Aurora – Elaine Wolf and her late husband, Melvin, have given millions to good causes all over the area.
There is the endowment for Shalom Park to provide care for needy seniors at the nursing home.
An entire wing of Rose Medical Center bears their name.
So, on its face, there is nothing especially remarkable about the half-million dollars Wolf, her daughter Sandra Wolf-Yearick and granddaughter Ashly Wolf gave to the University of Colorado for a new drug and alcohol treatment center.
Except that this time, the gift is personal.
When the Center for Dependency, Addiction and Rehabilitation, to be known as CeDAR, opens Oct. 29, it will include the Lori Wolf House, named for Elaine and Melvin Wolf’s younger daughter, whom they lost to addiction.
The 50-bed center will provide something unique in Colorado – inpatient addiction treatment for an average of 30 days, including medical care, emotional therapy, mandatory physical exercise and even spiritual development – said Dr. Robert Harmon, CeDAR medical director.
The cost for 30 days of treatment will be about $21,000.
What the Lori Wolf House will add is a resource for patients’ family members, and a place where they can gather.
“We heard about this, and it clicked,” Elaine Wolf said. “On one condition: that it was OK with Ashly.”
It was better than OK.
Ashly, Lori’s daughter, especially likes the family-support component.
“The family is going through recovery as well,” she said.
That recovery can be especially hard on children.
“They have to be sort of reintroduced to their parents” after the parents become sober, she said.
Ashly was 10 when her mom died of an overdose at age 35, 10 years ago.
By that time, Lori Wolf and her family had struggled with her addiction for more than two decades.
Elaine Wolf said she and her husband tried everything: They tried to be understanding and kind; they tried being firm. They fought with her and fought alongside her.
They sent her to treatment centers more than once, often out of state. There were few options in Colorado then, and there are still few.
Ashly Wolf said she isn’t sure whether the kind of treatment CeDAR will offer would have made a difference with her mom.
But she has no doubt her mother would approve of what the family is doing.
“She’d be happy to know we’re working so hard to help people who have the same problems,” Ashly said.
When Ashly was born, it gave Lori new inspiration to be sober. And she was, for a long time.
“She would tell me I was her reason for going on,” Ashly said. “She wanted to be sober more than anything. But I don’t think she knew how.”
Now, the family wants to help others learn that lesson.
“Maybe this is where we can lay Lori to rest,” Elaine Wolf said.
