Scott always agreed with me whenever we talked about parenting and childcare, but we were going to see if he meant it, because Leo made it sound like this next assignment was going to be tough. It was why he was so reluctant to give it to me. Big stories required lots of extra hours, and it’d been a long time since I had been able to do anything beyond the bare minimum, but I was ready to jump back in, especially after I heard it involved a potential cult that had moved into the area and was hanging around on campus.

Pierce College was the heart of Arcata, and people’s lives revolved around it. Students came from all over the world to study in their chemical engineering program and English world literature specialization. But our cute college town came with the same host of problems as every other college campus across America—we battled the opioid epidemic, losing two students to overdoses last year. Recently, a religious group referring to themselves as Love International had been showing up on campus and helping kids get off drugs. They had a facility on the outskirts of town, and members of Love International had taken them into their facilities and helped them detox. They stayed with them around the clock until they were sober. They’d already been successful with over a dozen students. Stories of their miraculous recoveries were spreading like wildfire throughout the community. It wasn’t as if their approach to carefully monitored detox and 24-7 care was all that different from other approaches to sobriety. There were hundreds of programs or sober coaches who provided the exact same services. The thing that set Love International apart was that they did it for free. All of it.

They were welcomed into the community with open arms even though nobody knew why they’d chosen us or where they’d been before. There hadn’t been anything negative said about them until one of the students who’d recently gotten clean dropped out of school afterward to join their movement. He began working with them to help other college students get sober too. It wasn’t long before he was followed by a few of the others they’d worked with. That started the tension. Parents wanted their kids sober, but they also wanted them in school.

In the past month, Love International’s circle of influence had widened, and other students who didn’t even struggle with addiction were dropping out of school and working with them. Parents were up in arms about it, and everyone was demanding to know more about them. The case garnered national media attention after the college newspaper ran a story about them, and it went viral. Their leader was a man named Ray Fischer, and he had refused to speak with any national media or give a formal interview until now. It was an interesting twist, since most of the time organizations like his thrived on publicity and actively sought it out. But he’d declined all offers from the press, even those that carried monetary compensation.