Forgiveness Is Job One

The boss had every reason to turn his back. Instead, he befriended a troubled man—and hired him.

- Jen McCaffery

JERAMIE MILLER IS the last guy you’d expect George Vorel to hire. After all, Vorel’s company, Envirosafe, is an industrial steel processor outside Pittsburgh where employees operate heavy equipment as they sandblast and paint steel used in bridges and buildings around the country. And Miller is a former drug user and dealer. What’s more, he introduced Vorel’s own daughter to heroin soon after she graduated from high school, in 1998.

It took Vorel’s daughter until 2005 to get clean. Once she was, she became a drug and alcohol counselor. Among her goals was to get her friend Jeramie clean too. He’d ended up in jail for selling and possessing drugs and aggravated assault, and she thought a job would help him get his life on track. “I remember her saying, ‘I’ll mention something to my dad,’” says Miller, now 40. “And I was like, ‘Huh? Are you sure? Your dad dad?’” Yes, George Vorel—the man who’d once chased this dangerous guy out of the house.