A US couple who were formerly heavy drug users have set up a center in Hualien to help people get off drugs.
After devoting 15 years of their lives to working with drug abusers, Frank Bartolatto and his wife, Annie, a Taiwan-born Chinese, recently decided
to establish a half-way house for young people in Hualien, according to a Central News Agency report.
If you think fate works in mysterious ways, you'll be amazed at how Bartolatto and Annie Chang first got together some 30 years ago.
At the time, Bartolatto was an American GI serving in a US military telecommunications squad in Vietnam in 1969.
A heavy drug user, Bartolatto and some friends went looking for more "hot stuff" during furlough.
They asked around for the place where they could get the most drugs -- they wanted to go to "druggie's paradise."
They were told "Thailand," but Bartolatto mistakenly heard the answer as "Taiwan." He then proceeded to Taiwan in high hopes of finding
paradise.
To his great disappointment, he did not find anything he wanted on the streets of Taiwan.
He went to a GI club, where he met Annie Chang, who at that time was also a drug user.
Fast forward: marriage, a child, years of drug addiction, drug trafficking, finally getting off drugs for good.
The Bartolattos returned to Taiwan in 1984 and worked with drug addicts at a center for drug abusers in Hsintien.
A year later, according to CNA reporter Deborah Kuo, they set up Agape House in Hualien with the purpose of helping convicted drug addicts
break the habit.
Great story!
offthebeat@taipietimes.com
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