The Gazette:
Step Springs’
formula works
By Vince Bzdek
Published November 8, 2026 7:00am
Step One: Sobriety
One year ago, Robert Loftin was living in the shadows.
“I was suicidal, addicted to methamphetamines, ready to give up on life,” he told me. He lived in his car and was arrested for drug possession.
He had tried programs to get sober and off the street, but they didn’t take.
“I did the Springs Rescue Mission back in 2015,” he told me. “I stayed sober for two and a half years, but I white-knuckled it. And it didn’t work.”
After his arrest, his dad heard about a different kind of residential recovery program that was opening in two days that he thought could help his son, called Step Springs. It only accepted highly motivated men.
When he walked into Step, Robert immediately sensed something different. “It was a place where I walked in and I felt that individuals truly cared. It’s run by former addicts. Men with firsthand experience.”
They knew what addiction looks like, smells like, feels like.
“If somebody says they’ve been through opioid withdrawals or alcohol withdrawals, they actually understand what it’s like,” Loftin said. “Somebody who’s just read a book hasn’t been there. I have. Step is run by individuals who have been in the program.”
He was one of the first four men in the Step Springs program. Meghan Shay, CEO of Step Springs, asked him how he slept on his first night. “Well, I’ll be honest, I haven’t slept in a bed in over two years,” he told her. “But I’ll get there.”
Now Loftin is the operations manager for the Step program, offering his experience to others who are in his shoes.
“So for the first five minutes, I’m the front line when guys come into the program. They’re with me for the first five days. I go over the rules with the individuals.”
And the rules are strict. Step believes in expectations, making sure the men are responsible for their own recovery, not charity cases. They don’t hold your hand.
Step puts recovery first. There’s a Breathalyzer at the front desk, and all the men have to take regular drug tests to stay in the facility.
“Consequences save lives,” said Shay. “We need to have consequences. They have to do the work. And it’s hard work.”
The men receive guidance and support from an individual recovery support manager and a peer recovery coach, recovery education groups and 12 Step fellowship meetings.
Recovery meetings and groups help explain the reasons men drink or use and help them develop coping skills to overcome those triggers.
During an open house last week, Loftin was presented with his one-year sobriety chip and everyone in the program and all the staff and all the visiting donors that day rose up and gave him a standing ovation.
Step Two: Work
After five days, the guys have to go look for full-time, paying jobs. “Our program is built on sobriety, work, accountability and community,” Loftin said. Step has a career center that provides residents with individual career counseling and classes to teach them how to prepare for, search for, interview for and land a job.
In addition, the men have access to a spiritual center, mental health counselors, fitness center, laundry facilities, media room and kitchen.
“By all means, yes, we need to teach a man to fish,” Shay said. “But he’s probably going to need a pole.” Step provides the pole.
There is no cost to the program, and Step asks that men don’t stay on any government or third-party assistance. Step doesn’t rely on public funding. “The way we protect it is we don’t take government money,” said Shay. “We don’t take Medicaid, and we don’t bill insurance.” It is entirely funded by philanthropy, by people who believe in their mission.
“Work works,” said one former resident in a testimonial video. “Work is what fosters self-respect, self-esteem and dignity. It is how to take responsibility, overcome failure and become contributing members of society.”
The hope is that the men become self-sufficient and even save for their future. One resident left the program with $28,000 in the bank.
“I see guys who have a job for the first time in five, 10 years,” Loftin said. “We get to celebrate those milestones.”
Step Three: Accountability
Step is not about volunteers feeling good about saving the world; it’s about accountability for the men in the program. No more excuses. No more blaming others.
Step was founded in 1983 in Denver, on Larimer Street, two blocks from where Coors Field is now. It was founded by Ray Hayworth, who had been homeless and was in recovery for alcoholism.
“He decided he wanted to help other men, and he got a room attached to a bar,” Shay recounts. “He said, ‘Any man that wants to be sober will have a safe place to stay’ and that is how we were founded.”
Step Denver is still on Larimer Street, in a building attached to a bar, surrounded by bars, the only building on the block not serving alcohol. “Every day they walk the gauntlet, they walk in that door and they pass the Breathalyzer and they prove to themselves, another day, that this is possible,” said Shay.
That gauntlet is deliberate.
“Unlike most models, where you’re in this little safety net and this recovery bubble for 30 or 90 days and you’re insulated from all the trials of life, at Step, you’re going through and experiencing all of the stress and temptation that the world is going to offer you all along the way,” Shay told me. “You are in real time, in a very practical way, being able to rebuild your life, every piece of your life that has been destroyed and you build a strong foundation under you that you take with you when you leave. We need to prepare people so that when they experience those consequences, they have the tools and experiences and foundation not to have that tear them down.”
Loftin lives for the progress of others now. He has healed himself by helping to heal others.
“I’ve seen guys who have restored relationships with their family. They’re coming to tell me, ‘I got to see my kids for the first time in two years.’ That’s that first spark, that first feeling that they feel, OK, I’m not hungry, that I can do it,” he said. “I get the opportunity now to see these guys coming into this program, just as broken as I was and it’s nice to be able to encourage, motivate and give these guys hope.”
Step Four: Community
There’s a real camaraderie within Step’s walls. “We have 43 guys in-house right now. So you become friends with those individuals that come in with you. The community has a brotherhood,” Loftin said. “Because if one guy is struggling, we can reach out to somebody else that’s in the house. It’s easy to give up when it feels like nobody cares, but here you have 42 other brothers around you. We become family.”
The kitchen is probably the center of that community. The men fix their own meals. Each man has his own shelf in one of 12 refrigerators. A nutritionist comes in biweekly to help them learn to cook healthily.
The bonds are built during phase one, when all men at Step stay together in the dorm. In phase two, residents are able to move into a private room. In phase three, they live in a space with an apartmentlike layout and much more independence. In phase four, they have an opportunity to move into separate sober living homes owned by Step.
These homes help graduates slowly reenter the community with additional privileges while maintaining the structure and support of a peer recovery community. They begin building outside support systems and resources and create a plan that will help them transition to a safe, sober living environment.
Step Springs has already served 221 men in its first year, and 73% got full-time jobs within 45 days.
Eighty-two percent have reestablished bonds with family. Eighty-nine percent of alumni have stable housing.
Ninety-three percent of residents have stayed sober.
No other program has numbers like that. Those kinds of stats are unheard of in this field.
“We really pride ourselves on our ability to do the work the way that’s practical,” Shay said. “Nothing that we do is complex. Nothing is so groundbreaking. What’s groundbreaking is the method and the experience for the men going through the program.”
This is how you solve homelessness, not with the shelter shuffle, but by treating men like men.
“The men we serve are the very last to receive compassion,” Shay said. “These are men that society has tried to throw away.”
Everyone knows someone, a friend, a neighbor, who needs these services. I asked Robert his advice for family members who are addicted. “You can’t give up on them,” he said. “There’s always hope for every individual.”
Loftin just published “Write-ups,” a book of recovery poems to help others going through what he went through. “Broken wasn’t the end. It was the beginning of my poem,” one verse explains.
“I felt like everybody in here had faith in me, even when I didn’t have faith in myself. A year later, life is great, well, not great, but is a lot better,” he said to laughs. “It’s an incredible journey.”
Shay wrapped up the open house by telling all the donors that, “When the men first come in here, there is a darkness in their eyes, an emptiness. We literally see them come back to life and a light come back on.”
Vince Bzdek, executive editor of The Gazette, Denver Gazette and Colorado Politics, writes a weekly news column that appears on Sunday.