A road to recovery: How one woman’s resilience paved a way forward

Mary Kay Riendeau began to use marijuana, alcohol and cigarettes at 12 years old after surviving several instances of sexual violence. Resources were not abundant in the 1970s, and Riendeau’s trauma response dangerously spiraled into substance abuse that lasted 23 years.

Since she set out on the path to recovery in 1999, Riendeau has refused to let the pain of her past define her future. Today, as the department head of addiction studies at Minnesota North College, Mesabi Range, she is helping widen access to addiction counseling services in rural areas across the state.

“You know why people use?” said Riendeau, “The pain of life.”

She says expanding access to addiction counseling will help people get the support they need.

According to a 2024 Minnesota Department of Health report, residents of rural areas seeking mental health and chemical dependency treatment typically travel over three times longer to access care compared to urban patients. The same report shows that of the 4,156 alcohol and drug counselors across the state, only 4% work in isolated rural areas. Only 6% work in small towns. Such disparities contribute to health inequity.

Faced with declining health and a looming prison sentence, Riendeau made the tough decision to stop using and turn her life around 26 years ago. She wanted to show up better as a mother, but also as the person she knew she was under the shadow of her addiction. So, she enrolled in college.

“I’m 61 years old,” she explained. “Am I going to let sexual violence ruin the rest of my life? There had to be a time in there where I made a decision.”

Minnesota North College’s program addresses the shortage of addiction counselors in the area by integrating a real-world problem-solving curriculum into the classroom. Riendeau was a 2001 graduate of the program and started teaching in the program in 2004. She has been the department head since 2007. There were only nine students in the program that year. Even with the impacts it was making, a shortage persisted in her community, so she sought out to expand existing initiatives.

Riendeau worked as a full-time, in-person LADC instructor at her alma mater for three years until she began to broaden the program’s efforts with technology. In 2010 she launched free Zoom panels, accessible to people across the state. From Grand Portage to the Iron Range she says these “Zoom rooms” have allowed the program to reach thousands who have been touched by addiction.

This is “a way of putting people together in a community of recovery,” she said. Healed communities “can excel and do things which expands the empowerment of people.”

Riendeau has seen more and more students engage with the LADC program during her time as an instructor. The program’s instructors currently oversee the education of more than 85 students. Thousands more have been licensed and are now active in the field of addiction work since her early beginnings.

Graduate Angela Tomassoni, who has faced addiction in the past, “gets goosebumps” when reflecting on the program’s impact. She said it has transformed and saved countless people — including her. She now serves as the program’s Indigenous grant coordinator, and helps to oversee some of the millions of grant dollars that the program receives.

Riendeau never anticipated her efforts reaching so far, but said she is grateful. After all, her main purpose in everything she has set out on has been to touch lives. Funding cuts threaten access to addiction services in rural communities, but Riendeau says her commitment is unwavering.

“We’re at a different time politically. But does it affect us? I’m not going to let it,” she said. “As long as we’re still there, there is still a voice fighting for addicts.”

Additional reporting by Legend Primus (Roseville High School) and Amelia Mohamud (Delano High School).