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Gunfights at the Puerto Vallarta corral? No way, say expats Barbara and Jim H., who four years ago decided to move their principal residence from Seattle to Puerto Vallarta.

Jim and Barbara, longtime active members of Alcoholics Anonymous in this area, have also carved a major A.A. niche in Mexico. Once the hot and muggy summer weather cools into fall, they´ll go home to resume planning for the eighth annual Sobriety Under the Sun conference in Puerto Vallarta Jan. 29-31, 2010. "We´re both very active in putting the conference together," Barbara said.

Meanwhile, they´re enjoying a relatively cool and low humidity summer at their home in the Georgetown neighborhood, visiting family and refreshing their friendships in Seattle A.A. Empire Way. But there´s no trepidation about returning to their other home when the weather there moderates.

Mexico and Mexicans get a bum rap from Americans, they say, who only hear about bloody gang wars over drugs. They feel perfectly safe, and say the same is true for the many other Americans and Europeans who live there. They´ve found excellent A.A. in Puerto Vallarta, and through the program have developed friendships from all over the world.

Why the move to Mexico? Jim had lived in Seattle all his life, and Barbara had been here since 1960, when she moved here from Denver. "The short answer," said Jim, "is that it seemed like a good idea at the time." Was there any apprehension about such a radical change? "Probably not enough," Jim said. "We were not planning on moving, but we figured we could, so we did, bought a lot and built in the colonia (neighborhood). "Neither one of us spoke Spanish, but our neighbors are encouraging us to learn. I´m taking lessons when we go back. Our neighbors are friendly, mostly Mexican."

Jim said they have "world class" water and sewer service, the product of the city hiring a British firm to Install and run it. It´s expected the city government will take it over in a few years.

"We have all the big box stores, but the old Mexican charm is there too: open markets, vendors door to door. I bought my clay cooking pots that way, and get our bread and pastries the same way," Barbara said.

Another surprise, at least to this Anglo, is what the couple has to say about the Mexican medical system. Barbara got colon cancer in 2007. Instead of fleeing to the States, she opted for treatment in Puerto Vallarta. Why?

"It was a God shot," Barbara said. A Canadian they knew from A.A. had suffered the same illness and found excellent care in Puerto Vallarta. "I had seven hours of surgery. The surgeon and the oncologist were amazing. While I was recuperating, the oncologist, with Jim´s help, walked me around the hospital corridor, and when I got home, he called every day and even made a house call."

The cost was one tenth of what it would have been in the U.S. They are enrolled in Mexico´s national health plan--$250 per family for total coverage-but the plan does not cover major illness in the first year, so they paid out of pocket.

Barbara´s cancer is in remission now and she´s feeling fine.

"A friend of mine in the program spent the whole night with me while Barb was undergoing her surgery," Jim said. "Afterward," Barbara added, "I had a huge craving for KFC. They brought me the works. And women in the program brought in meals while I was getting my strength back."Barbara has cleaned up her dietary act since those early post-surgery days. No more KFC instead focusing on healthy eating. "I´m not perfect by any means, but the only thing I want to do perfectly is not drink every day. I´m glad I have the gift of this program. I needed to trust in a power greater than myself."

Life is good now. They have no anxiety about Mexico´s reputation as a dangerous place to live. It´s true, Jim noted, that Puerto Vallarta has had eight or ten policemen killed in the past two years. "It´s dangerous to be a police officer in Mexico." But the gangsters so far have left expats and tourists alone to avoid damaging the tourist business.

"There are crazy people everywhere," Barbara said. "Yes, there are gangs and there are gang wars, but the gangs are typically fighting each other. True, wealthy Mexicans risk kidnapping, but the criminals are not preying on tourists.

"We don´t hang around the dangerous neighborhoods," Jim said. "Just like in the U.S."

"Consider this when you think about Mexican crime," Barbara said. "The United States has five per cent of the world´s population and consumes 50 per cent of the world´s drugs. Which country really has the problem?"

It´s not 100 per cent sweetness and light, of course. Where is it? Jim says early on, he gave a cop 50 dollars when he was stopped for an alleged traffic infraction.

"The neighbors told me it wasn´t necessary. Sure enough, a few months later I got stopped again by a uniformed cop who said my papers weren´t in order and he was gonna impound my truck, but offered to settle the matter for $120. I said no. He kept lowering the price till finally I told him to call the tow truck. He was desperate not to make the call, so he finally said ´Just give me 100 pesos ($7).´ Two weeks later, I saw him again. He assured me everything was okay. I haven´t been bothered since."

Jim got his start as an alcoholic while working as a teenage babysitter. The child´s mother bought him and his friend a bottle of wine, "and from then on, I wanted more." He became a daily drinker and drugger while building a 25-year career as a remodeling home contractor with his brother here in Seattle. His first brush with a 12-step program was Al-Anon.

"My marriage wasn´t right. I told my wife she was an alcoholic, all the time I was drinking and drugging. It didn´t go over very well. Along the way to divorce, I saw a counselor who asked me not to drink while I was in treatment. That was Jan. 1, 1989. Once I quit, my life changed for the better."

Jim has two sons, both clean and sober "from me dragging them to meetings. My kids will tell you they grew up in A.A."

"I didn´t consider myself an alcoholic for the first four or five years. but I followed the Steps one day at a time, It wasn´t until 1995 that I decided to claim my chair, but I count my sobriety from Jan. 2, 1989."

Barbara started her drinking career at 14, not long after moving here from Denver. "That was the late ´60s, peace, love and rock and roll," she said. "I spent most of my high school years in the usual hippy pot festival."

Married at 21, she had a son before divorcing 12 years later. "My story was that I drank like everybody else, only they were worse." It was a friend in Los Angeles who saved her life."I knew something wasn´t right. She took me to an A.A. meeting and I admitted I was an alcoholic. She gave me the Big Book. I read it on the plane home and kept on drinking for the next three years. I tried to control it, but finally realized it was hopeless. Miserable, I went back to L.A.

"My friend there told me to eat anything I wanted, smoke as much as I wanted,eat all the sugar I wanted. Just don´t drink today. For three or four days, I ate nothing but key lime pie. She walked me everywhere. She knew I loved to garden, so she invited me to rehabilitate hers. I gave it a total makeover, listening to speaker tapes all the time and crying all the time and working my tail off.

"She detoxed me. I was doing more than a bottle of scotch a day. She had me drink gallons of water, and she saved my life."

Barbara became a sober alcoholic on March 1, 1996.

When she got back to Seattle, she plunged into A.A. work, and resumed her volunteer work for Common Meals, the program for homeless which has now become the highly successful FareStart. ´Eventually, she left her management job at Starbucks and went to work full time for FareStart.

Jim has become involved too. They designed the new upscale restaurant FareStart has opened on Seventh Avenue downtown. The program still maintains its original goals: training the homeless to cook, helping them find jobs in the field, providing housing and training in life skills.

"It´s been wonderfully successful," Barbara said. "It´s being replicated all over the country."

Jim and Barbara met in A.A. and became romantically involved while Jim was helping to coordinate the A.A./Al-Anon New Year´s dance.

"We met on the A.A. campus," he said. "What a meeting!" They were married Sept. 11, 1999.

Looking back on their years together, Jim said that A.A. "has given me the opportunity to have a life I´d never had before. A host of friends, happy marriage, good relations with my children. All that thanks to sobriety."

"All of the above," said Barbara. "Life could not be possible any other way now. Working with others, doing the Steps, following the Traditions. This is a divinely inspired program. I am blessed to be able to be a part of it."

Interviewed and written by Dick S.