thinking about what came next. The answer surprised her. She didn't just want to stay in recovery. She wanted to help others find it.
"I felt like it was my purpose," she says. "I needed help, and I just thought, if I can get out of a very dark place, I want to show people that it is possible."
She became a Certified Peer Support Specialist and spent the next several years working alongside individuals beginning their own recovery journeys. Every day she met people carrying fear, shame, uncertainty, and doubt—the same emotions she once carried herself. And every now and then, she witnessed something remarkable. Hope.
"Once that light comes on, you can't turn it off."
For Ashley, there is nothing quite like watching someone begin to believe in themselves again. That first glimpse of possibility. That first moment someone realizes recovery might actually be within reach.
"It is amazing to be part of a sober lifestyle," she says. "It is such a humbling and good feeling to help someone else."
Recovery transformed far more than Ashley's career. It transformed her family. The changes she fought so hard to make rippled into every relationship she holds close. Her children found stability. Her family found peace.
"My mom no longer thinks I'm going to die," Ashley says. "That has lifted a weight for both of us."
Today, her relationships are no longer built on fear, crisis, or survival. Instead, they are built on trust, connection, and simply enjoying life together. Those are the gifts that recovery has given her.
When Ashley attended the 2026 Utah Peer Conference, she found herself surrounded by many of the people who had been part of her own recovery journey. Some had encouraged her. Some had walked beside her. Others were now doing exactly what she was doing—helping someone else discover that recovery is possible.
For Ashley, the conference wasn't simply a professional gathering. It was a reminder of something she now knows to be true. Recovery is never just about one person. It grows through connection. Through community. Through people willing to share their hope until someone else finds their own.
And once that light comes on... It can change everything.
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July 24, 2026
Ashley Smith
Story coming soon.
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July 24, 2026
Ashley Vasquez
By: Richard K Winter
For much of her life, Ashley Vasquez believed that being successful meant meeting everyone else's expectations.
As a first-generation Latina, she grew up balancing two worlds. At home, she translated for her family, helping them navigate systems, appointments, and everyday life. At school, she carried the pressure of succeeding academically—not only for herself, but for the people she loved.
"I was the 'smart one' in my family," she says. "I felt an enormous pressure to succeed."
From the outside, Ashley appeared to be doing everything right. Inside, she was carrying burdens that no one could see.
As a teenager, Ashley came to understand that she was attracted to both men and women. Sharing that part of herself with her family did not bring the acceptance she had hoped for. Instead, it became another source of pain. Her family's response left her questioning her worth and whether she could ever truly belong.
Growing up in an environment where emotions were often met with criticism or punishment, Ashley learned to protect herself by becoming quiet. She stopped sharing what she felt. She hid parts of who she was. She became skilled at keeping the peace, even when it meant losing pieces of herself.
During those years, she was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. She tried therapy. She explored different treatments. Still, she struggled to find relief. Searching for comfort and acceptance, Ashley eventually turned to nicotine and marijuana as a way to cope.
Instead of easing the pain, those choices contributed to a psychotic episode that changed the course of her mental health journey. Yet even then, the hardest battle wasn't simply with symptoms. It was with believing that her life had value.
College brought new opportunities but also new challenges. As a first-generation college student, Ashley often felt isolated. Financial pressures, cultural expectations, balancing work and school, and the constant question of whether she truly belonged weighed heavily on her.
"There were times when everything felt overwhelming," she remembers. "I questioned whether I had a future worth pursuing."
The turning point in Ashley's recovery didn't come from one dramatic event. It came from finding her own voice. Little by little, she began speaking up for herself. She started setting healthy boundaries. She continued treatment. She practiced healthier ways of coping.
Most importantly, she gave herself permission to ask a question she had never considered before. What if my life belongs to me?
"I realized I had spent much of my life trying to earn approval by living according to other people's expectations," Ashley says.
Recovery helped her understand something that changed everything. She was not responsible for carrying everyone else's dreams. She could honor her family's sacrifices while still choosing a life that reflected her own values, identity, and purpose.
That realization gave her something she had been searching for all along. Freedom.
Today, Ashley defines success differently. Not by external approval. Not by perfection. But by authenticity.
"Recovery for me has meant embracing my identity, prioritizing my mental wellness, and recognizing that my voice and experiences matter."
That new understanding has shaped the path she is building for herself. Ashley is pursuing dual bachelor’s degrees in psychology and health, Society & Policy, along with a minor in Pediatric Clinical Research at the University of Utah.
Her goal reaches far beyond earning diplomas. She wants to help create a behavioral health system where people feel seen, understood, and respected—especially those whose experiences have often been overlooked.
"As a first-generation Latina, I understand how stigma, cultural expectations, and the lack of conversations about mental health can keep people from asking for help," she says.
She believes culturally responsive care has the power to change lives. She believes recovery should honor each person's unique journey. And she believes no one should have to choose between their identity and their healing.
Ashley hopes to become a Certified Peer Support Specialist because she wants to offer others something she once needed herself. Hope. Compassion. Acceptance.
"My journey has taught me that healing is possible when people are met with hope, compassion, and acceptance," she says. "I want to walk alongside others as they discover their own strengths and build meaningful lives."
Looking back, Ashley realizes recovery didn't ask her to become someone new. It asked her to stop hiding who she had always been.
Today, she continues breaking new ground—not by living someone else's definition of success, but by courageously living her own.
And in doing so, she is helping create a future where others can do the same.