On behalf of the Honorable Judge Gary A. Hicks and the Honorable Judge John Marshall we are proud to announce the 15th Anniversary of the Henrico County Drug Treatment Court! This is a huge milestone and we'd like to thank the Henrico County Bar Association for its ongoing support of our program and its endeavors.

One of those endeavors is our Turkey Tuesday Drive. Since 2010, through the generous donations of community partners, like you, we have been providing Thanksgiving dinners to our participants and their families. This past Thanksgiving with your help we provided meals for 22 active participants. On their behalf, we'd like to say THANK YOU!

On January 18th we had the pleasure to meet with members of your association to discuss alternative sentencing programs available here in the county. Mr. David Stock extended the invitation and we greatly appreciated the opportunity to provide information to your members regarding our program and the services that we provide. The following day, January 19th, we kicked off our 15th year anniversary celebration with a Drug Court graduation. Thirteen participants completed our program, our largest graduating class to date, bringing our 15 year total to 196 successful graduates!

We were honored to have Mr. Wilbert Harris as our guest speaker, a graduate of our 1st graduating class in 2004. It was great to have Mr. Harris share with us about his time as a participant as well as his ongoing recovery journey which includes being an active member of our alumni and advisory board. To make this commemorative event even more noteworthy was the opportunity to make two special presentations during the ceremony; the awarding of our 1st Alumni Challenge award and the honoring of our administrative assistant who has been with the program since its inception.

The Alumni Challenge was created to promote ongoing recovery efforts of our participants and to further enhance participation in our alumni association. The challenge awards $200 to any graduate who commits to random, monthly drug tests for 12 months post program completion. Brittany Welsch, who graduated in January 2017, was the recipient of this award. Brittany continues to participate in alumni related events with our program and has also been hired as a Peer Recovery Specialist with Henrico Mental Health's Outpatient Program; we could not be more thrilled with her success. Our second presentation was to Ms. Secret Hatchett, our administrative assistant. Judge Hicks presented Ms. Hatchett with a bouquet and paid tribute to her tireless efforts in support of our program.

Our plans are to continue celebrating our anniversary at each of our graduations this year by inviting founding members of our program as well as our alumni to participate in our graduation ceremonies. The Honorable Judge Catherine C. Hammond, one of the founding judges of our program, has agreed to be our speaker in May, National Drug Court Month. We would love for you to be in attendance and hopefully witness the graduation of our 200th graduate!