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STORIES
BY LOU KILZER
The state intervenes
While Corey was off in Western Samoa, his petite, auburn-haired sister Kasio, then 15, also was having problems, Laura says.
Teachers at Sterling Middle School described Kasio as an intellectual girl who sometimes wrote poetry.
Laura says the problems went well beyond that.
"I took her to the local mental health center," Laura says. "I said we need family counseling. We need it very badly."
But Laura says it didn't help.
"All the local mental health facility did was listen to Kasio tell them that the problem was all me," Laura says. "That she was not using drugs, even though I found a bong (a pipe for smoking marijuana) in her room and told them about it. They believed her!"
After Kasio ran away once for three days, her situation came to the attention of Logan County social workers.
Eventually, Kasio was placed in a treatment program with a foster family in Breckenridge.
Jetta Schmitt, the foster mother, says Laura agreed with the placement but soon changed her mind and demanded Kasio's return.
"She did everything she could to regain control," Schmitt says.
Laura says she never agreed to give up custody.
The dispute landed mother and daughter before Logan County District Judge Steven Shinn.
"There were just a lot of issues going on between Kasio and her mother," Shinn says. "My main concern for Kasio was to get her in a program that she liked ... one that she was adjusting to, where I wasn't concerned about her running or even going one step further and doing something destructive to herself."
He ordered that Kasio remain with Schmitt in Breckenridge.
Schmitt, who takes in as many as four children at a time for theraputic foster care, says that Kasio arrived defiant but soon got on well in the family.
"She made some incredible breakthroughs," says Schmitt. Laura, though, still insisted on Kasio's return.
"They put her in a foster home and told me she was there permanently," Laura says. "I said, 'How can you do this? You never had a counseling session with us.' We never had family therapy, we never had a psychiatrist see her. We never had anything. They just decided they didn't like what I wanted to do."
In an interview with the News, Laura says that during a 10-month legal skirmish in Logan County District Court, the foster parents checked her letters to Kasio and limited access to her daughter.
Finally, Shinn decided that Kasio had improved enough that she could return home. He says he had heard that Kasio's brother was in a program on a Pacific island and he was afraid that if Kasio thought she was going there, she might run away or hurt herself.
So he insisted that Laura agree to one condition for Kasio's return: the girl could not be sent out of state without his permission.
But after Shinn issued his ruling, Laura paid a company linked to Teen Help to remove Kasio from her home and transport her to the program in Utah. Soon, Kasio was at Teen Help's Spring Creek Lodge compound in northwestern Montana.
"You know what?" Laura says. "I had her taken to the program and I left the state four days later and haven't been back."
Shinn says that had he known what had happened he could have found Laura in contempt.
Records show that Laura sold her Sterling house for $170,000 on July 18, 1997.
She bought a stucco home in El Paso, far from the jurisdiction of Shinn and Logan County social workers.
Desperate Measures: Home
| Epilogue: Lost Boy
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