Dr. Davida Coady—Physician, Activist, & Founder of Options Recovery Service

For 20 years Dr Davida Coady was on the ground level during global crises in Biafra, Bangladesh, Peru, and Honduras.  Back home, she helped build the Venice Family Clinic in Los Angeles into the largest free clinic in America.  She helped Cesar Chavez establish a new health system for farm workers, she marched alongside Daniel Berrigan, Pete Seeger, and Martin Sheen for their many causes.  She was arrested 50 times.
  
In her hometown she created the first Drug Court in Berkeley and built a drug treatment program – Options Recovery Services.  The program, founded with the mission to break the cycle of homelessness, violence, and broken families by providing drug and mental health treatment to people caught in the criminal justice system and for people living on the streets. The program houses and treats thousands of people every year and has done so since 1997. 

Her driving force had always been, “the greatest good for the greatest number.”  She believed a life worth living was a life doing, “as much as you can, as well as you can, for as many as you can, for as long as you can.”

The Options family, board, supporters, clients from the streets of Berkeley, Oakland and in the State, prisons mourned her passing on May 3, 2018.

We find comfort in the words of one Options graduate, “Dr. Coady never gave up on people, even after they gave up on themselves.”

Our grief only spurs our resolve to continue Dr. Coady’s vision of reaching out to the poor and imprisoned to help them find their path to life affirming sobriety and service.  Options former Executive Director Tom Gorham, Dr. Coady’s husband, said it best, “Options is here to stay.  The work to serve the unserved will go on.”