Cheryle Pacapelli and her dog Nugget
“I say it was divine intervention,” Pacapelli said of the path that led her into the addiction recovery field.
That path began with loss, as she spent years in telecommunications until her company collapsed after the September 11 attacks destroyed its New York City equipment. No work existed in the field. She then met someone in a recovery house who offered a suggestion.
“I had a house, good credit, and I was able to get a mortgage,” she said. “I bought my first recovery house.”
Within five months, she ran 26 beds of recovery housing. “These things needed to happen for me to end up opening a recovery house and ultimately to end up in New Hampshire building a network of recovery centers,” she said.
Pacapelli owned and operated Stepping Stone House in Connecticut for 21 years, serving men transitioning from incarceration or treatment. She helped launch the National Alliance for Recovery Residences and trained house owners on budgets, rules, and operating standards from 2004 to 2012.
She was an early architect of peer recovery support when the work had no formal name. “We were just getting recovery out of the basement of a church to show that people do recover,” she said. While there, she helped design two services still used across the country, telephone recovery support and peer recovery coaching, through The Art & Science of Peer-Assisted Recovery.
When she arrived in New Hampshire, the state had no Recovery Community Organizations. She set out to find people ready to open recovery centers during the early years of the opioid epidemic. “No one understood what it was and how it was affecting people,” she said.
Initially, she worked with six organizations, including White Horse Recovery, providing seed money to help them launch. As of June 2026, there are 21 recovery centers operating across New Hampshire, including four operated by White Horse Recovery located in Center Ossipee, N Conway, Berlin and Littleton. Because all centers share one data system, New Hampshire holds some of the strongest recovery data in the country.
Her personal values shaped the work. “I have my pathway to recovery, and not everyone does the same thing I do, but that doesn’t mean they can’t recover their own way,” said Pacapelli, who noted how the field has evolved. “When I entered recovery in 1989, a musician who drank while performing would have been told to give up the guitar. Today, the approach asks what it would look like for them not to drink while playing – letting people be their authentic selves.”
For the past decade, Pacapelli served as Project Director for the Peer Recovery Support Services Facilitating Organization at Harbor Care in Nashua, the main funder of the grant supporting recovery services statewide.
“Cheryle has shaped the peer recovery movement in New Hampshire from the ground up,” said White Horse Recovery Executive Director Matthew Plache. “Her decades of lived experience and her work training the coaches who walk alongside people every day make her an invaluable asset to our community.”
The 2026 Annual Freedom Event, titled “An Evening of Hope, Community, and Support,” will be held from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the First Congregational Church in Center Ossipee. The evening will also feature firsthand stories from individuals served by White Horse Recovery and a silent auction.
Tickets are $50 per person, with proceeds supporting behavioral health and addiction treatment services across Coos, Carroll, and Grafton counties. White Horse Recovery’s 2026 Annual Freedom Event is sponsored by Eastern Propane, Cobalt Construction Management, and Tony Fallon Architecture.
Founded in Center Ossipee, New Hampshire, White Horse Recovery has grown from a small organization into a leading nonprofit with 28 employees across four locations in Northern New Hampshire, providing both mental health and substance use disorder services, regardless of ability to pay.
If you or someone you know is struggling, you are not alone. White Horse Recovery offers services for those ready to start their journey to recovery. For more information, call 603-651-1441, Ext. 1.