Program chief has been there and done that

Friday, Dec. 28, 2001 | 9:39 a.m.

In-patient addicts at the local Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Program have to go some distance to put one over on their director, Maj. Romolo Giudice.

Whether it was shooting up heroin or shooting craps, Giudice, knew all the angles.

"I lived a life of drug addiction, doing what I had to do to get heroin," Giudice told the Sun in his first media interview about a troubled past that he has previously discussed only in testimony during church meetings. "I also gambled. I'd be on a roll shooting craps, which gave me this great high. Then I'd lose everything and go out and steal."

Now, the 66-year-old Giudice (pronounced Geu-dee-cee) is overseeing the Salvation Army's substance abuse programs and the new compulsive gambling treatment program.

He knows the road for the addicts, having finally found help at a Salvation Army center.

Having a wealthy father didn't help him defeat his addictions. Being a partner in a successful pizza business in his native Chicago did not give him the strength to beat his demons. Stints in city and county jails and the Illinois State Prison did not turn him back to the righteous path.

When he got out of prison in 1962, Giudice took the advice of a social worker to go for help at the Salvation Army where, as he put it, he planned to "rip them off for whatever I could, then move on. I was not a religious person."

Giudice's mother was a devout Catholic. But she died when he was 13, leaving him to rebel against a strict father, drop out of school and grow up on the streets of Chicago where in the 1950s he began experimenting with heroin.

Giudice found success as a partner in a pizza parlor, but much of his earnings went to satisfy his drug habit and, after being arrested several times at the business, "I knew it was time to get out."

In 1960, Giudice said he committed a felony -- he declined to say what the crime was -- and went to prison for two years, where he remained hooked on drugs and unwilling to change his destructive lifestyle after he got out.

"I had no intention of staying for any long period at the Salvation Army," Giudice said. "But the more I saw of the facility, the more I saw people just like me. And I began to question why I became the way I was."

Giudice earned his general equivalency diploma and graduated from the Salvation Army's substance abuse program in two years. In 1966, he was ordained a minister of the Salvation Army.

He served the nonprofit organization in Chicago, Omaha, Detroit, Hawaii and Los Angeles, before retiring with his wife, Salvation Army Maj. Georgann Giudice, to Las Vegas two years ago. His vast experience was welcomed by the local Salvation Army, which gave him big responsibilities even in retirement.

"He has such great business aptitude," Salvation Army Advisory Board Vice Chairman George Manska said. "He took our thrift store program that had been stagnant for 12 years and turned it around. He also identified locations for two new stores that will open next year."

Giudice says he is "very optimistic" of the potential for success of the compulsive gambling residential treatment program, noting, "we have a terrific staff. One of our new counselors is a former craps dealer."

Thirteen of the 14 Salvation Army substance abuse counselors are recovering addicts, and 12 of them have masters degrees or better, agency officials said.

Giudice recently received recognition from Alcoholics Anonymous for being drug-free since 1964. He has been approached by Christian film production companies that want to do a movie of his life, but he has turned them down.

"I don't feel that I'm that special a person," Giudice said. "I just don't see people going 'ooh' and 'aah' over the life I have lived."