Ruth Daiker, a retired addictions specialist who was director of the Jones Falls Community Center, died of pancreatic cancer Jan. 21 at Gilchrist Hospice Center. The Carney resident was 74.
Born Ruth Eileen Baker in Baltimore and raised on Darby Street in Hampden, she attended city public schools.
After raising her family, she joined the Greater Hampden Workforce, and several years later, while on the staff of the Jones Falls Community Corp., began working with people addicted to drugs and alcohol. She went on to become director of the Task Force on Youth and was later its executive director.
"She devoted the majority of her life to breaking the stereotype of people who suffer from substance abuse and addiction," said her sister, Sharon Fick of Middle River. "This cause was close to her heart. She had seen what addiction can do. Ruthie was a determined person and a fighter."
In the 1990s, Mrs. Daiker was director of a Hampden treatment program and halfway house called the Counseling Center.
"I've been in this field 20 years, and for 20 years we had to rob Peter to pay Paul to buy paper," she said in a Baltimore Sun article. "Now all of a sudden, we can get tutoring, we can get housing, we can get medical care. I've never seen so many people continue in treatment."
She retired in 2009 from what became the Baltimore Community Resource Center on 25th Street.
She appeared in a documentary video, "The Joy of Living Normal," with her son, and they talked about methadone treatment and the effects of substance abuse.
She was a past winner of a Community Relations Commission award for her work at Robert Poole Junior High School in Hampden. She had also been co-chair of the Greater Hampden Task Force Against Racial Violence and sought to ease racial tensions in the community.
Services were held Saturday.
In addition to her sister, survivors include her husband of 45 years, Dick Daiker Sr.; a son, Richard F. Daiker Jr. of Westminster; a daughter, Robin Woodell of Arbutus; four brothers, Carl Miller of Sykesville, Richard Miller and David Miller, both of Baltimore, and Billy Pruitt of Lakeland, Fla.; 10 grandchildren; and a great-grandson. A son, Joseph Green, died in 2007.