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Ex-addict becomes practicing physician

Patrick Flyte admits he wasn't a model college student. Flyte, who graduated from high school in 1978, twice dropped out of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff as well as from a chiropractic college in Chicago. But he recently accomplished something few of his college professors thought imaginable.

Today Flyte is the first  Teen Challenge graduate to become a medical doctor, according to Snow Peabody, director of the Arizona program. Flyte relinquished college keg parties and marijuana addiction when he checked into the Tucson center. There he accepted Christ as Savior and graduated in 1985.

"I don't know if any other program would have worked for me," says the 44-year-old Flyte, who attends First Assembly of God in Casa Grande. "I've seen it in many people's lives where there was no human answer to their situation, whether it was drug and alcohol abuse, finances or divorce. God restores lives."

>Peabody says the change that Flyte made shows that nothing is unattainable in the Lord. "His turnaround in the program from one of hopelessness to one of hope was truly incredible," Peabody says.

Flyte completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Arizona in Tucson then studied at Ross University School of Medicine in Dominica, West Indies. He completed three years of family practice residency at Louisiana State University last year and is now a board-certified staff physician at Harvest Medical Clinic in Casa Grande.