Dan Albert at Negley Park
If you’ve ever been to Lemoyne’s Negley Park, chances are, you remember the view. The park offers a stunning, eagle’s eye view that overlooks the city of Harrisburg and the Susquehanna River.
Dan Albert was in active recovery from substance abuse when he visited Negley Park nearly five years ago. And it was there, gazing at the view, that he gained a new perspective on life—one that led him to found the organization Hero in the Fight.
“I wanted to be proud of what I was doing, and I didn’t want anyone else to go through what I was going through,” said Albert, 36, of Camp Hill. “I was going from nothing, breaking down the stigma and shame of speaking openly about addiction.”
With his new perspective, he saw a new word. There, within his former drug of choice, heroin, was the word “hero.”
Just 90 days into recovery, he did three things that are still going strong today, nearly five years later.
First, he created shirts emblazoned with “Hero in the Fight,” which he began selling to fund scholarships for others who, like him, couldn’t really afford to live at a recovery house—but realized it was the key to a clean future.
The shirts are also conversation starters. Albert envisioned a world where society could talk openly about treatment and drug abuse prevention, rather than focusing on overdoses, deaths and statistics. Identifying those in active recovery as “heroes” acknowledges they are fighting for their lives.
Secondly, he created a Facebook page that operates as a judgment-free community supporting those in active recovery. Today, that community regularly reaches as many as 26,000 people around the country and the world fighting similar fights.
Third, Hero in the Fight started planning events.
“All my life, I thought I couldn’t have fun without a substance,” Albert said. “We started doing events in the community to prove that we can be productive members of society—there are a lot of stigmas placed on us that aren’t true.”
Today, those events—ranging from Sunday hikes to spoken word events, running and volunteering at the Bethesda Mission on Christmas—also help those in active recovery realize they’re not alone.
Somehow, Albert juggles Hero in the Fight with a full-time job, plus being a dad. He cherishes these things now, he said, because he’s learned to appreciate every moment, substance-free.
Rock Bottom
Growing up in Steelton, “I put expectations on myself that I had to be an amazing athlete, and I wasn’t,” Albert said.
Still, he did something that sports legends are made of. He hit a grand slam as a freshman baseball player that put him in a “very egotistical” mindset. Drinking became normalized in his family, and the perfect storm for substance abuse began.
He points to a number of rock-bottom situations, starting with a DUI, driving home from his first college visit (he’d gotten a full-ride scholarship—which he later lost). A few years later, driving his then-girlfriend to the hospital to give birth to their daughter, Albert made her withdraw cash from an ATM along the way, because he “couldn’t comprehend being there two days without substances. This moment that was supposed to be beautiful—I ruined it for her,” he said.
By then, addiction spiraled into heroin, deepening those rock-bottom moments. He almost died on his bathroom floor, before his mother’s eyes. Homeless, he lived in his vehicle. Then he spent a few days in prison.
“I didn’t want to live, but I was caring about being high too much to die,” Albert said.
Throughout his addiction, he held a string of jobs in Harrisburg’s restaurant industry—where he credits several pivotal people for his eventual recovery.
The Melting Pot owner Brian Sikorski “had a hard conversation with me. He said I had two choices—one, to go into treatment, or two—you’re fired.”
Albert’s first treatment wasn’t successful, but his second attempt was.
“Nick Laus, late owner of Cork & Fork—I told him I needed to go to treatment, and he said he’d keep my job open for me,” Albert said. “I was allowed one phone call a week. My daughter, who was 5 at the time, called and said, ‘Daddy, I just don’t want you to be sick anymore.’ And in that moment, I said, ‘All right, I’m going to do this.’”
Following treatment, he transitioned to the recovery house in Lemoyne and had that lightbulb moment at Negley Park. Hero in the Fight was born.
“Nick was pivotal,” Albert said. “I went on to become general manager for both Cork & Fork restaurants. These are places where I was once doing substances in the bathrooms.”
Recovery, Community
“At Cork & Fork, we created an atmosphere of recovery within the restaurant industry,” Albert said. “We had six people in recovery working there, including Ashlei.”
An active Hero in the Fight, Ashlei Gingrich, 41, of Harrisburg leads free Yoga of 12 Steps of Recovery classes (Y12SR) to her fellow heroes.
“I was inspired by Hero in the Fight to give back,” Gingrich said. “They opened the door for me and put me on this path.”
That’s because Hero in the Fight underwrote her Y12SR certification’s 200 training hours, propelling her to become only the third certified instructor in central Pennsylvania. The program offers healing through yoga.
What Albert has created through Hero in the Fight is “amazing,” said Dr. Weston Kensinger, director of the Douglas W. Pollock Center for Addiction Outreach and Research at Penn State Harrisburg.
“He’s living proof that recovery is not only possible, but it’s probable,” Kensinger said. “To start something like this from scratch, and grow it, is a testament to how much passion he has, especially in the context that recovery is an ongoing process, and it’s not easy.”
Recently, Albert took a new position that allows him more time with his daughter, now 10. It’s a job that takes him full circle, back to Sikorski and The Melting Pot, where he’s now general manager.
And April 30 marks a milestone for Albert—five years, clean.
“It’s more important to me than my birthday,” Albert said. “And no substance will ever be able to give me the life I have today.”
For more information on Hero in the Fight, see herointhefight.org. And to hear more about Dan Albert’s story, tune into the March episode of TheBurg Podcast, which drops March 11.
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