Bill TsurnosBill Tsurnos’ qualifications to be director of the Chanlyut training programs would be difficult to list on a resume. Tsurnos, 63, has spent much of his adult life incarcerated and has been in trouble with the law since 8th grade. By his count, he figures he’s spent 22 years behind bars for theft, burglary, forgery and drug charges. He used drugs for more than 30 years before getting clean, he says. So when he tells Chanlyut residents he knows where they’re coming from, it’s not a figure of speech.

Chanlyut, a residential training program based in Mountain View, seeks to provide vocational training to men. Many are sent by the justice system to reintegrate with the community after leaving prison. Some also walk into the program off the street, looking for a better life. Every one of them so far has struggled with addiction, Tsurnos says. Chanlyut is an Athabaskan word for “new beginning.” Residents commit to two years of operating the Mountain View Diner, other food service businesses, and landscaping and snow removal businesses. It’s a subsidiary of Cook Inlet Tribal Council.

Tsurnos found his new beginning in 1993 at the Delancey Street Foundation in San Francisco. Chanlyut was directly modeled on Delancey Street, a much larger operation that helps up to 500 people in San Francisco and operates various other houses across the country. At Delancey, Tsurnos spent 11 years overcoming his own drug habit and gaining education and job skills. He says he’d probably be dead today without it. Tsurnos came to Mountain View in March of 2008 to direct the program here that employs up to 20 men at a time.

Below are excerpts from a conversation with Tsurnos in which he speaks about his own background, his growth and his commitment to teaching Alaskan men, as he frequently says, “to live life on life’s terms.”

“Most of our people who come to us have, they have low self-esteem. They have no social skills and very little vocational skills or habits. They might get and go to work for a week or two, but after that they don’t work. Me, I never worked. I hated to work. I could not wait a week for a paycheck. I wanted to get loaded now, everyday.”

“What they come here for is a whole array of things. They come here to learn how to follow instructions. They learn here how to be honest, how to have some integrity, how to build their self-esteem... It’s like, ‘God, all my life I’ve hurt my parents. I was never there for my children. I never did anything good to help anybody. Let me keep taking this heroin because that’s what makes me feel good and happy I think.’ When you look back on it, it didn’t make me happy or feel good at all. It was misery.”

“Heroin and crimes, that’s what I did. All my crimes are from drugs… I thought I wanted to be a gangster. A criminal, a convict and drug addict. And I did the best I could at being as bad as I could.”

“From 1967 to 1993, until I went to Delancey Street, the longest I’d ever been out (of prison) was eight months… A little over 22 years, off and on.”

“I didn’t want to do what was necessary to stay out (of prison). I didn’t want to be responsible. I didn’t want to be dependable. I didn’t want to go to work. I didn’t want to be honest.” Mountain View Diner
“I was thinking about it the other day. When I would be sentenced, the judge would go ‘William Lewis Matthew Manuel Butch Tsurnos, is that your true, full and correct name?’ I’d go ‘Yes sir, your honor, it is.” He says, “I sentence you to five years to life in a state penitentiary at San Quentin.’ Pow. And I’d say, ‘Thank you, your honor. And I’d think, ‘You know what, punk, you can’t give me any more than I can take. Matter of fact when I’m done with this one, I’m coming back for more.’ I think about how stupid.”

“I never thought I could live a day without heroin. Now I’m going on 17 years without even a beer.”

“My children never gave up on me. Never stopped loving me. I would come outside of San Quentin a couple times and there would be my daughter, Sasha, or my son Hunter, both of them. And I’d think, ‘God, why do they still love me? What have I ever done to them, for them? Nothing.’ And that started getting to me too.”

“When I got out in ’93 I thought, ‘No, I got to go do something.” And that’s when I went to Delancey Street. Now I’m in Delancey Street and it’s after 90 days, I’m like ‘Stupid. What took you so long to get here? This is great.'”

“Going to Delancey Street was the best decision I ever made in my life. I stayed for 11 years, but I needed a lot of help... I accomplished more in Delancey Street in my 11 years than I did my other 46 years on earth.”

“I think whatever I did before was what I had to do to get to where I am today. I believe I am today the man the good Lord intended me to be. That other person is who I turned myself into.”

“We’re a big practice arena where they can do what’s necessary to get their lives together and actually make mistakes. As long as it’s not a major mistake – not drinking or drugs or fights or violence – we can deal with that. They’re not going to lose their job.”

“There’s consequences for everything, whether they’re good consequences or bad consequences. You have to learn to be held accountable for your actions… If there is good consequences, great. Believe me, when they do good we commend them all the time… I let them know also that even when you’re falling flat on your face, you’re still moving forward.”

“They have a sense of pride over this and that helps them all the way around because they actually feel it. They’re not being told this is what you should feel.”

“My main purpose here it to help teach these men how to live a happy, healthy, prosperous life with the least amount of resistance and drama they can have in it.”

“I try to make sure that I help as many people as I can so they don’t make the same mistakes I made in my life. That’s where my reward is… The money that I get paid for doing this? There’s not enough money that can pay me for what I do here.”

“It not only helps the men here, it helps everybody now they come in contact with… It just resounds all the way around you.”Tsurnos at his office in the Chanlyut house.