KRM employee reflects on struggles with family abuse, addiction

Apr. 4—Editor's Note: This is the first of a two-part series titled "Beauty from ashes: A sit-down with the Kokomo Rescue Mission's Jesse Fondots."

When Jesse Fondots was 7 years old, he hid in a laundry basket.

He wasn't playing hide-and-seek with friends or being silly like some kids tend to do.

He was hiding to escape the harsh reality of the physical and often verbal abuse that enveloped his childhood.

Fondots doesn't remember what he was thinking that day he hid inside the laundry basket, or at least he didn't share those thoughts out loud.

But if it had not been for those struggles of life, he said he knows he wouldn't be who he is today.

Jesse Fondots.

Six years sober.

Director of Operations at the Kokomo Rescue Mission.

The Tribune caught up with Fondots earlier this week, and the married father of two said he has a lot to be thankful for these days.

But to really tell the story of what makes him so thankful for his present blessings means digging through the pain of his past as well, Fondots said.

Because that's where God was the whole time, he said, even if he didn't know it.

'Straight out of a horror movie'

Fondots did eventually leave the laundry basket that day, but he said what he entered into was a world of confusion and pain.

His parents divorced when he was 2, he said.

And when he was 10, his mother began to manufacture methamphetamine.

"So at a young age, the household was crazy, right?" he noted. "We had people over every day, and there would literally be physical fights."

A couple years later, around age 12, Fondots found himself staying up until all hours of the night just because he felt the need to protect the daughters of his mother's boyfriend from the violence they all were surrounded by.

"I know now that me thinking I was going to protect them wasn't necessarily true," he said, "but I felt like we were all going to die one day. Someone was going to come in the house, and they were going to kill us. And so I'd stay up, and of course I'm in school at the time, so that was another struggle."

When Fondots wasn't in protector mode, he said he was often a free-range child, staying out until 2 a.m. on his bicycle because he knew his mother wouldn't mind.

Those bike rides were sometimes his escape, he admitted.

That and his grandparents' house.

"I went with my grandparents every weekend," he said, "and that was my safe place."

But the realities of home were never far from his mind, even with his grandparents, Fondots explained.

"I never said a word of what was happening at home to my grandpa and grandma," he said. "In my household, my mother always taught me not to snitch. So my world was upside down, and nobody knew. But one day, I just got to my breaking point, and I told my grandpa one weekend what was happening.

"And he was like, 'Get in the truck.'" Fondots added. "He got me some plastic bags, and he told me I was going to go back home and pack some things because I was going to come live with them. And I was thinking, 'Oh my gosh, my mom's going to kill me.' So we went over there, and I walked in with the trash bags. I got my stuff and walked out. And nobody said a word. Like I said, my childhood was straight out of a horror movie."

Then, two months after moving in with his grandparents, Fondot's grandmother died.

It was his first experience with death.

A few months later, his mother was arrested for manufacturing methamphetamine and sentenced to six years in prison.

It was around that same time Fondots also met his father.

The only thing Fondots said he knew about his father at the time was he was an alcoholic, and so it was a tough decision for him to make.

"My grandpa had been the one that always protected me my whole life," he said, "and then here he is telling me I should meet my dad. He told me that yes, he was an alcoholic. But he wasn't the monster I thought he was. And you know what? He was right. He was an alcoholic, but he did love me."

Flash forward a couple years down the road.

Up until that point, Fondots had managed to only be a witness to some of the illegal drug use that was taking place around his childhood.

But he would soon find out the hard way how much those illegal drugs can change your life.

'All fun and games at first'

It all started out as harmless teenage fun, Fondots said, describing his first foray into marijuana.

"I was 16, and my best friend started selling it," he said. "And when we were 17, it was pounds of weed being sold. He was in pretty deep, and I was right there with him. It was all fun and games at first, but that led on to other things. I was eventually using it to self-medicate. Then I started using ecstasy and selling that in large quantities. It was a game, but it was a stupid one."

At 18, Fondots said he felt like everything changed.

He met a woman he'd eventually marry, and they had a son Colton.

"I met her and stopped everything," he said. "I quit hanging out with those friends, and it felt different. I still used marijuana, and she knew that because I didn't try to hide anything from her. But it was OK."

18 is also the age Fondot was when his grandfather died, essentially leaving him with no family but parents he said he hardly knew anymore and his then-wife's family, whom he was living with at the time.

And while Fondots said his grandfather's death and his own growing family should have been enough to keep him from using drugs, it didn't, which ultimately prompted an ultimatum.

"She (Fondot's then-wife) eventually got to the point where she thought that at 18, that was OK," he said. "But you're grown up now. She needed me to stop, and I had a problem with that. So then it became a problem in our marriage, and she threatened to leave me."

This prompted Fondots to change careers and become a semi driver, mostly because he knew he'd be randomly drug tested and would have to stay clean.

But that's when he was introduced by a friend to Spice, a synthetic drug that wouldn't show up on drug screenings.

Fondots quickly became addicted.

"I remember walking into my house from work one time," he said, "and my wife looked at me with tears in her eyes. She had a bag in one hand and our son in the other. And she asked me if I forgot anything. It was her birthday, and I had completely forgotten. So she took our son, and she left."

He would not see his son again for over four years.

Rather, Fondots — who was suddenly homeless — turned even deeper into a life of drug use, ultimately committing crimes that landed him in jail.

"I began to surrender myself to something around that time," he said. "I didn't really know what it was at first, but I thought I was surrendering to IDOC (Indiana Department of Correction) and the fact that this was going to be my life. So I was prepared to just get used to it."

In jail, Fondots said he found peace, as well as salvation in Jesus Christ.

He also applied for Howard County Drug Court and found himself as a resident of the Kokomo Rescue Mission.

And though Fondots didn't know it at the time, the KRM would ultimately be one of his biggest saving graces.