A former Derry drug addict, who once lived as “down and out” on the streets of his home town and Dublin, will tomorrow represent Ireland a top international athletics meeting in Hungary after turning his life around.
Timothy Shiels.
It is 17 years since Timothy Shiels was sleeping rough and doing whatever he could to get money to feed his drug addiction, after being told to leave Derry by paramilitaries.
Tomorrow, the 38-year-old will compete in the 800 metres at the World Masters Indoor Athletics Championships being held in Budapest after winning the Irish title at the distance last month.
Timothy puts the transformation in his life down to a Dublin nun, who took him under her wing, got him into rehab and gave him a job.
After being put out of his home, following a fall-out with his parents during which he threatened his father with a knife, Timothy was sleeping rough in Derry and was forced to leave the city after he, in his words, “got in trouble with an organisation.”
He turned his father for help who refused to give him money because he was convinced Timothy would spend it on drugs.
However, his father gave him a lift to Dublin giving him €20 before leaving him, something Timothy admits broke his parents’ hearts.
After booking into a hostel for the destitute, Timothy took to crime to fund his drugs addiction sleeping on the streets on occasions.
It was during this time he met Sister Consilio who ran a “halfway house,” Teach Mhuire, which served as a bridge between the care homes and a return to normal society.
After getting him to restore his belief in himself, Sister Consilio encouraged him to go into re-hab for a 13-week course and gave him a job at the home.
Following his rehabilitation, he began working as a trainee manager at Woodie’s DIY, met his wife Jenny, also a former addict
They moved to Neston on the Wirral peninsula where Jenny’s father offered him a job as manager in his motor cycle business.
However, following the death of her mother, Jenny resorted to her drugs habit and entered into a relationship with a drug dealer who lived in the same street.
After Jenny fell pregnant to the dealer, Timothy returned to Derry, bringing the twins with him, to live with his mother.
However, Jenny returned to Cellbridge in Ireland where her aunt was a Christian councillor and seven years ago, after three years of separation, the couple were married.
When Jenny got up one Sunday to testify about her transformation at the Church known as the Assemblies of God, Timothy became a volunteer with the Church, eventually taking up a full-time post as pastor to the Derry congregation,
Then after giving up smoking, he and Andrew McCourt, an official of the Church, trained for and ran the Belfast Marathon about six years ago, covering the course in three hours and 15 minutes.
Since then he has run from Derry to Dublin in seven days to raise funds for a children’s orphanage in Harare, averaging a marathon a day, running 42 miles on one of them.
After completing a Derry 5k in 17 minutes 30 seconds, he joined the local Foyle Athletics Club but left the club some time later and just over 12 months ago began training on the track and entered the Irish Masters in Tullamore last summer, taking the bronze medal in the 400 metres in their age group, a remarkable achievement given the fact he had no coach.
This inspired him to join the Derry City Track Club and after some more specific coaching, he sprinted from third, with 100 metres remaining, to snatch victory on the line in the 800m at the recent Irish Masters’ Indoor Championships.
Timothy is currently pastor of his own church in Omagh.
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