They were three friends in Philadelphia and hard-core Eagles fans who needed to get sober, so they headed out to Arizona to see Jimmy Wallin.

Wallin, a Cardinal O’Hara High School graduate, had gone out to Arizona 30 years earlier to go to a recovery house there,  writes Jason Nark for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

He ended up buying the recovery house in Arizona and today operates 18 Good Life recovery homes in Mesa, Phoenix, and Peoria, Ariz., along with one in Chester, Pa.

“There’s a lot of recovery houses and a lot of halfway houses in Arizona,” said Denny Alessandrine, a 54-year-old West Catholic graduate. “So there’s a lot of us out here.”

There are at least seven men from Southwest Philly who came to Arizona to get sober. They say the party atmosphere from Eagles fans coming to Phoenix for the Super Bowl won’t test their sobriety.

“I mean, I think half of our neighborhood is flying in but no, we have that foundation we built,” said Mike Daggett, a West Catholic graduate.

He finds it “fricking amazing” that the Eagles are in the Super Bowl in their backyard.

Read more about this group of friends getting sober in Arizona with help from Jimmy Wallin in The Philadelphia Inquirer.