At the height of his drug addiction, Dustin didn’t care if he lived or died.

“Basically, I was trying to kill myself,” he recalls.

“I had given up. I was done.”

Because his father was a TV director, Dustin grew up assuming you had to be “the star” or you hadn’t succeeded. So he tried restaurant management. Started his own taxi business. Played in a band. But each time, drugs became his undoing.

One morning he was sleeping outside a Presbyterian church in Santa Ana when he woke up with a quarter in his hand, and a note that said “Call Doug,” along with a phone number.

Though he didn’t know who had given him the quarter (or who Doug was!) he was so tired of the life he’d been living that he took the quarter and made the call to Doug, the Admissions manager at the Orange County Rescue Mission.

Through your giving, the Rescue Mission helped him see God’s Kingdom — and his own life — in a whole new way. Finally, he surrendered. “Okay, God, let’s do this!” he remembers thinking.

Today, he works as a dishwasher at the Village of Hope, a position that would have once been demeaning to him . . . but not anymore.

“I feel like I squandered the first 40 years of my life,” Dustin says. “Now I believe God will give me another 40. If He says stay here and be a dishwasher, that’s what I’ll do.”

Dustin has learned, who needs to be “the star” when you’ve got God?