In the News ... "TURNING IT AROUND"

OA Photo by Mark Sterkel

• Cooper finds purpose at Salvation Army; Troubled life leads to peace running shelter

By Bob Campbell, Reporter
• Odessa American

ODESSA, TEXAS - Chris Ryan Cooper led a whimsical and often dangerous life until deciding to turn things around.

Now manager of the Salvation Army’s Mabee Red Shield Lodge, Cooper had taken a peripatetic path from growing up on a farm and ranch near Gruver, in the northern Panhandle, to two one-year stints at Texas Tech, being “a ski bum” in Colorado, serving in the Navy for six years and building houses in Texas and Utah to spending six years on the streets of San Diego and Fresno, Calif., injecting methamphetamines ...

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