Angela “Angel” Miller shares her life story with an open humility. “Most of my adult life was spent in addiction,” Angel said. “I hope sharing my story will help someone, some way, some day.” Read more of Angel’s Goodwill NCW story.

In 2008, when Angel was in her mid-twenties, she was prescribed pain killers and became addicted to opiates. “It was a gradual descent into addiction,” Angel said. “Addiction doesn’t happen to everyone who ever uses a drug or drinks or gambles, but something in my brain was triggered the first time I got high, and it never wanted to let go after that.” Angel suffered from chronic back pain and was diagnosed with Degenerative Disc Disease, a hereditary condition that caused her vertebrae to break down. Treatment for the disease required surgery. Angel’s doctor wrote her initial prescriptions for almost a year before her surgery, and then again afterward for the extensive recovery time. “By the time I should have been healed and the pain should have lessened enough to be managed without narcotic medicine, I was already completely dependent on opiates,” Angel said.

Angel’s oldest brother overdosed and died when she was 12 years old. She promised herself at that time that she would never do drugs. “Addiction is so powerful it ran right over lines I never thought I’d cross. It’s not just a disease of the body, but mind and soul too,” Angel said.

Her life spiraled as her addiction worsened. “For the next seven or eight years I just made appointments with whatever doctor or dentist for any real or imagined or made-up reason to get more.” A month’s worth of pills would last Angel less than a week, so she found other sources to sell her pills between prescriptions. “I had to find ways to come up with the money to pay for them. Most of those ways were dishonest, or more often illegal ways, but it took over my whole life,” Angel said.

Around 2015, the opiate epidemic peaked, and doctors began reevaluating the way they were prescribing the deadly, addictive pills. Angel and everyone else that had access to pain pills for nearly a decade via prescribers were cut off from the refills. Without money or insurance, there were little to no accessible options for receiving effective treatment for the withdrawal symptoms. “The easier and faster way to alleviate the suffering was the final step off the cliff,” Angel said. She became addicted to heroin in 2015. “Once I got ahold of that for the first time, only because there were no more pills floating around, it was like my addiction took on a life of its own. All my morals and values, my interests and personality, and most devastating, my relationships with loved ones, just fell by the wayside. I completely shattered everything that made me who I was. I was lost to everyone including myself,” Angel said.

Angel lost her housing and driver’s license, became unemployed, had no money, damaged relationships and got in trouble with the law. “I had a record that was getting longer by the month,” Angel said. She bounced in and out of jail and prison. In between stays, she hurt her family’s trust and ended up living in her car. “All I thought was how long is this stretch of freedom going to last? It didn’t last the last time. I didn’t think I was ever going to get to a place where I didn’t want to be addicted. I had given up thinking that I would ever get to live a normal life,” Angel said. For about 15 years, the only periods Angel was sober for any significant stretch was when she was serving time. Throughout these cycles, she says she never had a goal to do anything different.

After her second release from prison in January 2022, Angel entered the Portage County Adult Drug Treatment Court, a program led by an organization called Justice Point. Drug Treatment Court is a five-phase program which takes a minimum of fourteen months to complete and provides treatment, rehabilitation and accountability to drug-dependent participants. The program is intensive, including court and counseling appointments. Each of the five phases has requirements which must be successfully completed before a participant can petition to move to the next phase. It is not uncommon for participants to never make it to graduation or return to their previous lifestyle soon after. Throughout the program, Angel had to work incredibly hard to stay sober and meet all the requirements. She knew addiction would always be a path she could continue to choose, but the new path that the Drug Treatment Court offered opened to her the possibility of having a full life with her family and health.

During one of the final phases of Drug Treatment Court, Angel was allowed to seek employment. She had not held down a steady job during her 15-year addiction. “I couldn’t be relied on to work any kind of job, so my children were forced to sacrifice things they wanted and deserved,” Angel said. Prior to the start of her addiction, she had earned her associate degree in Medical Transcription and completed about half of a Business Administration degree at the local technical college. She also had worked her way up to a general manager position at a fast-food chain, where she helped run three local stores. Angel says she always did well in school and had a great work ethic.

Angel was very motivated to search for a job again and knew it would be an important part of rebuilding her life. At the same time, she had strong doubts that she would be given a chance with her fresh record and the gap in her employment history. “One of the hardest things when you come out of prison is, how do you survive with this record that is going to prevent you from getting a job,” Angel said. “The one thing that people take for granted is getting a job. When you have a record a mile long, you get a lot of ‘nos.’ Then you’re denied for housing, then you’re denied for a bank account.”

Angel’s parole officer referred her to Goodwill NCW and her contact at Justice Point coordinated with the mission team at Goodwill NCW to set up a 12-week temporary work experience. On July 13, 2022, Angel entered Goodwill NCW’s Work Skills Training program and began training in the Plover Goodwill store. The store leaders welcomed Angel.

Angel expressed interest in learning job skills in the front of the store, including how to run the registers, merchandise product and provide excellent customer service. She was paid by the Department of Corrections during the training program, which allowed her to begin to improve her financial stability. 

Within six weeks of training, the store leaders recognized her outstanding work ethic and that, “She was working at a team member proficiency and beyond.” They invited her to apply for a position as a Customer Experience Specialist and they noted that it made sense to offer her competitive pay and benefits for the level of work she was doing to allow her to continue to improve her financial stability. During her interview, the leaders recalled that Angel was bravely open about her background and Angel said she felt no judgement about what was on paper about her. “It felt so good to not be seen for my past but for who I am now,” Angel said. “I was given a chance. It made me want to keep living this way. When you think that your mistakes are all you are and all everyone else will see, that is a big thing that keeps people using.”

On September 1, 2022, Angel was hired part-time. She felt tremendous gratitude for the opportunity. “Getting a job is the first, but hardest thing. It can make the whole difference. If you have no money, you don’t have any will to do anything different. People just go back into the easy, fast ways to get money and it’s not long before you’re back in the system,” Angel said. Support from her store team leaders, including providing a flexible schedule, allowed Angel to continue to successfully meet the requirements of Drug Treatment Court while holding down a job.

In spring 2023 Angel celebrated a major accomplishment; after 15 months, she graduated from the Drug Treatment Court program. The structure and accountability that the program required helped Angel to stay focused on recovery. As her obligations to Drug Treatment Court lessened and ended, Angel was eager to take on more hours and leadership responsibilities at work to maintain the positive focus in her life. She was elevated to a full-time Customer Experience Specialist at the Plover Goodwill store and was asked by her leaders to become a trainer for new cashiers. Angel said she was able to remember all the questions she had when she first started and used that experience as a foundation to train others. The team members she trained appreciated her empathy.

On a particularly busy Saturday, Angel’s Store Team Leader, Sarah Morgan, worked side-by-side with her and observed Angel’s leadership skills in action, including the respect she had from her fellow team members as she gave them direction to better manage the heavy flow of customers. That Saturday stood out, but Angel’s leaders had recognized and fostered other leadership qualities along the way and encouraged Angel to consider a Shift Leader position at a neighboring store. “When I talked to Angel about leadership, I told her that she has some hidden potential,” Sarah said. At first, Angel was hesitant to transfer stores and leave the familiar surroundings and the relationships she had built. With support from her leaders and interview practice from Goodwill NCW’s Employment Placement Specialist, in November 2023, Angel was elevated again, accepting a Shift Leader position at the Stevens Point Goodwill store. “The confidence I got from working here and the encouragement and support, it’s immeasurable,” Angel said.

As a Shift Leader, Angel plays a key role in opening and closing the building, assigning team members to tasks for the day, cash handling, job training and much more. At times, Shift Leaders are the only leaders in the building and need to have a working knowledge of all areas of the store to problem-solve through questions or concerns from both customers and team members. Angel’s leaders describe her as having excellent critical thinking skills, positivity, a willingness to cross-train and jump in where it is needed, flexible thinking, an outstanding work ethic and great people skills.

“I say my life began at 40 because I turned 40 right when I started at Goodwill,” Angel said. “Because I had a singular focus of drugs and using, I had to get to know who I am now. Goodwill was really good for me to get to know who I could be and who I wanted to be. I’ve learned that I can be a dependable, reliable, honest person.”

During her training and employment at Goodwill NCW, Angel received ongoing assistance from her local Employment Placement Specialist, a member of Goodwill NCW’s mission team who guides people to resources and offers training and support to help with life challenges that can create issues at work. As Angel’s finances improved, she requested assistance to find a healthy, stable housing option. Since most rentals require a criminal background check and references from previous landlords, Angel felt stuck. With assistance from her Employment Placement Specialist, Angel gathered reference letters from her leaders, searched for options and filled out paperwork for a rental program through the county. In November 2023, she moved into an apartment she shares with her fiancé of 20 years. “It’s a new start,” Angel said.

Goodwill NCW’s Employment Placement Specialist also helped Angel enroll in and utilize her benefits. Angel says she has started to save for retirement with help from Goodwill NCW’s retirement match program and is looking forward to a day she can contribute even more. Thanks to her dental insurance, she is taking care of her smile for the first time in her life, which she says she now has reasons to use often. She is grateful for the monthly contribution to her Lifestyle Spending Account (LSA) that allows her to buy gas, groceries and furnish her new apartment. In addition, Angel and her family benefitted from free mental health counseling through Goodwill NCW’s Team Member Assistance Program. Angel connected with Goodwill NCW’s Financial Wellness Services for budget and credit score counseling. “I also was able to start repairing and building my credit with the help of the financial coach I talked to as part of the LSA benefit. I was able to obtain a loan for a vehicle from my credit union, which my paychecks had been direct deposited into since I started at Goodwill, so on both fronts Goodwill was almost 100 percent the reason I was approved for it.” She now has a bank account with savings, paid off debt, got her driver’s license back and purchased reliable transportation.

Angel is outspoken about how Goodwill NCW’s mission has made a difference in her life. Starting when her two children were young, she received help from Goodwill NCW’s GoodNeighbor assistance program to purchase essentials like clothing. Now her children are in their early 20s. “I’m lucky because I still have my family in my life, including my kids. If things didn’t go this way, I don’t know that they would have waited. They may have just washed their hands of me,” Angel said.

It matters to Angel that she works for an organization that is serving her community and she says it is a big reason she stays at Goodwill NCW. She sees it as one way she can start to repay her debts to society and to those she hurt in ways she may never know. Angel is giving back in other ways now too. She runs the alumni group for the Drug Treatment Court program. In her role, she meets weekly with the participants who are in the program, attends graduations and invites those who have graduated to participate in the alumni group. She also does service work for a narcotics anonymous group, like offering rides to meetings, and she spoke at a technical college for a class of students studying social work.

Her passion to tell her story is rooted in the hope it may inspire others. “I want to turn my past into an experience I can share to make a positive impact, even if it’s in just one person’s life,” Angel said. Angel dreams of someday writing a book about her story and working in the field of recovery as a peer support specialist or substance abuse counselor. “I never had any career aspirations in my life before that held as much meaning and focus and motivation for me. I feel like I have finally figured out what I want my life to be,” Angel said. “I want to help people get out of the thinking that active addiction is forever. I found my way out and I would love if my story could help someone else do that.” She is hoping to use Goodwill NCW’s education reimbursement to pursue certifications for her long-term goals while she continues working.

Angel’s journey into a life in recovery started back in 2020 when she last used drugs, prior to her second prison stay. Reflecting on where she is four years later, Angel says getting to be the person she was meant to be is her proudest accomplishment since coming to Goodwill NCW. “Every day it gets easier. The more I move forward in my life, the further my past seems,” Angel said. “Now I have the confidence, references, work experience and work ethic to turn my lived experience into a positive. It took these last four years to put myself back together. But with the extra pieces I picked up along the way from what I’d endured, made me a stronger, more complete, authentic version of the person I could have been, if I hadn’t been an addict.”

Angel says the chance that Goodwill NCW gave her was a major part of what made a difference after her release from prison this time. “At Goodwill, your background doesn’t mean as much as your potential,” Angel said.