About 60 people filter into the large, open room in Northeast Portland, filling rows of metal-framed chairs. Some grab a cup of coffee. Others chat.

The low rumble of conversation quickly subsides as a woman begins.

“Our primary purpose is to stay crime-free,” she tells them, reading the group’s preamble from a laminated sheet of paper.

While the setting is familiar to anyone who has attended an Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous session, this meeting has a different purpose.

The one-of-a-kind Criminals Anonymous started in an Oregon prison six years ago when two men wanted to prove a prosecutor wrong by showing that they could change.

The group now has chapters that meet weekly in Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas and Lincoln counties.

Participants pledge to follow its 12 steps to halt their “endless cycles of misery and disappointment.”

They range from young men and women in their 20s to those in their 50s with long rap sheets. Some are parents balancing toddlers on their laps. Some are in drug treatment. Others are homeless. One night, a woman shuffled into the meeting using a walker.

They have shoplifted, stolen cars, dealt drugs, assaulted others and more.

“The reality is that some of us don’t know there is another choice because we’ve been doing it for so long,” said Jacquinetta Suzette “Suzy” Leon, 43, who helps lead the weekly Wednesday night meetings at the Miracles Club recovery center in Portland’s King neighborhood.

Leon’s father was a member of a Mexican drug cartel, according to documents filed in court, and she grew up immersed in drugs and crime.

“We get addicted to that fast money, fast life, the thrill of committing crime,” Leon said.

No one is turned away at the Criminals Anonymous sessions. People tell their stories, typically using their first names. They share their latest achievements and struggles.

They’re congratulated for staying crime-free for even one day, but many have made it past a year or two.

They step up to receive color-coded rubber bracelets to mark how long they’ve stayed sober and avoided crime, all based on an honor system. The crowd enthusiastically applauds each person’s accomplishments.

“My name is Kenneth,” a man says as he rises from his chair at a recent meeting.

“Welcome, Kenneth!” people shout back in unison.

“I’m an addict, a criminal, a liar … all that good (expletive) that will get you locked up,” he continues.

His first drinking buddy, he says, was his mother, who gave him alcohol when he was 6 years old. He smoked PCP, popped pills and did cocaine before moving to Oregon, where he got hooked on oxycodone, Adderall and eventually fentanyl.

He ended up living on the streets of downtown Portland, “sleeping half of the day … doing nothing with my life pretty much.”

He tried treatment and other recovery programs, but nothing stuck until Crim-Anon, the group’s nickname.

“I started listening to the message. I started doing what was suggested to me and then just worked the steps. …I started feeling like me,” he says.

He’s now 27 months sober and crime-free, he says. The group claps and cheers.

BUNK MATES

It’s far more than Harold R. “Bear” Cubbedge dreamed he could accomplish when he was serving a sentence of two years and three months at Columbia River Correctional Institution for stealing a Maserati.

The theft conviction was his last in a string of crimes that put Cubbedge, now 58, behind bars for a total of 23 years, nearly half of his life.

In 2018, Cubbedge was bunking next to Zane Grey Macziewski, who was serving about four years for burglary, theft, criminal mischief and fleeing police. The two already knew each other from Portland’s streets.

Macziewski had a copy of his criminal case file and Cubbedge began reading through it. A prosecutor in the case notes observed that Macziewski, in his 50s, hadn’t aged out of crime and described him as a menace with “little hope” of changing.

That damning pronouncement galvanized the men. They took it as a challenge to change.

“There is hope,” Cubbedge protested.

They convinced staff at the Northeast Portland prison to let them use a classroom to prove a point.

Cubbedge promised a candy bar or container of instant soup from the prison canteen to their dorm mates if they attended a group meeting with him and Macziewski. All were doing time for shoplifting or theft.

A motley group of largely “lethargic guys” gathered around a table, Cubbedge recalled. Their demeanors changed only when he asked them to describe their best “boosting” techniques.

“All of a sudden they lit up,” he said. “Those guys’ heads were lighting up like Christmas trees.”

Cubbedge said the reaction proved a revelation: These men were addicted to the thrill of committing crimes.

“We get high off of thinking about it. We got a high off of planning it and carrying it out,” he said.

Criminals Anonymous was born. Together, Cubbedge and Macziewski drafted 12 steps and 12 precepts to accept responsibility for their crimes, recognize the consequences of the crimes to their victims and themselves and pledge no further harm with help from a community of others committed to doing the same.

Cubbedge drew from books he read by the Dalai Lama and other philosophers about their “keys for living life.”

“It’s really about coming up with new values because my old ones weren’t working,” he said.

The first step is acknowledging: “We suffer an attachment to crime, the actual act of crime, the criminal lifestyle and the self-image that’s attached to it, and that our lives have become unmanageable.”

The first precept: “We believe in the fundamental gentleness and goodness in ourselves and all human beings.”

Macziewski was released from prison first in mid-July 2019 and promised to start meetings on the outside. He had trouble finding a place to meet because no one wanted to host “a bunch of criminals,” he said.

But finally, they were allowed to gather in the kitchen of a Southeast Portland church.

“I’ve been to a lot of different meetings and a lot of treatment. They never talk about the crime part of it,” said Macziewski, 59. “For me, I was more addicted to crime than I was to drugs or anything else. We decided there’s got to be a better way.”

In addition to the meetings, Cubbedge, Macziewski and other veteran participants speak in court on behalf of Crim-Anon colleagues – some who have slipped up and others who joined the group while awaiting sentencing.

“We don’t shoot our wounded,” said Cubbedge, who this week celebrated seven years crime-free, his longest stint. “Some people go on extended relapses and go back to the lifestyle. But the seed has been planted. It’s about being there for them. We are not responsible for the outcome. We are responsible for the effort.”

Those who wish to take on a leadership role in the group can apply to become part of its “Elders Circle” if they’ve committed no crimes for at least 90 days. They must attend at least four events each month, lead community outreach or fundraising activities, sponsor others and vow not to break the law or use drugs.

Cubbedge estimates that thousands of people have attended the group’s meetings.

Multnomah County Senior Judge Eric J. Bloch said he has seen the difference that Criminals Anonymous can make.

Cubbedge graduated from the judge’s specialty court that helps provide treatment to repeat property offenders addicted to drugs.

Bloch said the idea that crime can be an addiction has resonated with people who come before him.

“If folks are willing to put together a program where they’re willing to connect, support and rally around general concepts of sobriety and law-abidingness, I’m all for that,” Bloch said. “It’s a fairly large network at this point.”

John Fitzgerald, a licensed professional counselor and certified addiction specialist who has advised Bloch, said the definition of addiction — psychological and physical dependence – is no longer restricted to alcohol and drug abuse. It has expanded to address other behaviors, including gambling, sex, eating and technology addictions.

So it’s not surprising, he said, that the definition can apply to repeat offenders. Extreme behavior often stems from untreated trauma, he said.

“I would never take anything away from people who are trying to help themselves,” Fitzgerald said.

Christina Anderson, program director of community and corrections counseling for Volunteers of America, said the nonprofit allows the support meetings at some of its sites.

It shows that they can reimagine themselves despite their entrenched identity – “their criminal lifestyle is part of who they become,” she said.

“Crim-Anon gives them this sense of community and relationships and recognition that they can rebuild their lives after a life of crime,” she said.

RAP SHEETS

Cubbedge and Macziewski talk openly about their decades in and out of prison.

Cubbedge started stealing at a young age in Daytona Beach, Florida. It was a way to find relief and pleasure, he said, after his father left his mother when he was 6 and he blamed himself.

At the beach, he would swipe people’s keys off their towels and run back to their hotel rooms and take whatever they had. By 12, he said he ran “a little burglary ring.”

“I had pockets full of money,” he said. “I had buyers for all kinds of stuff.” He thought of himself as Robin Hood.

He befriended tennis pros at a local club, got personal lessons, played tennis in high school and got a four-year scholarship to play at the University of Lynchburg in Virginia.

But he was expelled after two years when someone found a gun in his dorm room. He said he had stolen the pistol used in competitive shooting during one of his earlier hotel room burglaries.

By age 21, he had dropped out of another school, Florida State University. He started using cocaine and stole $20,000 out of the safe at a Ruby Tuesday’s restaurant where he worked as a night cook. He was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Once he got out, he followed a girlfriend to Oregon, got a job as a meat wholesaler and salesman and soon married the woman. But he relapsed into using cocaine and returned to crime.

From 1996 through 2008, he racked up six convictions in Oregon and Washington for being a felon with a gun, criminal mischief, robbery, theft, burglary and possession of methamphetamine, according to court records. He stole the red Maserati Ghibli in Clackamas County in June 2017 at age 51.

While serving time for stealing the sports car, he promised his dying mother that he would start Criminals Anonymous. He said goodbye to her over a phone from prison.

He said he watched his mother, cousins and sister “grow old in pictures without being there for them.”

“That’s the greatest theft that I’ve ever committed in my life – stealing time away from my family,” he said.

Cubbedge now lives in and manages a group home in Hillsboro for the nonprofit Transcending Hope Recovery Homes. He’s also a certified alcohol and drug counselor and runs a side business printing mini pamphlets to promote recovery housing and second-chance employment. Agencies pay him to advertise their programs.

“We can’t make up for all the stuff that we’ve done,” he said. “But we can make living amends and become better human beings.”

Macziewski was raised in unincorporated Redland in Clackamas County by an alcoholic and a drug addict, he said.

“I’ve been committing crimes ever since I can remember,” he said. “I stole every single day, every single night to pay for drugs.”

He started with heroin, then methamphetamine. He typically stole from job sites or unfinished homes to get money for drugs.

“I never had more than one day of sobriety,” he said. “Stealing was all I knew.”

In 2016, he stole a refrigerator from a home under construction in Northwest Portland, then fled from police in a truck and was caught with a fake ID.

Those crimes landed him in prison for the eighth time – but also put him in the same dorm as Cubbedge.

After his release five years ago, Macziewski went to work to establish Criminals Anonymous outside the prison walls, armed with a laminated copy of the 12 steps and 12 precepts.

“When I came back out, this gave me something else. This gave me hope,” he said.

Macziewski now works as a foreman for a construction company, is married and lives in a house with his wife and 4-year-old daughter.

ROAD TO RECOVERY

Simon Cheesman, who once ran Avalon Antiques & Vintage Clothing store, credits Criminals Anonymous for helping pull him out of his descent into drug use and dealing.

He had moved the longtime family-owned business out of downtown to the east side after protests erupted in the city core when Donald Trump was first elected.

The business went downhill. When he couldn’t keep up with the rent and bills, he said, he shuttered the shop and turned to selling cocaine, heroin, fentanyl and methamphetamine. He had one cocaine possession charge that was dismissed.

Last year, Cheesman went to detox with the help of his son and then to residential treatment. During his first week of treatment, someone from Criminals Anonymous showed up to talk about the group.

What stood out to him about Crim-Anon was how its members have each other’s backs. If someone in another recovery group relapsed, they might be ashamed to show their face at a subsequent meeting, he said.

“But at Crim-Anon, they’re like, ‘Hey, if you slipped, just get back up,’” he said.

Crim-anon mentors share their phone numbers with others and check in on people. Meetings are held several times a week at different locations, including separate ones for men’s or women’s groups. Leaders of drug treatment programs often allow a Crim-Anon leader to pitch their program at their sessions.

Now Cheesman, 57, is 20 months crime-free and a manager of a sober house of 21 men in Oregon City.

Addison “Addy” Blackmon III, addicted for decades to cocaine and crack, said Criminals Anonymous helped him realize the devastation his drug dealing brought to people like him. He has been busted for cocaine, heroin and marijuana possession and running from police.

“It’s not OK to have fine things by taking advantage of someone else’s disease,” said Blackmon, 53. “Criminals Anonymous gave me a conscience.”

He serves as a mentor to others and manages a recovery house.

Leon, the meeting leader who grew up with a father who worked for a cartel, became addicted to methamphetamine at age 12.

She pleaded guilty in September in federal court to conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine. She had been caught more than a year earlier on a wiretap working to get methamphetamine from a supplier in Mexico.

Drug Enforcement Administration agents then seized 10 pounds of methamphetamine from Leon in late June 2023, according to court records.

After her indictment, she was released while awaiting trial to inpatient drug treatment at Volunteers of America. Part of the treatment included weekly trips to the Criminals Anonymous meeting in Northeast Portland, she said.

Leon said she spent years in and out of drug recovery programs.

She found “the vibe” different at Criminals Anonymous. The people, she said, were raw and honest about their pasts.

“Everyone was welcoming and non-judgmental,” she said. “It made me realize the persona that I had built over the years was all around this criminal mindset. I sort of normalized it.”

She has spent 17 months crime-free, she said.

“We praise people for their first day crime-free,” she said. “They come in broken, their life’s a mess. We all know that reality. You realize how quickly your life can look like that again.’’

Members of the group pursue what they call “fields of merit,” such as community service and fundraisers, to make amends for their past. Leon has sought donations for a clothing closet for people in treatment and for Christmas toy drives.

She works as an outpatient drug and alcohol counselor for Northwest Family Services, helps manage a recovery house for LatinX Transcending Hope in Milwaukie and is a certified recovery mentor who uses her bilingual skills to support others.

Crystal Gallaher has watched her friend go through recovery only to relapse multiple times, but she said Leon has found support and accountability with Criminals Anonymous.

Gallaher used to be on the street selling drugs with Leon but got clean nearly 13 years ago and now works for Multnomah County’s Behavioral Health Department.

“She’s always been a hustler,” Gallaher said. “It’s a matter of changing what she’s hustling. She always ended up back in the environments that were risky.”

Now, Gallaher said, Leon recognizes: “Oh, I got something else to hustle. There is hope for me. I can use it to motivate and create change.”

It’s a powerful responsibility, Leon said.

“I get to help people on their journey. I get to be all of the things that I never had,” she said. “I get to advocate for women who are losing their children or women who don’t know where they’re going in life — and I get to help them find their way.”

She has reunited with her three grown children and one grandchild.

“I hurt a lot of people,” she said. “I’ve created a life I really adore now. I have something to lose now.”

While she still faces a future sentencing in court, she said she’s confident in her ability to stay crime- and drug-free.

“Whatever is going to happen is going to happen. I’ve got to pay for it,” she said. “And I’m going to get out and still be on the right path. I don’t want to do it again.”

Find more about Criminals Anonymous, locations and times of group meetings, its 12 steps and contacts at crimanon.org

— Maxine Bernstein covers federal court and criminal justice. Reach her at 503-221-8212, mbernstein@oregonian.com, follow her on X @maxoregonian, or on LinkedIn.

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