Mentors guide troubled girls through Pathways to a second chance

BY CHRISTINA SOSA, Californian staff writer
e-mail: csosa@bakersfield.com | Saturday, May 13 2006 11:37 PM

Last Updated: Sunday, May 14 2006 12:06 AM

Sara Rock wasn’t going to make it on the outside.

Photos:

Photo by John Harte

Now 22, Shasta Gutierrez is a mother of two who has avoided the drug problems of her youth.

Photo by Rodney Thornburg

Sara Rock, 14, carved an obscene phrase into her arm describing her feelings about love, an act that screamed to anyone who bothered to notice that this girl was desperately alone.

Photo by Rodney Thornburg

Heather Torres, 15, and the other women of the Pathways program relax while getting an avocado facial.

It was already March, and the 14-year-old had been locked up in juvenile hall since November, when she tested positive for methamphetamine, in a rehabilitation program called Pathways, where she was supposed to be learning how to stay off drugs and make better decisions.

But it wasn’t working.

The obscenity she had carved into her arm describing her feelings about love screamed to anyone who bothered to notice that this girl was desperately alone. It was clear, even to Sara herself, she would seek the solace of the drugs she had turned to first when she was 11 years old, the moment she was released.

“I think they (the program) help people who want to be helped, and I’m not sure if I’m one of them,” Sara said.

Few of the roughly 30 girls ages 14 to 17 years old in the Pathways program are happy about the court-ordered help they endure for 12- or 18-week sentences. Even though they don’t see it, this is a second chance.

Shooting for normal They spend their days pretty much as you’d expect. Academics, meals, time to think, lots and lots of therapy.

On Monday nights, they get a couple of hours in Mentors, a program Kern County Probation Department Coordinator of Volunteer Services Sarah Webb started about five years ago.

Each week a group of women, many not much older than the girls themselves, try to present them with a new perspective. Often the focus is fun, and the nights are almost considered a reward, Webb said. The girls have learned how to make avocado face masks and practiced a couple yoga moves.

“It’s important to be exposed to fun because it helps them to feel normal,” said Theresa Yanez, assistant division director of the program. “It helps them to feel accepted. It’s just building them, building their character, giving them their self-esteem back.”

Many Monday nights are also spent listening to guest speakers, who come in to talk about everything from trade schools to sexually transmitted diseases.

Wendy Adams, a mentor who started volunteering in January, first came to the program as a speaker. She talked to the girls about the decisions they’ve made, and emphasized that they are not inherently bad kids.

“We could have made the wrong choice at the wrong time,” Adams said. “It could have went the other way.”

Most of the girls there got there because of the same bad decisions. Drugs, gangs and boyfriends come up often as they explain the circumstances of their incarceration. Violent crimes do not.

Crimes like murder, armed robbery or especially violent assaults will automatically disqualify a girl from the program. Judges take all sorts of factors into consideration, such as number of offenses and home life, when choosing to sentence a girl to Pathways, according to Sherry Bullock, county probation volunteer services coordinator.

“The majority of the girls are not as savvy,” Bullock said. “Their crimes are not as serious. They have more of an opportunity to change their lives.”

It’s an opportunity they didn’t ask for, but one they all need. Pathways is a rehabilitation program that started in 1992 under the name Female Treatment Program.

The name changed somewhere along the way because Pathways was more positive and better reflected the goal of the program, Bullock said.

County taxpayers bet about $750,000 each year that these girls are still redeemable.

Growing pains “I’ve been trying to get locked up,” said Patricia White, 16, who served from December to the end of March. “Just to get it over with.”

Patricia has never met her father. She said she knows he’s in prison, but not why. She has always lived with her grandparents, because her mother suffers from mental illness, her grandmother, also named Patricia White, said. That she would end up in police custody was more of an eventuality for her.

But she has people who love her. One of Patricia’s biggest regrets is stealing money from her grandparents. She couldn’t bring herself to use the money to buy the drugs she wanted.

“I love my grandparents. I feel bad for stealing from them,” Patricia said.

Flashes of her lingering childhood were apparent as she described what she missed most about home while being locked up for the first time.

“Probably waking up and not having my granma there, because I used to sit on my granma’s lap in the morning,” Patricia said. “In here, you can’t hug people, and it’s hard.”

The volunteer mentors are instructed to maintain a certain distance from the girls. They walk their own tightrope, between trying to reach the girls and being wary of becoming too emotionally involved. “You try to stay away from anything very personal. You try to talk about superficial (things),” said Jennifer Webb, 20, Sarah Webb’s daughter and a volunteer mentor.

Mentors don’t talk about their own lives, don’t hug the girls and can’t contact the girls after they leave the program without special permission.

Adams shows her affection by bringing the girls food. The cost of some generic soda and bite-sized Hershey’s bars from Wal-Mart is cheap for 30 smiling children, she said.

The girls, in turn, are equally as affectionate toward Adams, calling her name and saying hello as they see her come down the stairs each Monday. They snatch for the treats she places in the middle of the tables eagerly, and list talking to her as their favorite part of the week.

“I don’t talk above them. I show them respect,” Adams said. “I think a lot of them never had that kind of respect before. They’ve been put down, put down, put down.”

Starting on track Respect and chocolate go a long way. Kristen McKenzie, 17, seemed convinced by Adams’ philosophy in March.

“It’s helped me out a lot. It’s let me know that there’s people out there that do care, that we’re not bad people, we just made bad decisions,” Kristen said.

Kristen vowed to get out of custody, stop using methamphetamine, appreciate her parents more and generally do better. But the phone number Kristen provided had been disconnected by the end of April. Webb could provide no clue as to how Kristen was doing, except to say that she was not back in custody.

One of the frustrating parts about working with these girls is that often volunteers never know what happens to them after they leave the program, Bullock said. But even worse, and more often, the mentors and program directors know exactly where the girls end up, because it’s right back in custody. Sometimes girls are even sentenced right back to Pathways.

“Seeing one leave and then come back, that was my most devastating thing,” Adams said.

Strong, supportive parents help keep the girls out of trouble, Bullock said. But some of the girls come from good homes to begin with, and sometimes going back to a good home doesn’t help.

“It seems to be more to do with the friends they choose. That seems to be the determining factor,” Bullock said. “Some of them, that’s all it takes is just that one trip here.”

Despite problems with her parents, Patricia White’s grandparents gave her a good home, her grandmother said.

“We gave her every advantage under the sun,” White said. “She never gave us an ounce of trouble.” When Patricia was first released from Pathways, things were OK for a while, White said. Then her granddaughter met back up with the boyfriend whose arrival originally brought about the change in Patricia.

On April 21, Patricia ran away. By the beginning of May, there was a warrant out for her arrest for violating her probation, White said.

“Patricia was everything you wanted (in a child), then she met him,” White said. “She is making choices, but if she was to stay away from him, Patricia has really, really good qualities and a really good heart, and I think she would be fine.”

Changing attitudes Sara Rock, who had already done a two-week stint in custody before she was sentenced to Pathways, was released from Juvenile Hall on March 28. She went home to a difficult relationship with her mother and a father she barely knows because he hasn’t been around most of her life, she said.

By the end of April, Sara had been out of custody, and clean, for nearly a month.

Her future is incredibly uncertain. But for maybe the first time in her life, she’s started thinking about what she wants it to be.

“I just hope it turns out without this thing on my ankle,” Sara said, referring to the house arrest anklet she was still wearing at the time.

Each day, sometimes every hour, is a new opportunity to fail. So far she’s been stronger than she thought she would be.

“It’s been hard, because there’s so many temptations, but I’ve been able to avoid them,” Sara said.

She goes to school and spends two hours each week at church. She admits she doesn’t really like church, but at least it’s a way to get out of the house.

“I think it’s my attitude toward life that’s gonna change,” Sara said. “I have not drank. I’m gonna continue it, too.”