Simon says, “Put your hands on your head.” Simon says, “Touch your nose.” We all remember that game from childhood. Well, resident Simon H. says, “If you want something from someone, you don’t say, you ask.” From a young age, he learned that you can get almost anything you want just by asking. Well, by asking, and calling, and leaving voicemails on every extension in the MTV building (because you’re 12 and what you want are tickets to the Teen Choice Awards), and writing emails to every faculty member and grantor at a college that has turned you down, but you’re determined to (and do ultimately) get accepted into, what Simon doesn’t say, or rather, doesn’t do, is give up.
Simon was born in England. The fourth of five children to Iraqi-born parents. Simon and his family moved back to his parents’ native Iraq when he was five years old, at the height of the turmoil-ridden Gulf War in 1992. From there, they sought refuge in Jordan before being granted a visa to join his maternal grandparents in San Diego in 1995. Culture shock aside (initially thinking the 20-unit apartment building was his grandparents’ house, he’d try to walk freely into every door to check out the new digs!), he soon adjusted to this California lifestyle. Shortly after arriving in San Diego, his father landed a job in Santa Monica, so up the coast they cruised!
It was in Santa Monica, at the age of 12, that Simon honed some remarkably savvy skills. He realized that if he hung out outside of award shows at the opportune moment just before the show started, as the hair and makeup crew were leaving, he could innocently approach them and ask for their backstage pass. He was a kid, so whether they thought he wanted a souvenir for show-and-tell didn’t matter to him…what mattered was that they handed it over without a second glance, and he was IN!
Simon had ingenuity. He was crafty, creative, and determined. He learned how to open all kinds of doors for himself. He discovered that if you ask the right people, and put in the legwork, the world is your oyster…shuck away! He was able to attend Drew University in New Jersey (after appealing his initial rejection) and have it paid for by multiple benefactors, most of whom he’d never met. Like I said, ingenuity. In college, he majored in Theater, minored in Arts Administration, and dabbled in every drug possible. Opiates quickly rose to the top of that list and became his go-to source when he needed comfort on cold Jersey nights.
Drug habit aside, life seemed to be going just as planned. After graduating, Simon moved to New York, where he landed his dream job. “I worked at a non-profit performing arts center in this cool warehouse in Brooklyn. I was the Development and Marketing Associate. I thought I’d live in New York for the next ten years because it was so exciting, but six months later an organization I was involved in as a kid, the Virginia Avenue Project, an arts mentoring program, wanted to hire me for a new development position they were creating.”
So plans, as they tend to do, changed. It was back to Santa Monica for young Simon. In a strange twist of drug fate, he ended up kicking heroin because of a combination of ignorance (he didn’t know how to smoke the drug, in NYC they snorted it) and long wait times at the UCLA Emergency Room (he got tired of waiting and went home to self-detox). After a few days in bed with what felt like the flu, he was back in the game, and he was killin’ it!
“I had this great new job, a place in Marina Del Rey, and a nice car, life was exciting.” Things were going so well that he was even featured in Forbes Magazine for a fundraiser he had successfully executed for the Virginia Avenue Project. But Simon felt life wouldn’t be truly complete until he fulfilled his artistic goals as well. He auditioned for, and was hired, first as an actor, and later, as the managing director of the theater company “The Actors Gang.” But, as we all know, this is not where spotlights end. There was grace in his life, and with grace often comes a fall from it.
Through all of his successes, Simon felt the urge to use opiates creep back in. “I don’t know where the craving came from, but I wanted some Vicodin, just some gentle painkillers. Eventually I wanted Oxycontin, which then led me back to heroin.” He was falling fast. “Cocaine, meth, fentanyl, my life was becoming unmanageable.”
Falling, Simon left his job to try his hand at freelance work, but the clients didn’t appreciate his sporadic disappearing acts.
Falling, he lost his nice home, he was now couch surfing.
Falling, he lost his couch, and was now living on the streets.
Still falling, he was hospitalized for a month with everything from COVID, to heart and lung problems.
But this is where the fall seemed to stop, and there was suddenly a safety net to catch him. Simon’s mom asked him, “Please call Beit T’Shuvah and see if they will take you.”
On February 29th, 2024, a shell of a man checked into Beit T’Shuvah. “It’s surreal, I’ve been to other rehabs, but I’ve never stayed for more than 9 days. Then I came here, and this is just not what I expected. I used to be so down about how recovery is not possible. This is a really strong disease. I thought there was nothing I could do. But this place is so loving and so non-judgemental. They believe so much in me, and them giving me opportunities to change has made me love myself and see myself in a way where it’s possible to have potential again.”
He not only has that potential again, he’s using it. Before Simon came here, he did his research. “I read that they had a Development department, and, after reading Avia’s bio, I thought it was so amazing that the head of Development is a Beit T’Shuvah Alumni. I looked up to her so much on a personal level and a professional level. I thought, “That is so cool, I want to work for her.”
Well, Simon, you asked, and you received…you showed us that. Simon now works for Avia in the Development department as an intern. He credits his counselor Vinny, who knew Simon’s background in non-profit fundraising, for pushing him to apply. Now he’s doing incredible work.
So whether it’s getting backstage passes to the Teen Choice Awards, asking to be admitted to Beit T’Shuvah, or fundraising for the upcoming BTS Open Golf Tournament, if Simon asks for it, you can bet that it’s something he really wants. And I said “Simon asks,” I didn’t say “Simon says!”