Readers Care: Where young people escape their past, regain hope for the future

EDITOR'S NOTE: For a quarter-century, Seattle Post- Intelligencer readers have donated generously to the newspaper's annual Readers Care Fund drive, generating more than $5 million for local charities. Today, we look at one of the charities benefiting this year: Southwest Youth and Family Services.

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They are still young, still lacking a traditional education, still not long removed from the life that got them in trouble in the first place.

Stephanie Lopez and Cinthia Alaniz wouldn't seem to be a font of wise counsel for their peers. Their lives were marked by the pitfalls of many struggling youths: drugs, alcohol, gangs, academic problems, teen parenthood and poverty, with cultural issues as well.

Yet today, as they pull their lives together with the help of Southwest Youth and Family Services, the young women barely hesitate when asked what advice they would give to teens who are not unlike themselves a few years ago.

"Stay in school. Stay away from gang activity -- they're not always going to be there for you," said Alaniz, 18, an ex-gang member who covers most of the tattoos she once proudly displayed.


		Karen Ducey / P-I
	Stephanie Lopez, 20, and her daughter, Annisa Andrews, 20 months, take a break from Lopez's teen parent GED class at the Southwest Youth and Family Services center.

"Young girls see me on the bus and they ask, 'What gang are you in?' I say, 'None. You need to get out of there.' "

Lopez, 20, spoke from personal experience as well.

"Do you want to work at a fast-food place while pregnant? Think about that," she said. "I'd tell them, 'I know you don't want to hear this. You think the world revolves around you. But it doesn't.' "

The two Latinas are among about a dozen students enrolled in a teen parent program that helps them earn their General Educational Development certificate. The GED is one of several educational programs at Southwest Youth and Family Services, which also provides individual and family counseling and teaches classes in parenting and English as a second language.

The agency, which serves West Seattle, White Center and South Park, aims to offer help in a way that is relevant to its clients, many of whom are teens or immigrants.

Alaniz and Lopez each take at least two buses to get to the agency, at 4555 Delridge Way S.W.

"It's worth it because I know I'm going to get it done," said Alaniz, who leaves her Rainier Beach home more than two hours early to get to class on time.

Both young women experienced family problems growing up, struggled in school and gave birth to daughters about 20 months ago. They had little success at other programs before coming to Southwest Youth and Family Services, where both are flourishing.

"Many of (the teen parents) are products of other teen parents," said Steve Daschle, executive director of the 25-year-old agency, which serves about 1,500 people annually. "We're hoping to break that cycle, so that they can be successful as parents and successful in their lives."

It's a cycle Lopez and Alaniz say they intend to halt in their families.

"I don't want to see (her daughter) pregnant at 16," said Alaniz, who was three months shy of her 17th birthday when she gave birth to Anais Santana. "I want her to go to private school. I want her to go to college." Alaniz, a native of Mexico, grew up mostly in South Seattle. She dropped out of school at 15 and joined a gang.

"There was peer pressure. I ran away from home and went to live with my boyfriend," she said. "It was a bad choice."

Lopez was reared in Stockton, Calif., before moving to Seattle with her father when she was 13. As a new girl in middle school, she felt like an outcast. She stumbled academically and became a dropout by 16, a time when she started to have a drinking problem.

"I didn't have any purpose in this world," Lopez said, describing herself then as "basically immature."

She met a boy who made her "feel safe," she said, "and I ended up having a baby."

Annisa Andrews entered the world six days after Lopez's 19th birthday. Without an education, Lopez and Alaniz ended up working at fast-food joints, with Lopez working back-to-back, full-time shifts at two restaurants for 1 1/2 years.

Both young women use similar words to describe how pregnancy and motherhood affected their lives.

"Everything changed," Lopez said. "Now I had a purpose to live."

Pregnancy "changed everything," Alaniz said. "I didn't hang out with the same people. Didn't smoke, didn't drink -- I stopped everything. I wanted my baby to have a good life."

They tried to get their education back on track, but struggled at mainstream and alternative school programs, places that "just gave me work but didn't help me," Alaniz said.

A public health nurse told them about Southwest Youth and Family Services and they enrolled on the same day this year -- Aug. 23 -- though they had not known each other previously.

With child care provided at the agency, Lopez and Alaniz can bring their daughters with them as they study for GED exams and participate in a support group with other teen parents.

"Before, I couldn't talk about my past," Lopez said. "But it's cool. Everybody talks about what's happened to them. Everything is confidential."

The difference in attitude starts the moment Lopez and Alaniz step into the agency.

"We walk in the door and the receptionist says, 'Hi, how are you doing?' " Alaniz said. Even that simple greeting means a lot to them.

After they complete their GED, they want to continue their education. It's not a coincidence that both intend to work with teen moms, Alaniz as a midwife and Lopez as a counselor or social worker.

Curn Domingo, the agency's young parent family advocate, facilitates a Thursday support group for the teen parents, ensuring them that "they're never truly ever alone."

Among the topics they discuss are better ways to communicate, raise children and curb teen parenthood.

"We break down what they need to do to break that cycle," Domingo said. "In the group, they hear things they never listened to before."

She believes Lopez and Alaniz have the determination to make it.

"They're so smart," Domingo said. "We learn so much from them."

Alaniz also has learned something about herself, something she realizes every time she reflects on the gang life she left behind.

"They're stuck in the same place," she said. "But I want to change."

P-I reporter John Iwasaki can be reached at 206-448-8096 or johniwasaki@seattlepi.com

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