Troy Martinez, senior pastor at East Vegas Christian Center, says it came as a shock when he recently received a notice that he had been nominated as one of the three finalists for the Governor’s Point of Light South Individual Award, the state’s highest honor for volunteer work.
But it shouldn’t have. For Martinez has enlisted himself in fights against the valley’s gravest problems. He’s taken on homelessness as spokesperson of the Community Interfaith Council; vandalism with the Southern Nevada Graffiti Coalition; endangered youth as founder of the 10,000 Kids Partnership; and youth violence, too, as a leading member of Safe Village. Thus his chances of winning at the award’s banquet ceremony on January 31 at Sam’s Town Hotel and Casino are as good as anyone’s.
“I enjoy helping people,” says Martinez. “It brings glory to God.”
Yet, his toughest challenge to date persists, and that is the widespread use of methamphetamine throughout Nevada.
“It’s the most dangerous threat to our state,” says Martinez, chairperson of the Las Vegas Crystal Darkness campaign, which has taken active measures to bring all aspects of the community together to fight meth.
It’s a mountainous problem. Last year, according to the state’s department of public safety, 93 percent of violent crimes in Nevada were attributable to methamphetamines. Clark County social services say 667 children were taken away from parents who were hooked on meth. Usage rates among Nevada’s high school population, tops in the country, have remained a steady five percentage points ahead of the national average.
It’s drawn urgent attention. Governor Jim Gibbons allocated an unprecedented $17.4 million to the 2008-2009 biennium budget (now subject to a 4.5 percent cut) toward the fight against meth, and in January 2007 he imparted an executive order to create a working group on methamphetamine use, composed of more than a dozen state and county agencies, including the attorney general and the Clark County Sheriff. Last legislative session, lawmakers enacted four laws specifically related to methamphetamine use.
But to seemingly little effect. The crisis continues.
And so now Martinez seeks to bring the power of God to the fight, which he says has been his forte in his other volunteer efforts.
“It’s definitely a David versus Goliath battle,” he says. “We absolutely have to have faith if we’re going to reverse the direction of this trend.”
His nonprofit 10,000 Kids has published and distributed 250,000 of its meth training handbooks, enough for every junior-high and high-school kid in the county. The book is also distributed to churches and community centers, where Martinez is now striving to arm the leaders with training to identify and help meth users. Crystal Darkness aired an anti-meth documentary on 10 TV stations simultaneously this past May 30. Martinez’s goal is to saturate the market with the anti-meth message.
Unlike in other cities, like LA, “there’s still time to get ahead of the curve,” Martinez says.
His experience on the streets helping people has been that no other drug inflicts more collateral damage. He feels it his irrevocable duty to help.
“Meth addicts are our lepers,” he says. “If Jesus were around today, I believe he would care for them.”