Addict works his way to success

On this Labor Day, it is fitting for Martin Webb to acknowledge that hard work has brought him from despair to success.

Even when he was a homeless heroin junkie in Washington, D.C., driving a cab kept him alive and provided a rolling roof over his head.

"I always worked," said Webb, 35. He said he was employed during and in between five different stabs at drug rehabilitation that left him with no family or friends to care anymore.

Eight years after leaving the mean streets of the nation's capital, Webb is the owner of the successful Plan It Solar business in Penn Valley, where he now lives. The firm that started in a garage had $150,000 in gross sales in 2002 and is looking at $2 million this year.

Webb points to Nevada County's acceptance of others and his tightknit group of employees as a reason for his remarkable professional and personal turnaround.

"It's important for the community to know that just because you're a drug addict or homeless doesn't mean that there isn't the potential to be a productive person," Webb said. "Being an addict is a full-time job and so is getting away from it."

Kristen Stinnett-Brown was a customer when she first met Webb, and now she works for him as project manager.

"Martin is a very intelligent man, and his values are in line with mine," said Stinnett-Brown, a long-time environmental activist. "We communicate with a lot of positive feedback and constructive criticism. It's a team approach to running the business, and we're all involved."

Employee Adam George actually likes the firm's meetings "because we're brought up to speed every day on the company and the industry."

"You're really listened to," said employee Jedediah Biagi, who left his last job because he was fed up with corporate indifference. "The communication level is really high."

Long before Webb was listening intently to employees, he was using drugs in his teens as a form of rebellion. He was macho in his intake, always trying to prove he could handle more than anyone else, even in self-abuse.



A birth and rebirth

As Webb's addiction progressed, he hit a turning point with the birth of an unplanned son with his then-girlfriend. He hit the streets dejected when he realized he was in no condition to raise Ian Webb, now 11.

"I emotionally fell apart," Webb said. "But my son was also the reason I came out of it."

Ian comes for summer visits now, joining Webb and his wife, Asia Currie, and their 3-year-old daughter, Gwynna Webb. Asia's parents, Len and Mimi Malthan, lent him $1,500 and their garage in Penn Valley to start his business and continue to provide encouragement.

Webb took Ian to the Nevada County Fair this year and on their first road trip together to Legoland in Southern California.

That's pretty Americana for a guy who was once so despondent he tried to overdose on heroin but couldn't because his tolerance for the drug was so high. Toward the end of those terrible years, he found himself in Nashville, where his father lived.

"I got detoxed, but that's all they could do for me for free," Webb said. He went to a homeless shelter, where "I made contact with the last remaining friend I had and she (Gina Ellison, now Gina Gill) was in a place called Nevada City. I rode the bus out here."

Realizing once again that work was key, Webb caught on with a local solar firm and quickly became the office manager. It was 1998, he was 27, and he decided he would be self-employed by the time he was 30.

He started with $5,000 and had his first employee by the end of 2002. Now he has nine workers and a growing business.

"I wanted to open a place where I would want to shop at, that would cater to the techie and the novice and be generous with time and information," Webb said. "I wanted to make it as easy as possible to convert to solar.

"Many people are interested, but few know where to get the information," Webb said. "I advertised in The Union and I knew Nevada County needed someone to proactively push solar."

He also decided to focus on selling a lot of small solar projects as opposed to landing just 10 large ones a year.

"We always offered free site visits, which is now the standard in the area," Webb said. "The personal contact is really important because we're dealing with something that is so new and different. We even turn people down if there's too much shade or things aren't right" for a solar system.

Webb tries to treat Nevada County customers right because Nevada County did so for him.

At the end of his drug odyssey, "Having Nevada County be a landing spot was really important and getting out of the city," Webb said. "When I got to Nevada City, I wanted to cross Broad Street one day, and all the cars stopped!"

To expand his local horizons and to draw awareness to energy issues, Webb also became the host of a weekly radio program called The Energy Report, airing on KVMR, FM 89.5, at noon the first Thursday of every month.

"Energy was barely mentioned in the election of 2004," Webb said. "It's been an amazing change," with the topic now dominating world news.

All the fun and success aside, Webb has not forgotten how he got here.

"The specter of drug addiction never leaves and haunts you," Webb said. "Any recovered drug addict is a veteran of an internal war.

"In my worst times, I remember, it could be worse. A lot of people leave Nevada County to get clean. I had to come here to get clean."

Webb's next dream is to do more advocacy work in the energy and drug rehabilitation fields. His business handles much of the former, and he is thinking about starting a fund to get local addicts treatment, a rehabilitation scholarship fund, if you will.

"It would be for people who don't have the means to stop working and get cleaned up," Webb said. "I want to give people what was given to me, a free way to get off drugs."

He might even have a place for them to work.

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To contact Senior Staff Writer Dave Moller, e-mail davem@the union.com, or call 477-4237.