editorial comment paraphernalia notices how much help the jail system was for Mr. Barton, as compared with treatment. Indded, we do need more police and prison guards out there. They are such useful individuals.....

Dennis Barton was a promising young man, a member of the Boys Clubs of America, a hobbyist who built model ships and airplanes, a fan of James Brown, and a regular at church on Sundays.

But things started going south, as he puts it, when he entered Theodore Roosevelt High School in the Bronx.

"This is the 60's, remember?" asked Mr. Barton, 53. "You have the whole 60's drugs and free love thing. And we bought into that, the whole counterculture thing."

His initial teenage rebellion was fairly mild: he listened to Jimi Hendrix and had a few sips of wine in the schoolyard. But soon, he was also smoking marijuana.

"I remember going through the Village barefoot with a joint in my hand," Mr. Barton said. "It was the whole hippie thing." At 15, he was arrested for carrying a roach clip, used to hold marijuana cigarettes, in his pocket.

He was released to his mother, who was a single parent, but the incident frightened him. He panicked, thinking he would never be able to get a job or enlist in the Army, so he decided to further immerse himself in his hippie lifestyle, eventually selling drugs in addition to using them.

When he was arrested a second time, at 17, a policeman found 75 bags of heroin on him. He spent four months on Rikers Island, got three years' probation and was told to return to school. But when he tried to register for his senior year, the dean, who had been present for his arrests, kicked him out.

Mr. Barton's expulsion from high school quickened his descent into a hazy world of heroin, acid and eventually crack. He married at 19 and was a father by his 20th birthday.

"We were too young to be married and too young to have kids," Mr. Barton said. "You know, I wanted to furnish the house with black lights and glow posters. I wanted to listen to the Grateful Dead."

The marriage lasted less than a year. He fathered another child in 1975 and a third in 1982; all three of his daughters have different mothers. When he was not in jail, he worked as a fast-food deliveryman or worked odd jobs from building superintendents.

Life was a vicious circle: He sold drugs, he went to prison, he broke parole rules and it was prison once again. From 1986 to 1999, he was homeless.

There were, however, times when he cleaned up. He earned his high school equivalency diploma and even took classes at Bronx Community College. But he always fell back into dangerous habits.

In the spring of 2001 he ended up in the Bellevue Men's Shelter in Manhattan after being paroled following yet another arrest. For the first time, one of the conditions of his parole was that he attend a drug treatment program.

It was the beginning of his transformation, and it is how he got clean.

Counselors at Bellevue referred him to the Education Outreach Program of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, one of seven charities supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. Money from the Neediest Cases is used to support the outreach program.

The program helps those who have been homeless to live independently. Participants attend 12 weeks of sessions that include life-skills workshops, mentoring and storytelling, in which they write about their lives in an effort to move on.

"I'm grateful for all this program has done," said Mr. Barton, who received a small stipend for his participation. "My whole lifestyle has changed."

Evidence of his former life, however, is marked on his body.

There is a long dark line on the inside of his right arm. He calls it the A train. He calls a similar track on the inside of his left forearm the D train.

"The shuttle is here," he said, pointing to a short line on the outside of his forearm.

But sharing drug needles has left more than scars; Mr. Barton has H.I.V.

He now lives in a studio apartment on the Upper West Side paid for by the H.I.V./AIDS Services Administration, which provides social services and benefits. Medicaid pays for his health care, and he receives food stamps.

Mr. Barton's three daughters, who he says have all embraced him, buoy his spirits. In a tattered green Bible the size of a box of playing cards, he has written their names and birth dates. He carries that Bible with him wherever he goes.

After 35 years of addiction, he is finally able to be a father. He no longer drinks or uses drugs; he has even stopped smoking cigarettes.

He has, however, picked up one of his old habits: Every Sunday, he attends church.

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