Long before the drugs and arrests and jail time, Richard Jensen was a rambunctious fourth-grader, a skinny kid with curly red hair who found an outlet for his endless energy on the wrestling mats.

"I got twisted up in knots a lot at first," he said. "But I had fun with it. Wrestling was the biggest influence on my life. When you took away wrestling, the truth is I tried to find acceptance in other things."

Those other things later led Jensen to prison, where at a dining-hall table one day he sat across from several men serving life sentences. He decided there, at rock bottom, to turn around his life and find the wrestling mats once again.

Jensen, now 38, plans to speak with students at Queensbury Middle School today and wrestlers with Journeymen Wrestling on Thursday to share his story, which he hopes can serve as both a cautionary and inspirational tale.

Through an organization he founded called "Lost Dreams Awaken" (http://www.lostdreamsawaken.org), Jensen travels the country talking with school-age children about the pitfalls of addiction and the redemptive powers of wrestling that helped save his life.

"I feel obligated," Jensen said. "I feel like I'm able to educate not only the kids but also parents and adults and the public about the power of sports and the depths of drug addiction."

Jensen believes wrestling spared him from those depths throughout high school. The sport was a sanctuary from the poor Portland, Ore., neighborhood in which he was raised.

But when wrestling ended, his addiction started. He tried methamphetamines and Alcohol for the first time after his senior year. His first drug arrest came in the early 1990s. Then he was busted for DUI. Then there was another arrest for possession. Another for assault. Then another for distribution.

Jensen's final arrest came Oct. 10, 2003, after which he was sentenced to 13 months in the Oregon State Penitentiary.

"I remember sitting there one day with some guys who were never going to get out," Jensen said. "I realized if I kept doing it, I was going to be that guy across the table."

Jensen was released in November 2004. He made good on his vow to get clean, then started on his next goal -- a return to wrestling, at age 36.

He enrolled at Clackamas (Ore.) Community College and told its coach, who was nine years younger, of his intention to wrestle. Not sure what to expect, Jensen showed up to the first day of workouts with only his wrestling shoes. So when the team went on a three-mile training run, he had to run barefoot.

"Shoes or no shoes, I was going run just like the rest of them," Jensen said.

Jensen wrestled at Clackamas for two years. He reached the junior-college national tournament his second year, which helped spread his story through a series of newspaper articles and a story televised on ESPN.

Earlier this year, Austin Cowper, an English and Language Arts teacher at Queensbury Middle School, designed a unit for his students around the ESPN story. As part of the lesson, each of his students mailed Jensen a letter.

"When I saw the story, I said to myself that I needed to get this immediately into my students' hands," Cowper said.

Jensen later called the school to set up his visit, during which he'll speak to more than 700 students. Jensen also plans to speak to wrestlers from Journeymen Wrestling at a practice at Shenendehowa High School.

"His story is compelling and his story is real," said Frank Popolizio, founder of Journeymen Wrestling. "If one human being in that room has roots from that story growing into them, then it was worth his visit."

Jensen, who also owns an automobile repair shop called Affordable Car Doctor, said speaking to kids has helped him cope with addiction.

"The temptation gets not only few and far between but also further away," he said. "I think about those kids who wrote me those letters and say, 'I'm not going to use drugs and Alcohol today.' "