Like many Craig residents, Dean Harrison wakes up at about 6 a.m. to go to work at his business.

Unlike many Craig residents, Harrison wakes up in jail.

The location of his bed is just one obstacle Harrison faces daily as a businessman and inmate in Moffat County Jail’s work release program.

Harrison is serving two consecutive one-year sentences of work release after being convicted of the last in a string of drunken driving offenses.

“When I started I had nothing. I was dried up. I was blown away,” Harrison said.

Since that desperate beginning, Harrison has started his own business, MDH Inc. He’s found salvation through the Apostolic Lighthouse, a Craig church, and now strives to let others know there’s still hope. He should be released from jail in mid-September.

“If this reaches one person and gets them out of a bar, then it’s worth the paper it’s printed on, it’s worth its weight in gold,” Harrison said.

For many inmates, work release is a difficult sentence to serve. Moffat County uses the program as a revenue source, charging inmates $42 a day plus medical expenses. Most inmates work minimum wage jobs that don’t pay enough to meet the $42 charge, said Lt. Dean Herndon, jail administrator. To get its money, the jail has had to start insisting work release inmates deposit their paychecks with the jail.

Harrison is the first inmate Herndon knows of who has started his own business while on work release.

“He’s the best work release we’ve had,” Herndon said.

When assigned to work release, inmates have five days to obtain legitimate employment. Harrison started work release by hitchhiking to Steamboat Springs and working construction for a friend. Covered with sawdust, he was picked up by a Craig resident who asked him to remodel her kitchen. Winter was setting in and construction was slowing down, so he took the job.

“I had no power tools because when I was drinking I hawked everything. I hawked everything except my soul, and it wasn’t worth nothing,” he said.

Harrison bought second-hand tools and borrowed specialty items from friends. He did good work on the kitchen remodeling job, he said, and started getting additional business through word of mouth advertising.

When discussing a job with a customer, he always tell them up-front he’s on work release, figuring they’ll find out one way or another. But that was the least of his challenges starting out.

Harrison didn’t think he’d ever see a drivers license again after getting his last DWI. He was bumming rides from friends to get where he had to go. Indeed, his friends played an integral role in his recovery, he said.

It was a friend who drove his truck to Grand Junction to get a breathalyzer installed on the ignition. He has to breathe into the machine before his car will start. The machine enabled him to get his driver’s license back.

Each time Harrison leaves his shop to go to a job, he has to call the jail and tell them where he’s going. When he stops to get dinner after work, he has to call and say where he’s eating. When he goes to church at the Apostolic Lighthouse on Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings he has to bring a paper for the pastor to sign.

“If someone had told me four years ago I’d be going to church, I’d have laughed at them,” Harrison said.

But today he credits the church, along with his friends, for his recovery from alcoholism. He tried Alcoholics Anonymous and found it didn’t work for him, but he doesn’t knock the program. He encourages anyone seeking help to join AA or a church.

He has goals now, too. He’d like to own a house someday and a horse as well. He’s owned a horse before, but it’s always lived at someone else’s house. When he’s done with work release, he plans to visit his mother, who doesn’t know he’s in jail. Then he wants to go to the Virgin Islands, a place he’s wanted to revisit since he was in the Navy.

“At the beginning, I stayed sober because of the law. But I missed out on 20 years, so I’ve got to hurry up and get things done,” Harrison said.

Tonight, Harrison plans to take a friend who wants to get sober to his church. Today, he is confident he can help someone else recover from addiction.

Rob Gebhart can be reached at 824-7031 or rgebhart@craigdailypress.com.