After fighting addictions, Alberta woman helps others escape gang life

Jorgina Sunn remembers preparing for death in the quiet of the darkened hotel room.

After years of running with street gangs in Calgary, selling drugs and selling her body to feed her addictions, she was "beaten down" and desperate.

For Sunn, that was the bottom.

Four years later, she's helping others find sobriety and escape gang life.

Originally from the Paul Band First Nation west of Edmonton, she now works with STR8 UP, a Saskatoon group that works with former gang membersalong with a number of other anti-poverty groups.

'I was looking for acceptance'

Sunn says the gang lifestyle gave her a sense of security she never had as a child.

"Looking back now, having worked with a lot of people that have been in a gang, I was looking for acceptance," Sunn said in an interview with CBC Radio's Edmonton AM.

"Coming from dysfunction and brokenness, and not really having a connection to any of the people in my life, being in the gang was sort of filling a void that I felt I had been missing my whole life."

Both of Sunn'sbiological parents were trapped in their own cycles of alcoholism. She was just sixmonths old when she and her brother were removed from their home.

Sunn would never see her mother again. She committed suicide six months after losing custody of her children.

During the remaining years of her childhood she was shuffled from foster home to foster homewhere she sufferedneglect and sexual abuse.

'I was very, very bitter'

Looking for an escape, Sunn would run away from home, act out andget drunk and high.But the relief was always fleeting.

She dropped out of high school and moved to Calgary to be closer to her brother, and it was then that she began to spiral out of control.

Within five years, Sunn says, she was homeless and addicted to drugs. She traffickedcocaine and prostituted herself on the street.

"I remember the overwhelming feeling of shame that I had all the time. I was very angry," Sunn said. "I was also suffering from depression that I didn`t know. I was very, very bitter."

• Former Saskatoon gang memberJorginaSunnnominated for national award

The first wake-up call for Sunn call came from incarceration.

She was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to spend six months in a healing lodge. It was then she began to connect with her Indigenous heritage and accept help.

"It took a few different people in my life, reminding me that I had a different purpose, and that being incarcerated, taking drugs, selling drugs and doing the things I was doing were beneath me," Sunn said.

"I would like to say it was something inside of me that woke me up, but it actually took other people showing me a different way to live."

'It's heartbreaking at times'

She moved to Saskatoon for a fresh start, and became involved in STR8 UP. She has since been awarded the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples Aboriginal Order of Canada for her work on the front lines of the organization.

Other than Sunn's work with people trying to leave the gang lifestyle, she has also become an accomplished speaker, talking to groups across the province about poverty and the importance of living a better life.

Sunn sayswhen she stares into the faces of her clients, she recognizes herself.

"It's never easy;this work that we do is not easy. It's heartbreaking at times,"Sunnsaid.

Her painful history helps her connect, but also makes her work all the more excruciating.

"It's absolutely frustrating, because we have people that have died and I have known many people that have re-offended and now they're sitting back in jail," she said.

"I know I can very easily fall back into my old ways. But the greatest thing about living this way for a certain while, you tend to learn that you have a lot to lose."