They used to be homeless on Broadway. Now they’re giving back.

Zack Churchfield first stumbled onto North Broadway when he was 15 years old. He wasn’t using yet, but years later he ended up using drugs, and even fentanyl.

Now, Churchfield and several others in the recovery community are coming back, this time to give back to a community they used to be a part of.

Saturday afternoon, the group will set up in a field near Broadway and Murdock and offer a variety of resources to those in need, including haircuts, food, clothes, hygiene supplies and naloxone.

They’ll also have people available from sober living, treatment centers, and recovery and support groups.

“I want to give back to a community that I feel like a lot of Wichita ignores,” Churchfield said. “They’re not bad people… they’re just sick, like we [once were].”

North and South Broadway have become popular destinations for the homeless in Wichita over the years.

A number of events lead to Churchfield wanting to host the event: a spike of overdoses near the area in May, and a shooting death in April at the Afton Motel on South Broadway.

Churchfield said he knew the man who was shot to death at the motel, 21-year-old Martevion Davis, and that it was over a game of dice.

“I wanted to get back out there with my people,” he said, “show them that there is a new way of living … that nobody’s given up on them.”

Churchfield is organizing the event along with several friends he’s met through Fentanyl Anonymous – the group is the first of its kind in Kansas.

That includes Deborah Williams. Williams and Churchfield both knew each other when they were both still active in their addiction and on Broadway. Now, Williams is the alumni coordinator for Bel Aire Recovery Center.

“It’s to … instill some hope into the community,” Williams said. “It feels that way when you’re down there. There’s a lot of stereotypes and stigmas attached to Broadway.”

Many in the group stressed from their own experiences that recovery from substances isn’t linear.

“I, too, spent a good amount of time on Broadway in my addiction,” John Rupp, who now helps people get insurance so they can get into treatment, said. “I had … 10 plus years of sobriety and went back out there. That’s right where I went back to. There’s good people down there, and they need to know that we care still.”

With the recent spike of overdoses in the area, and the relocation of the naloxone vending machine nearby, organizers are hoping to get naloxone in the hands of the people who need it the most.

They hope it’ll give them another chance at life like they had.

“A lot of people, they say that we’re just enabling them at this point,” Churchfield said, “but you never really know when someone’s finally gonna … pull the plug on their addiction and try to give recovery a chance.”

And for many in the group, God is what helps them stay sober, and they want to carry that message to others if they’re willing to listen.

“I was once where they were, and recovery is possible,” Whitney Smith, who’s in recovery from fentanyl, said. “Getting your life back in any form is possible, whether drug related or not. I just want to be the hands and feet of Jesus.”

Churchfield and his group stressed that those who spend time on Broadway aren’t bad people, just people who fell on hard times.

“We’re coming back for our people, those are our people out there,” Churchfield said. “I’ve spent a lot of time with some of these people out there, man. I’m coming back for them, bro. Even if it’s just one person [that we] impact.”

This story was originally published July 10, 2026 at 11:28 AM.