Community health worker a key player in Mark Gonsalves' turnaround

PROVIDENCE — Anthony Thigpen, community health worker at Lifespan’s Transitions Clinic, has been there, too — like Mark Gonsalves, he once belonged to a gang and spent years behind bars, and he has lived with depression and attempted suicide.

The gang was Boston’s Columbia Point Dawgs, which in 2015 was the subject of an FBI raid in which some four dozen gang members were arrested. “The largest, most violent and feared organization on Boston,” then-U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz said at the time.

Thigpen, whose association with the Dawgs dated to his adolescence, was long gone by then. He was serving his last term, eight years in a federal prison, when his epiphany occurred.

“There were men in there that were 60 years old who just haven’t gotten it, and I didn't want to be one of those men,” Thigpen said. “I didn't want to be one of those guys who shared a cell with his son. I didn't want to be one of those guys whose kid’s baby's father came inside the jail, you know. I seen all of that, and I just didn’t want it.”

After his release, Thigpen had the good fortune to meet Teny O. Gross, who headed the Providence-based Institute for the Study & Practice of Nonviolence.

“He gave me a shot,” Thigpen said.

Now, he gives others theirs.

Specifically, Thigpen, who works from an office at the Lifespan Community Health Institute on Prairie Avenue in South Providence, serves as a sort of concierge for his clients on matters of health, housing, education, law enforcement and more. He takes calls at any hour, and counts listening and calming among his skills.

His past helps him bond with those he counsels.

“I think most of my clients I could relate to, and I think that's why I've been having the success that I've been having with them, because I'm no different than them,” he said. “I give them encouragement that they can do something different.”

His message: “You’re not a felon or a drug addict. You know, that's not who you are.”

He adds: “But I always stress to them one thing that I did, and that was: I accepted help.”