OCEANSIDE -- The Rev. Carmen Warner-Robbins first met Christine Mendez while serving as a prison chaplain. Mendez was in jail at the time after years of selling drugs on the streets.

After she was released from the Vista jail, Mendez walked to the Oceanside headquarters of Warner-Robbins' Welcome Home Ministries to begin the rehabilitation process that would change her life.

Ten years later, Warner-Robbins considers Mendez a close friend, and the two share a strong rapport.

That's typical of the kind of stories that come out of Warner-Robbins' Welcome Home Ministries -- stories of hope and courage and support.

"I tell the women there isn't anything they could do that would cause me to turn my back on them," Warner-Robbins said last week. "I will never give up on them. Many of them have never heard that. They've never heard anything except, 'You're no good. You're never going to amount to anything.' Welcome Home does not give up on them."

Since 1996, the organization has helped hundreds of women who have served time in prison or jail transition back into the community. Focusing on drug rehabilitation and career training, Warner-Robbins has built her organization into one of the premier rehabilitation centers on the West Coast.

Her organization has even attracted the attention of the president of the United States. Earlier this year, Warner-Robbins and leaders of other nonprofit programs around the country joined President Bush for lunch at the White House.

Warner-Robbins said her organization helps "provide jobs, job training, dental care, clothing and food" for women coming out of incarceration.

"We help with finding a place to stay," she said. "We help with support. We help with IDs. We help with basically all of the needs that help people get back into the community."

Officially recognized with nonprofit status in April of 2000, Welcome Home boasts its own "home-grown" staff of rehabilitated women who work both paid and volunteer positions.

Janie Hudson, the program's case manager and career specialist, said she was addicted to drugs for more than 20 years before finding help at the Welcome Home Ministries.

"The gifts and blessings that I received, I love to pass on," said Hudson, adding that in October she will have been clean for six years. "Nothing is a coincidence that happens here. Each person that serves here has been appointed and anointed for a purpose."

Take Mendez, for example. Mendez now works as a bus driver for North County Lifeline, a transit system that helps the disabled travel within the county.

She said she has been "clean" of drugs for 10 years, but that before that she was a drug queen in Vista.

"Drugs, being abused, being beaten all the time -- that was my life," she said. "That's what I thought life was all about."

Mendez said that in addition to the help she has received from Warner-Robbins and her Ministries, her faith has helped her as well.

"I should've been dead so many times, I ran into so many wicked people," she said. "It's much better now with the Lord on my side. Without the Lord, who do I have to cry to?"

Citing a Bible verse out of the book of Jeremiah -- "For I know the plans that I have for you, plans to prosper you, to give you a hope and a future" -- Warner-Robbins said spiritual encouragement plays a large part in healing for the women at Welcome Home Ministries:

"That's a scripture that most of the women really adhere to -- they really hold onto that," she said.