LI-based Gino Macchio Foundation gives money to recovering addicts to help them get, keep jobs

A Lindenhurst-based nonprofit is looking to make the path through substance abuse recovery a little less bumpy by providing funding to help individuals get jobs and stay employed. 

The Gino Macchio Foundation has established the Put Recovery to Work program with the aim of connecting those who have finished rehabilitation with businesses that have been trained as a Recovery Friendly Workplace. The foundation also offers “scholarships” to those in recovery for expenses that stand in the way of them retaining the job.

Those costs can include clothing, transportation and housing. Employers can also receive some of the funding, including salary reimbursement and costs associated with training. Scholarships range from $12,000 to $18,000 and last up to six months, said Ken Daly, the foundation’s executive director.

“It’s designed to remove barriers for those in recovery,” Daly said. “We just want to get you over that bump.” 

The foundation has received $70,000 from the Town of Smithtown and $49,500 from Babylon Town, using federal American Rescue Plan funds, toward the scholarships.

The foundation is named after Gino Macchio, 25, of Dix Hills, who was in recovery for a prescription opioid addiction and had gotten his life back on track when he was killed in a motorcycle accident in 2018.

“His mission was to help the people he met in rehabilitation get jobs, and we wanted to keep his mission alive,” said Daly, a longtime family friend.

The individuals are referred to the foundation through advisers for chemical dependency treatment programs, such as the one at the Beacon Family Wellness Center in North Babylon.

“I think it’s the missing piece for a lot of people in sustained recovery,” said Delores Bocklet, former center director and town consultant. “Many of our clients have lost everything, so those things that we take for granted that we have, they make available to them.”

To qualify as a Recovery Friendly Workplace, businesses must get training to learn how to deal with employees in recovery, Daly said. He said three businesses have been trained so far. The program is partly modeled on New Hampshire’s Recovery Friendly Workplace initiative, which was started in 2018 and now has more than 300 companies on board.

One of those is Genfoot America LLC in Littleton, which has two footwear factories. Plant manager Mark Bonta said that when he learned about the program he remembered an employee who began coming to work intoxicated, whom he eventually fired. Six months later the woman died of liver failure.

“It immediately made me think of this girl and wonder if the RFW [Recovery Friendly Workplace program] was around then, maybe if I had known of other alternatives, maybe she’d still be alive today,” Bonta said.

Isaiah Duhart, 21, of Deer Park, was part of the Gino Macchio Foundation’s pilot program with two other individuals. Duhart said he had been homeless and the scholarship paid for a hotel room and transportation to his job until he could get back on his feet.

“It’s not charity, they’re helping me and I’m giving back by working for them and trusting them,” Duhart said. “They just kind of gave me a key to those doors that I couldn’t find.”

By Denise M. Bonilla

denise.bonilla@newsday.comdenisebonilla

Denise Bonilla has worked at Newsday since 2003 and covers the Town of Babylon, including the villages of Lindenhurst and Amityville.