Alcohol and Substance Abuse Prevention Council of Saratoga Springs, NY

After serving with the Saratoga County Alcohol and Substance Abuse Prevention Council for 30 years, Judy Ekman will retire from her position as executive director. A celebration honoring her career will be held tonight at Prime at Saratoga National Golf Course. (ERICA MILLER/The Saratogian)

By PATRICK H. DONGES, The Saratogian

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Judy Ekman, who has served as executive director of the Alcohol and Substance Abuse Prevention Council of Saratoga County for 17 years, will retire June 30 after 30 years of service with the nonprofit agency.

In 1979, after teaching English and volunteering for a child abuse prevention program, she became the educational coordinator of the Alcohol and Substance Abuse Prevention Project, the precursor to the council. She became executive director of that program in 1993, and in 1996 she facilitated its merger with the Alcohol and Substance Abuse Prevention Council of Saratoga County.

The agency has tripled in size and scope since the merger.

While directing the council, Ekman has also been a trainer for the U.S. Center for Substance Abuse Prevention’s Northeast Center for the Application of Prevention Technologies and a founding co-chair of the state Prevention Credentialing Board.

For her service, she has received the U.S. Department of Education’s Youth Against Drugs Award, the New York State Legislature’s Outstanding Citizen Award, Saratoga Center for the Family’s Child Advocate of the Year Award and honors from the State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services. In addition to those accolades, Saratoga Springs Mayor Scott Johnson has proclaimed today, June 22, 2010, “Judy Ekman Day.”

“My career has been entirely synonymous with the growth of prevention,” Ekman said Monday, highlighting recent studies that allow organizers to track the effectiveness of specific programs. “The field has exploded in the last 30 years,” she said.

“She has built this agency from just a couple of programs to be a real force for prevention statewide,” said Barbara Ferraro, a current council board member who remembered being interviewed by Ekman in 1987 for her former position as clinical coordinator of the student assistance program. “She brings to every task within the agency an ability to relate to the kids, to administrators and county and state officials,” she said.

Before the council’s establishment of school-based mentoring programs, the primary tool for prevention education was bringing ex-addicts into schools to describe their experiences. Ekman said this often had undesirable effects, exciting teenage audiences who craved escape from the classroom.

One of Ekman’s first accomplishments with the agency was bringing structure to a state pilot program at the Saratoga Springs City and Ballston Spa Central school districts that paired high school students with sixth-graders to discuss alcohol use, an arrangement just as precarious as assemblies with addicts. By adding an educational component, the program was expanded to every district in the county.

“It’s ideas like that that came from her organization,” said Saratoga Springs Police Investigator John Kelly of the numerous programs established during her tenure that include the D.A.R.E. All Stars Camp, the Cool out of School program and the Safe Spring conference and workshops.

As the resource officer at Saratoga Springs High School, Kelly serves as a liaison between the council and the police department. “Kids can pick a phoney,” he said. “She used to always connect with the kids. They didn’t feel intimidated.”

“The most successful approach to prevention is community coalitions,” Ekman said, adding that she worries about the future of funding in the face of the state’s severe fiscal crisis.

Aside from its effects on funding, she said recent government incivility and dysfunction are also affecting the way in which youths are maturing.

“Grownups are supposed to put the lid on it,” she said of political bullying and the sensationalizing of scandal.

Ekman said she will take at least a year off from forming or sitting on any boards or committees, taking time to travel and visit her five grandchildren and partake in community functions.

“She never passed up an opportunity to accept responsibility for programming opportunities,” said former Ballston Spa Middle School principal Stephen R. Toussaint, a Prevention Council board member for 12 years, eight of which he served as president. “She managed to recruit some board members that were representative of a broad spectrum in this community,” he said, noting the importance of bringing together educators and law enforcement, among other professional and social groups, to talk about problems and find solutions.

“We have a good quality of life here,” Toussaint said. “I think a great deal of it is due to the vision that Judy had.”