Rusty's House Teen and Young Adult Drug and Alcohol Support Facility

Rusty’s House News

Marvin Family Message

Click here for more details and to print a flyer | Register Online

Recipes to Recovery

Support Rusty's House by purchasing this great CookBook!

Only $18.00 (No additional cost for shipping. Price includes shipping costs)

Jamie Farr Owens Corning Classic

June 29th - July 5th

Presented By Kroger Get Details Here

Enter your pledge by downloading and completing the Pledge form. The tournament will invoice you after the tournament and dispurse your donation to your designated charity.
Download Pledge form

Mission Statement

Our mission is to educate and assist young people with recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. Rusty’s House will provide service, prevention and rehabilitation through meetings. The primary goal of Rusty’s House is to help with recovery from these addictions and to continue to provide a support system to these young people and their families.

What We Do

We challenge teens to make wise decisions about drugs and alcohol.
We give teens a safe environment to open up and talk honestly about drugs and alcohol.
We give parents a place to share their frustrations, fears and to gather information pertaining to their kids drug and alcohol issues.
We guide teens and young adults from intervention, to treatment, to aftercare and then to a path free from addiction by teaching them to utilize a 12 step program in their everyday lives.

Couple who lost son to drugs strive to keep teens sober

By DAVID YONKE, BLADE RELIGION EDITOR

After frantic attempts using CPR and prayer, Rick Marvin came to the shocking realization that there was nothing he could do to save the life of his 18-year-old son, Rusty.

Almost immediately, he said, he felt God calling him to help other young people caught up in drug and alcohol abuse.

"This is what I'm supposed to do. I'm not going to let my son die in vain," Mr. Marvin said in an interview this week at Rusty's House, a West Toledo office building that is the home of the nonprofit agency he runs with his wife, Amy.

His son was a smart kid who earned an academic scholarship to St. John's Jesuit High School, a "people person" who was going into a nursing career to help others, Mr. Marvin said.

He was a star football player at St. John's, where he started a morning Bible study.

"He was a perfect son," Mr. Marvin said. "Everybody loved him."

But Rusty had problems with cocaine, and his addiction grew worse in the last half of his senior year of high school.

After graduation, when his friends were spending the summer partying, Rusty tried desperately to stay clean and sober by staying home and watching movies in his parents' basement, his mother said.

"His friends would call and invite him to join them," Mrs. Marvin said. "They swore they wouldn't use in front

of him, and they meant well, but they were addicts themselves."

On the morning of July 7, 2005, Mr. Marvin found Rusty slumped in the family's garage, dead from a cocaine overdose.

Today, Mr. and Mrs. Marvin devote all their time, energy, and resources to trying to steer young people between the ages of 15 and 25 away from the tragic fate of their son.

Rusty's House was founded a month after Rusty's death and meetings were held in a library and church until January, when the organization moved into a former dental office at 2428 West Sylvania Ave.

After extensive repairs and redecorating, the facility now serves between 150 and 200 people a week, including clients and their parents and relatives…

Continue reading at The Toledo Blade →

One year later, cocaine death of St. John's student is still a shock

By TAD VEZNER, BLADE STAFF WRITER

Shock. With the teen's death, everyone felt it.

Some knew Rusty Marvin, the ever-smiling, much-hailed St. John's Jesuit High School varsity football player, to be equally addicted to God and cocaine. They'd heard him tell of how the second helped him discover the first; how the first implored him to abandon the second.

But a year ago today, when the senior who school officials touted as a class leader and prayer group founder was found dead in his garage of a cocaine overdose, it struck them all like a thunderclap.

His mother, Amy Adams, remembered an intense discussion with her 18-year-old son months before, while he suffered through a whirlwind of chemical and spiritual craving.

"Why is it so hard for people to follow in God's footsteps?" she remembers Rusty's asking.

"I told him, 'It's easier to do it the other way.' "

To this day, a date remains etched in Ms. Adams' memory - July 7, 2005. "I told everybody at work, it's my day to be with him," she said.

Rusty had come into her room about midnight the night before. The two talked excitedly about the day to come, about his registering at the University of Toledo.

It was going to be one fine day, Rick Marvin also mused when he woke up that morning. Rusty's father, a real estate agent, motorcycle aficionado, and 25-year drug addict, was at the 60-day mark with his Alcoholics Anonymous group. He was set to receive his second coin, the one AA participants get each month they last.

Discovery by mistake

There was energy in Mr. Marvin's step as he walked out of his Ottawa Hills home to the garage behind it to warm up his motorcycle for the ride to work.

But as he was opening the garage's side door, he remembered his bike was parked outside.

"I wondered why I even went in," he said.

Opening the door, distracted, he noticed Rusty collapsed against the main garage door. Fury and disgust roiled in him - Rusty was passed-out drunk, Mr. Marvin surmised, as he walked up to kick his son's feet.

"Get up. C'mon, get up," he said, then grabbed Rusty's arm.

The chill of it, the quiet in the garage: Something stole all the fury away.

"When I flipped him over, I knew," Mr. Marvin said, remembering Rusty's wide-open eyes. In a corner sat a rolled-up dollar bill, an ID card flaked with white, and a CD case topped with what authorities later determined was $300 worth of cocaine - bought the night before with funds from an ATM.

With a lunge, Mr. Marvin bent down, his mind snatching one crazy thought from many: rumors of several teenagers who had hanged themselves in recent weeks. One hand darted to Rusty's neck, searching.

Instead of a rope or a scar, he found a crucifix, the single accouterment Rusty always wore, even to bed.

Hailey, Rusty's 16-year-old sister, woke to a sharp, sudden sound. Sitting up in her bed, she glanced out her bedroom's second-story window. Police cars packed the driveway.

Darting to the next window, she saw her brother's legs - his father and a police officer kneeling over him - and ran downstairs, too shocked to cry or even think.

An hour later, Mr. Marvin remembers the words of a police officer he now considers kind, as medical personnel worked on Rusty's limp body.

"I'm going to save you $20,000 and a ton of heartache - he's gone," said the officer, before being quickly chastised by a partner.

After his family prayed over him, Rusty was pronounced dead. A coroner's report later found 21 times the toxic level of cocaine in his system…

Continue reading at The Toledo Blade →