ST. LOUIS — Hi-Tech Charities started out small more than 20 years ago by trying to help at-risk youths in Hamilton Heights, one of the roughest neighborhoods in north city. Based out of a church, they offered counseling and leadership training.
The nonprofit is still in the area. Now, it has its own headquarters at 5920 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, with locations in New York and rural Missouri. Hi-Tech Charities says it has also begun operations in West Africa, to help children, youths and women from extremely low-income families and communities.
"We go where the need is enormous," Francis Onukwue, president and founder of Hi-Tech Charities, said during a Feb. 9 grand opening to celebrate another expansion of services including a mobile health clinic. "That is what our mission is."
Hi-Tech Charities had net assets of $2.5 million in 2019, according to the most recent public records available online. Over the years, its budget fluctuated a lot depending on government contracts.
One of its latest grants has raised hard questions from neighbors, at least one elected official and Fred Lewis, who says he's the chairman of the Hi-Tech Charities board of directors.
"He spends a lot of money and does absolutely nothing for our neighborhood," Lewis told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about Onukwue.
In 2021, Hi-Tech Charities was the recipient of one of the largest grants of its kind in Missouri, when it was awarded $4 million from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. SAMHSA has been investing heavily to integrate mental health and addiction treatment to help stem the death toll from the opioid epidemic and address disparities.
Hi-Tech Charities' headquarters is located in one of the ground zeroes of the epidemic. It also has a facility in Irondale, Missouri, a town of about 400 people, 55 miles south of St. Louis, in Washington County. According to the Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic "expansion grant" from SAMHSA, Hi-Tech Charities was part of an effort to expand existing services to military veterans, minorities, LGBTQ youths, the homeless and those suffering from serious mental illness.
Among the measurable objectives mentioned in the two-year grant that just ended Feb. 14, Hi-Tech Charities was to serve a minimum of 600 unduplicated clients, including engaging at least 150 of them in medication-assisted treatment for drug addiction.
In interviews last week, Onukwue described the $4 million grant as a "one-time-deal kind of thing" meant to "build capacity." Asked if they met the measurable objectives, he referred specific performance questions to another leader of the organization, Chidimma Nwankwere, who was offended by the inquiry.
"I don't need to give you that," she said.
She said it was too soon to officially say how many people were served because the grant just ended. Nor would she comment about progress reports during the two-year grant period.
Onukwue said they are trying to serve a difficult population.
"You put your best foot forward and do what you can," Onukwue said. "We are serving the homeless."
Steven Mitchell, 41, who lives in a nearby tent and doesn't remember the last day he didn't struggle with opioid dependence, said Hi-Tech Charities turned him out in 2022. He said he returned earlier in February to get paid to collect signatures at the grand opening event.
"I live right here. I don't see a lot of traffic," said Mitchell, doing odd jobs last week at the nearby Wellston Loop Community Development Corporation, which received a $60,000 grant from the government in late 2021 to help fight the opioid epidemic.
"Who is it that they help? I am not seeing a lot of help. I am not hearing people saying they got any help up there."
Kim Jayne, who helps run Wellston Loop, which offers free meals, clothing and Narcan, while trying to get people into housing and drug treatment, shook her head when asked about Hi-Tech Charities.
"All I know is they got a ton of money, and I have never met anybody who got any help from them other than to use their phone and get a ride," Jayne said. "I've walked people up there to try to find something for them. I couldn't find them to do anything. It's a shame to waste money when people are dropping dead and overdosing on some s--- we've never seen before."
Candance Irving, 34, seven months pregnant, had similar criticism.
"They let me use the bathroom, and that's it," she said.
Told some of the concerns, SAMHSA wouldn't comment about Hi-Tech's performance.
Not on board
In the event someone overcome by drug addiction, or one of their friends or family wanted to find the nearest help, SAMHSA has a treatment finder available online.
Despite the $4 million SAMHSA grant, Hi-Tech Charities doesn't come up in the finder. Not at 5920 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in St. Louis, nor at 104 South Hickory Street in Irondale.
On its own website, Hi-Tech Charities says in large letters that it offers "world class addiction help and home care!" The phone number in the top left corner of the main page has an extra numeral. The "book an appointment" icon in the top right corner doesn't work. Office addresses aren't easily found and oversight has changed.
Dr. Cheryl Ray is listed on the website as chairman of the board. Contacted by email, she said she's no longer serving on the board. She didn't respond to a follow-up request to discuss her experience with the organization.
Onukwue said that the website is old and that a new one will be up soon. Asked who currently sits on the board of directors, he hesitated to answer.
"It's a little complicated," he said, adding that COVID-19 was a big obstacle. "The problem we have right now, we are looking for capable board members."
A survey of 15 years of Hi-Tech Charities public tax filings rarely included any board members.
Onukwue provided the names of two board members, Geraldine Malone and Stella Erondu. In a telephone interview, Erondu said she was a retired co-founder of a charter school in north St. Louis. She said she's been on the Hi-Tech board about a year or two, but hadn't attended meetings in recent months because she'd been on vacation in Dubai and Africa.
Asked about Hi-Tech's efforts to provide medication-assisted treatment for opioid addiction — naltrexone, buprenorphine, methadone — she said she hadn't followed that closely.
"I do not know the everyday details of how that works," she said. "I am more interested in the counseling, behavioral health things for children and their families."
She said Lewis had served on the board.
Onukwue said Lewis was elected as interim chairman and served on the board, but hadn't filled out all the background paperwork. Yet Onukwue confirmed Lewis was the only board member present at a recent meeting.
"If anything, he's creating problems for us," Onukwue said. "Fred Lewis doesn't know anything about how organizations function."
Lewis sold the headquarters building on MLK to Hi-Tech Charities in 2004. Onukwue said it largely accounts for the $2.5 million in net assets reported in public tax filings. Though the city appraises the building at $89,900, he said much more has been spent getting it in shape and demolishing nearby vacant structures.
In telephone interviews, Lewis, who lives in the Hamilton Heights area, blasted Hi-Tech Charities for lack of transparency.
"What he is doing to that neighborhood is dreadful," he said of Onukwue. "He's configured that building three or four times with new material. ... He's never gave me financial reports. He's never gotten approval to do anything."
Grand opening
In a tour of the two-story headquarters building at the Feb. 9 grand opening event that marked an expansion of services, Onukwue said Hi-Tech has 17 employees, including two nurse practitioners and seven therapists. He said they work with about 500 children a year, mainly at Normandy and Hazelwood school districts, while running the behavioral health center on MLK.
"We intend to increase the number of people we serve," he said. "At capacity, we will be serving 3,000 people a year. It could be more."
The main floor was set up as an outpatient clinic. It looked shiny, new and unused. Asked about their medication-assisted treatment program, he didn't offer specifics.
"Anything we don't have in house, we coordinate it with our partners," he said.
The basement was dark, in the middle of a construction project. If they could get funding, Onukwue said, he hoped to have shelter beds down there, maybe a computer lab. The top floor was also unfinished. Onukwue said he hoped to turn that floor into classrooms for an entrepreneurship school that also teaches youth employment skills.
He paused by the window, looking out on the hardscrabble neighborhood where drugs, prostitution and decay are rampant.
"You see here. All of the area is run down," he said. "We are hanging in here. As you can see, the need is enormous. We have to do something different to see how we can revive our community."
Going rural
Hi-Tech Charities first expressed public interest in expanding to tiny Irondale, in rural Washington County, in September 2021, according to a review of the minutes at City Hall. The next month, it bought an old home at 104 South Hickory Street and tried to turn it into a health clinic.
A Feb. 8, 2022, occupancy inspection failed for "several issues," the inspector wrote in large letters in the report. Major repairs were needed to address: damaged boards, peeling paint, loose wires, no smoke detectors and other items. The inspector also wrote that a professional electrician and structural engineer were needed.
Mandy Barton, city clerk, said Hi-Tech Charities operated without an occupancy permit. Onukwue said it was his understanding that they didn't need one because the land was supposed to be rezoned commercial.
Regardless, Barton said, the Feb. 8, 2022, failed inspection report came to her attention in recent months after a Hi-Tech Charities assistant called City Hall, concerned that her desk was going to fall through the floor. The assistant and a nurse practitioner who formerly worked at the location didn't respond to requests for comment.
"We had to lay them off to complete the work," Onukwue said of the building, adding: "One of the plumbers cut off one of the supports of the building."
The work hasn't been completed. Last week, the building was vacant, with delinquent property taxes owed and a blown out window on the second floor.
Some, like Teresa Edmond, 38, weren't surprised. She said she went to the Hi-Tech Charities facility in Irondale one day last year to ask for an antibiotic prescription to treat a tooth infection.
"They didn't even look at my mouth," she said.
Edmond said she twice drove several miles away to a pharmacy, but the prescription was never filled. Ultimately, she went to an emergency room for treatment.
Victoria Wells, 33, was sad to see the clinic close, even if it seemed like a work in progress. She said Hi-Tech Charities offered drug treatment and other services in a remote area that needs it. She said she went there a few times for doctor visits. She said her son was set up to do telehealth.
"I had a good experience. My aunt did, too," she said. "We were upset when they closed the doors to it."
But Frederick Williams, an alderman who keeps tabs on the Hi-Tech Charities property, was skeptical.
"Look at this," he said, stepping over broken glass on the front walkway. "This place is a mess. It's been a mess. They've been doing a little work here, a little work there, to make it look like something is being done. They've been here a little over a year doing this."
The sight of it all made him mad.
"They think they can run things through us just because we are a tiny 'ol town," he said.
Hi-Tech Charities still sees potential. In an email to Irondale leaders in February, Onukwue said they are working on completing the facility soon. He said Hi-Tech Charities will be in touch about a grand opening event scheduled for March 16.
"Thank you all for the good work you do, building and supporting the City of Irondale and its wonderful, God-loving citizens," Onukwue wrote.
An online advertisement has also surfaced, seeking up to $100,000 in investor capital for the redevelopment of the Hi-Tech Charities' Irondale branch.
But after a visit to the location on Feb. 22 with a structural engineer, Onukwue told the Post-Dispatch that it would probably take $400,000. He said the existing building was unsalvageable. Maybe a prefabricated building could be purchased and they'd park the new mobile clinic at the property.
Full steam ahead on the March 16 grand opening ceremony.
"We want to get the word out there," he said. "We are not going to abandon you."
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