My name is Sunny. I work for a faith-based nonprofit recovery center called Adult & Teen Challenge. I am living proof that there is hope and that God makes all things new. Today, I help put hope within reach for those bound by life-controlling issues, including addiction. I boldly share my testimony through the Word of God and my personal experience.

Here is part of my story and the purpose behind my campaign.

I am from Arizona and was raised in a Jewish home, mostly by my grandfather while my mother worked. After high school, I worked as a preschool teacher while attending college at night. I had a promising future ahead of me. I became a licensed aesthetician, and at 23 years old, I had a beautiful daughter with my high school sweetheart. Life was good — until it wasn’t.

When I was 25, I was involved in a horrific car accident. Shortly afterward, my daughter’s father left me. I broke my spine and could barely walk. This was during the beginning of the opiate epidemic in the United States, and in 2004, Big Pharma heavily overprescribed opiates to me instead of encouraging surgery, despite me being a young mother.

I had never used drugs before, so I was blindsided by prescription medication addiction. Prescription drugs eventually led me into a dual addiction to meth and heroin. Drugs completely took over my life, leaving me bound in darkness for over 20 years.

But my suffering now glorifies God.

My life is nothing short of a miracle.

Bible Romans 8:28 says, “God works all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.”

For years, I feared sharing parts of my testimony because of safety concerns. Now I understand the power of testimony and how God can use it to transform other people’s lives.

I was eventually arrested in Alaska for smuggling drugs connected to a cartel. Looking back, I know I am lucky to be alive. I truly believe God intervened in my life through that situation.

Today, I serve as the Student Life Coordinator at the Alaska Women’s Campus of Adult & Teen Challenge.

For over 20 years, I suffered from addiction to meth and heroin. One bad decision after another led me into a life of destruction — in and out of jail, losing everything repeatedly. I entered an abusive, toxic, and controlling relationship that lasted 11 years. My entire marriage revolved around chasing money and drugs. Nothing was ever enough.

I stayed numb to avoid my pain, grief, and trauma. Eventually, I lost my identity, my sanity, and my sense of self. I became a shell of who I once was.

During my addiction, my mother passed away, and six months later, my grandfather passed away. To protect my daughter from my lifestyle, I made the heartbreaking decision to let her live with her father while she was still in elementary school.

I later married a man involved in drug trafficking who controlled me through drugs and money. We had a son together, and I still could not get sober. Eventually, CPS took him away. I chose addiction and a destructive relationship over my own children. I hit absolute rock bottom.

Conviction turned into depression, and depression pushed me deeper into addiction as I tried to numb the pain. My priorities were completely out of order. I believed that if I kept my husband happy, I would feel safe — but I was never truly happy. I felt trapped in a vicious cycle with nothing left to live for.

Eventually, my husband got another woman pregnant and expected me to accept it. He even asked me to become a “sister wife.” She was much younger and naïve enough to agree, but I couldn’t.

At that point, I decided to secretly make one final trip without him knowing, take the money, and leave Arizona for good. I arranged everything in secret and boarded a plane. When his girlfriend realized my belongings were gone, she anonymously tipped off the police. I was arrested in Juneau, Alaska.

My husband used my arrest as an opportunity to take everything we had and abandon me in jail.

I truly believed my life was over.

But in reality, it was just beginning.

Because I was not from Alaska, I was considered a flight risk. Due to my ties to the cartel, I was not allowed near airports or ferry terminals. My bail was set at a quarter of a million dollars cash only — impossible for me to pay. I had no family, no resources, and nowhere to turn. I was completely alone in a foreign state, trapped in the consequences of my own decisions.

During detox, I suffered multiple seizures, was hospitalized, and nearly died. Every night, I cried myself to sleep and wanted to end my life.

Then I realized something powerful: when you fall to your knees, you are already in the perfect position to pray.

Night after night, I cried out to God, begging Him for one chance to change. I asked Him to restore me to the person I had been before addiction destroyed my life.

I applied to multiple treatment facilities and was accepted into several programs, but they were all located in areas the judge refused to let me travel to. I was stuck in jail awaiting trial, facing 15 to 20 years in prison with no hope.

At that point, the only thing I had left was God.

To pass the time in jail, I started attending church services. There, I met a pastor who gave me my very first Bible. I explained that I had grown up in a Jewish home and knew the Old Testament, but I did not know Jesus. He encouraged me and told me I was exactly where I needed to be. He told me to start reading the Gospels.

At the time, I didn’t fully understand it, but God was already writing my story.

Days passed as I continued crying out to the Lord in prayer from the shower floor and beside my bunk. I had no one to call, so all I did was read the Gospels.

Then one night around 2:30 a.m., a correctional officer woke me up and told me I had one hour to pack my belongings because they were transferring me by plane to Anchorage. The prison I was in was literally sinking into the ground.

I was stunned.

In the book of Matthew, Jesus says that if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can tell a mountain to move. I truly believe God moved an entire prison to answer my prayers because suddenly I was transferred to an area near treatment facilities where I finally had a chance.

For the first time, I saw light breaking into my darkness.

Once I arrived at the new facility, I immediately asked for treatment applications. There was only one available — a one-page application to a program I had never heard of before: Adult & Teen Challenge.

I filled it out and sent it in.

The director accepted me into the program, and I immediately requested another bail hearing. I begged the judge for one chance and promised I would not waste it.

Shortly afterward, I was released into the program.

When I first got into the van, everyone was singing worship music. I remember thinking, “What did I just get myself into?” But deep down, I knew I needed to trust God.

Twelve months later, I graduated from the program and was invited to stay an additional year as an intern. Meanwhile, the judge continued postponing my sentencing to see whether my transformation was real.

The State of Alaska initially opposed reducing my sentence, so there I was — finally sober, forced to face emotions I had spent over 20 years running from. I was learning how to live life on life’s terms, heal from trauma, grieve the loss of my family, rebuild after addiction, and surrender control over my circumstances.

And through it all, I found peace and gratitude in what God had already done.

Over time, both the prosecutor and the judge saw how radically my life had changed. At my sentencing, the judge cried and showed me mercy.

Today, I have been sober for five years.

I reinstated the driver’s license I had lost for over a decade. I was allowed to serve my sentence on an ankle monitor, which enabled me to complete my program and internship instead of going to prison. I paid off all of my Alaska fines, court fees, and restitution.

Eventually, I was hired into leadership ministry at Adult & Teen Challenge.

Now I evangelize in prisons, share my testimony in churches across Alaska, help restore mothers with children who were taken by the state, and travel to remote villages encouraging people still trapped in addiction and hopelessness.

As my life continues to improve, I remain committed to doing things the right way.

Unfortunately, I still have unresolved court cases in Arizona from before my arrest in Alaska, including two felony cases that must be handled in person. I currently owe over $14,000 in fines and have outstanding felony warrants for failing to appear in court while I was incarcerated in Alaska.

In December, I plan to return to Arizona to watch my daughter graduate from college and to finally turn myself in so I can quash my warrants and resolve these cases legally and responsibly. I will bring all of my documents, certificates, letters of recommendation, and proof of transformation.

However, I do not have the financial means to pay the fines required to close these cases.

That is the purpose of this campaign.

I am humbly asking for help so I can pay these fines, resolve the final chapters of my past, and continue serving others through the work God has called me to do in Alaska.

God has a plan even when we cannot see it in the middle of our trials.

My heart is to help people the same way others once helped me — by showing Christlike love to everyone, including nonbelievers.

Because once upon a time, I didn’t believe either.

But God showed up.

Please share this campaign with anyone whom has a heart for recovery, the church, testimonies, transformation, community; anyone.

Thank you for hearing my heart.

This photo is of me speaking at a gala last October. I was recognized by the attorney general of Alaska named Treg Taylor. I have many photos to share if you’re interested.

I also included a 9% donations because it says it’s biblical to Tithe 10%