From homeless to hope to grace: The Grace Project gives lives back

HACKLEBURG — “I started on marijuana when I was about 13 years old. It escalated from there. We (my wife and I) were homeless, sleeping in a hammock that we'd ride around and find some woods that we could tie the hammock up in a tree just to get some rest.”
These are words spoken by a person, not from some distant city, but from one right here in Marion County. His name is Jamie Abbott, and he attends the Grace Project in Hackleburg.
“And there at the end, man, I was going out to inject drugs, and I was a needle user,” he continued. “I was going to inject these drugs in my vein, slipped and fell and shot my hat off my head with a shotgun.”
The Grace Project began in Hackleburg with Kenny Hallmark, the current police chief.
“I've been a police officer now for 33 years, and the majority of it has been working narcotics,” Hallmark said. “I've been with the Drug Task Force since 2000. Even when I was in just regular patrol and in investigations, the majority of it was narcotics. And that's the majority of our problems in this county and every county I've ever worked in.”
Hallmark stated he felt a calling a couple years ago to think outside the box on what he could do to be proactive and help the situation.