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STORIES
BY LOU KILZER
On to Montana
With Corey still stuck on the lower levels in Western Samoa after almost two years, Laura had her son transferred to Spring Creek Lodge in Montana. Kasio was there — as a staff member — and she encouraged the move.
But Corey's activities were still restricted.
When Mitchell Humason came to visit his children there, he was allowed to see only Kasio. Corey was not yet on a high enough level to allow a visit from his dad.
Spring Creek Lodge sits in the mountains, where the air is crisp and the lodgings far more comfortable than those in Western Samoa.
In seven months in Montana, Corey broke into the upper levels. The shy, introspective boy even made it to Level 6.
Before he could leave, however, he had to pass one last hurdle: joint parent-child seminars in Utah. It is an emotional reunion of a child with the parent or parents.
With his mother there, Corey passed.
But with Teen Help, completing the program does not always mean leaving it.
Laura, like many other parents in the program, became a fervent backer of all aspects of Teen Help. She began staffing the program's seminars for parents and touting the benefits of Teen Help.
"People revere it as though it were a religion," Humason says.
Corey, too, was tethered to Teen Help. Last summer, when he was 16, Laura discovered that he had drunk beer and smoked cigarettes.
She sent him back to the Montana compound for a three-month refresher. And she kept a close eye on him when he returned to El Paso.
"I did return my son Corey to SCL (Spring Creek Lodge) after he'd been home a year — the moment I found out that he was drinking and smoking pot. ... He is now back home again, but he understands that if he runs away from home, he stays wherever he runs to. I WON'T HAVE HIM IN MY HOUSE WITH THIS BEHAVIOR.
"And I've just stopped feeling that I need to have him in my control. ... My son threatened to call Child Protective Services just once. I told him that if he did, he could stay with them. I wouldn't fight with them, and I wouldn't have him back. If they put him into a foster home, then he would find out what living without the advantages I could give him would be like. ... It'd be a great life lesson for him.
"He shut up with that threat mighty fast."
Desperate Measures: Home
| Epilogue: Lost Boy
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