AUBURN – Greg Shea is all about hope.

Hope for Maine’s thousands of mentally ill. Hope for the dedicated people who work with them.

Hope for the future.

“You can’t get up in the morning and take another step if you don’t have hope,” he said.

At Tri-County Mental Health Services, Shea has been providing that hope since 1974. Working up to 15 hours a day – often seven days a week – he’s dedicated his life to ensuring that Tri-County, his employees and their thousands of clients thrive.

But now, after three decades as the agency’s champion, he is passing that responsibility on to someone new.

Shea is retiring.

“I’ve been here 30 years,” said Shea, 62. “They need someone who can take it another 30 years.”

Finding his place

In the early 1960s, Shea faced a choice.

A knee injury had forced him to leave the Air Force Academy, his dream school since childhood. He had moved back to his Auburn home and had enrolled in Bates College in Lewiston, but he didn’t know what to do with his life from there.

“I had a feeling I wanted to do something with people,” he said.

He briefly considered becoming a doctor (took too long) or a lawyer (too many already). Then the Maine Department of Health and Welfare said it would pay for graduate school for anyone who agreed to become a Maine social worker after graduation.

“I said, That’s what I want to do,'” Shea said.

After graduating from Boston College with a master’s degree in social work, Shea moved back to Maine and became a social worker. But for the emotional man with a passion for helping people, the state job wasn’t always a good fit.

After 12 years, he felt he was about to be fired.

“There were issues that were important to me that the bureaucracy wasn’t ready to move fast enough on,” he said. “Particularly with regard to child protection.”

At the same time, Tri-County, the tiny Lewiston-based community mental health center, was in the middle of a search of its own. It needed a new leader.

Shea won the job.

Weeks after he arrived, he learned one reason why the agency was struggling for money.

“We hadn’t billed anyone in seven and a half months,” he said.

Shea threw himself into the job of executive director, working nine to 15 hours a day. He met every new Tri-County employee and attended every orientation. When the state made budget cut after budget cut, he helped shepherd the nonprofit group through the financial trials. When the state was ordered to increase community services for the mentally ill, he helped Tri-County and the rest of Maine deal with the new needs.

For many, Shea is Tri-County.

“He’s been there so long you can’t separate the two,” said Laird Covey, Central Maine Medical Center’s chief operating officer and former president of Tri-County’s Board of Directors.

Last day

In 1974, Tri-County served fewer than 1,300 people a year from four locations. It had a staff of 80.

Today, the agency helps 7,000 children and adults – with substance abuse, mental illness, developmental disabilities and crisis situations – from 23 locations across four counties. It has a staff of 476.

But Shea still knows everyone by name. And they all know him.

He’s the man who gave up pay raises when Tri-County couldn’t afford to give them to everyone. He’s the boss known for sending out cards and personal notes, for taking the time to connect with staff and clients.

Chris Copeland, program director and Shea’s replacement, called Shea Tri-County’s “champion.”

“I’m going to miss him tremendously,” he said.

Shea is going to miss Tri-County, too. By midafternoon Friday, Shea’s last day, he was struggling to keep back the tears.

A husband, father of two and grandfather of two, Shea plans to relax over the next few months. He will, he said, need to rediscover who he is apart from Tri-County.

But he easily admits, “It may be hard for me to do nothing.”

Shea plans to continue volunteering with a number of area organizations, including the Abused Women’s Advocacy Project.

“There are things I want to do to continue to make a difference,” he said.

As Copeland takes over, though, Shea will stay away from Tri-County. He knows the agency will be OK without him, he said.

It will always have hope.