By Lisa Levitt Ryckman
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer

MONTROSE -- She's a little girl with a little girl.

Bobbi Langlois, 15, kisses her 5-month-old daughter, Riley.

They are two kids with their whole lives ahead of them: a baby with eyes the color of the sky before a storm. And her teen-age mom, who sees hope on the horizon.

Bobbi Langlois is 15. Her baby, Riley, is 5 months old.

In many ways, Bobbi became a mom when she was 6 years old, and her own mother was killed in an accident.

Her younger brother needed care, and her dad had problems. After her mother died, he quit his job as a police officer and dulled his pain with alcohol.

That left Bobbi to hold things together. Now, nine years later, she seems serious and steady, an adult in all but age, a teen-ager who knows more than any 15-year-old should about courts and cops and county social services.

She didn't have time to be a child.

"I had a lot of responsibility," Bobbi says. "My younger brother was only 4, so I had to help raise him. But at the same time, I became really close to my dad. Because I wanted to help him, and I didn't know why this was going on."

Her dad got in trouble a lot. Domestic violence, forgery, drunk driving, driving without a license. He remarried, divorced and remarried again. He was in and out of work release and finally ended up in at a state prison in Cañon City.

Before that, Bobbi and her brother went into foster care. They bounced from family to family for two years, waiting for their father to get clean.

"We'd be in a place for about three months, and then we had to leave there because of the time limit," Bobbi says. "We'd go to another place. It's hard -- it's very hard -- to go into somebody's house you don't even know."

Some of the foster families were nice, some rude, some downright difficult. Through it all, Bobbi and her brother stayed together -- their sympathetic county caseworker made sure of it.

They finally came home, but they were alone at night while their father was on work release. On one of those nights, Bobbi decided to throw a party. She drank so much she had to be hospitalized.

Her father went back to jail, her brother to foster care. Bobbi went to a girls' home.

"That was the worst feeling I've ever had," she says. "I got my little brother put in a foster home and I got my dad's work release taken away. It killed me, it did.

"Being in that girls' home, that was really difficult. I was so shut down when I was there, because I felt so bad. It was really strict. But that was good. I think of it as punishment, and that's good, because I deserved it, for what I did."

At age 14, Bobbi began dating an 18-year-old. They were together nearly a year, and after they split up, Bobbi found out she was pregnant.

When county officials asked Bobbi whether she wanted to bring statutory rape charges against him, she agreed. She wanted him to take responsibility, something he had never had to do.

"When I told him I was pregnant, he was like, 'Oh, OK, that's nice,"' she says. "It was his third baby."

Bobbi went to court recently for a hearing in the case and took Riley with her. Her former boyfriend walked right past them.

"It doesn't bother me," she says. "If he doesn't want to see her, that's fine. Then he doesn't deserve to. He's missing out.

"When my baby does get older, if she wants to find her dad, I'll help her. I'll explain to her how me and her dad were. I think we loved each other. I loved him. I'll tell her..."

Bobbi pauses.

"Well, I don't know," she finally says. She turns the idea over in her mind for a minute, imagining her daughter, 10 years from now, asking about a father she never knew, a father who never wanted to claim her.

"I'll tell her who he is, what kind of person he is," Bobbi says. "He's a nice guy. But it'll be really hard for me to tell her how he was when she was little. And I think a lot of it is that he doesn't want to see me or talk to me. But he has to realize that I'm going to be there with her all the time. So if he wants to see her, he'll have to put up with me. If he doesn't want to see her with me, then I can't do anything about that."

So Bobbi concentrates on the parts of her life she can control. She dreams of being a veterinarian, and she knows that means going on to college. She works hard at Passage Charter School, the alternative high school for teen moms she has attended since April. If she keeps up her current pace, she'll graduate a year early.

"Sometimes I get frustrated, if I'm having a bad week," Bobbi says. "And sometimes I do feel like giving up. But I just think, 'Take a deep breath, this will be over.' I have never once wanted to drop out or quit. If I graduate from school with good grades and my diploma and everything, then I can tell my daughter, 'I did that. Now you need to."'

Bobbi wants to be the best mom she can be, to lead a healthy life and teach her daughter how it's done. But first, she's got to do it herself.

She stopped smoking when she got pregnant. She doesn't drink or party; she works as a cashier after school. She and her brother live with their stepmother, their father's third wife.

For the first time, Bobbi doesn't have to be mom to her little brother. And she has someone she can turn to for help, even though asking for help is still hard for her.

"Because there's never really been anybody for me to ask for help," she said.

Riley has made all the difference, with her perfect peach-fuzz head and round eyes that look blue, then gray, then hazel. She sleeps all night and wakes up smiling.

"That just makes my whole day," Bobbi said. "She keeps me going, I'll tell you what."

Bobbi hasn't been out with her friends since Riley was born, and she doesn't really miss it. Becoming a mother made her realize that she needs to be a parent her daughter can depend on, somebody who gives her love, limits and stability.

"Right now, I don't want anybody. I don't need anybody," Bobbi says. But she knows exactly the kind of man she could love.

"A person that would not look at me for my age when I had my daughter. Somebody that doesn't look at my looks. Somebody who loves me for who I am. Somebody that loves and treats my daughter with respect and loves her for the person she is. And somebody that'll show responsibility.

"If I ever have another child, I want to be settled, have my own place. And if I am with the person I have another baby with, I want him to do just as much as I do. Get up in the night. Change diapers. That's the kind of person I want. They don't have to be drop-dead gorgeous. I just want him to look at us for who we are, not for what we've done."

That's what Bobbi does with her father: She loves him for who he is and forgives him for the past.

He'll be eligible for work release next year. He's been clean since the end of May, and he's going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in prison.

"That shows me he doesn't need (alcohol) anymore," Bobbi says. "I think he used it as a crutch after my mom passed away. There were some real rough times. But everybody makes mistakes.

"Everybody goes down the wrong road sometimes."

December 26, 1999

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