By Lisa Levitt Ryckman
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer

LOUISVILLE -- At first glance, there's no way to know what makes Lorena Garcia special, what makes her more than just another teen-ager with an easy laugh, average grades and a job in a shoe store.

Lorena Garcia, center, sings carols at a recent gathering of the Young Life Christians group at a cabin near Chautauqua in Boulder. Of the group, Lorena says, "It opened my heart so I could love people more and I could have the desire to help people."

Without talking to Lorena, there's no way to know about her big heart, about all the kids whose lives she's touched or the impact she has already had, even though she's only 17.

Lorena defies all the negative stereotypes she knows people have of teen-agers, the belief that they party, play video games, revel in violence and don't care about anyone but themselves.

Because Lorena cares about everyone.

"Why do you do all this stuff?" her friends ask her.

"I just want to," Lorena says.

Community activism runs in the family. Lorena's parents toted her to meetings before she could walk or talk.

Her mother, Teresa, is a third-grade bilingual teacher and a past president of the Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition. Her father, Richard, is a family resource coordinator for elementary schools.

"I see my dad, and he's so involved in everything. And he really wants to help make people's lives better," Lorena says. "This is kind of my way of doing it."

Community involvement -- at least for kids -- has to be fun, Lorena says. It hasn't always been that way for her, but when she helped organize a youth conference for the Parent Coalition, she made sure it would be fun for the kids who showed up.

"It used to just be a whole bunch of workshops," she says. "And then, we were like, well, that's not as fun as if you were to play games and have hands-on activities, but then actually learn something from them," she says.

"We play games. We talk. We don't present. We listen, to what their needs are, what they want."

They play a game called the Electric Maze. There's only one way to the top. Teams of kids work together to get there, one step at a time, finding the right path through trial and error. Like life.

"If you mess up, you have to go back the exact same way," Lorena says. "You can't just step off. If you do, you add to your time, and you want to get done as quick as possible. In life, if you were to mess up and just quit, it would take you twice as long to start again."

Lorena credits a religious awakening several years ago with helping her see beyond herself. Her family is Catholic but not particularly involved with their faith.

In her freshman year of high school, Lorena joined Young Life, a Christian youth group, and faith became paramount.

"It opened my heart so I could love people more, and I could have the desire to help people," she says. "I think I was very bitter before. I look back at middle school. I did not have any fun. I don't think I was really ever happy. There's a facade you wear of happiness, but I don't think I really was."

She says she's always happy now. And she thinks she has some answers she wants to share.

Lorena was chosen to help organize Colorado's program for "A Season for Nonviolence," a worldwide movement to promote the principles of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Through another group, Statewide Opportunities for Youth, she has been trained to teach other kids how to get involved in their communities and get the most out of their lives.

The training was based on 40 developmental assets identified by Assets for Colorado Youth, a five-year statewide initiative designed to help kids grow into responsible adults. The ideas include being involved in school, reading for pleasure, placing value on helping others, planning ahead, peaceful conflict resolution, having a sense of purpose, feeling empowered and optimistic about the future.

Next year, the young people will go to high schools in Pueblo, Grand Junction and the San Luis Valley to explain the assets to kids there.

"What we're going to ask for in return from those kids is that they promise to apply the assets in their community," Lorena says.

She says one of the most important assets is supportive parents like hers, parents who ask you what you did today and actually want to hear the answer.

Another is being involved in activities outside of school -- sports, a youth group, a job. Or in Lorena's case, all of the above.

"Because you can learn things out of school that you can't learn in school -- like common sense," Lorena says.

Sometimes, common sense isn't enough. Once, a friend told Lorena she was being abused by her mother's boyfriend. Lorena asked her father's advice.

"You have an obligation under the law to report that," he told her. He urged her to tell a school counselor or let him alert authorities.

"You can't carry this burden all by yourself," he told her.

She did, though. She struggled with the decision, afraid of betraying her friend's trust. Finally, she reported it -- and lost a friend.

"It broke her heart," her father says. "That's the type of individual she is. She feels a lot for people."

All people -- which is a source of friction with her dad, who thinks she should pay more attention to kids of her own ethnicity.

"My dad's very into taking on the problems that Latino kids have, like dropping out of school," Lorena says. "I don't like doing that, because I think every kid has the same problems.

"He gets kind of mad. He says, 'You obviously don't care about your race.' I'm like, 'Yeah, I do. I just don't think it's a problem just for Latinos. I think it's a problem in the whole entire youth population."'

Every month, Lorena meets with a group of freshmen she's been mentoring since the school year began. It's part of Links, a Centaurus High School program that hooks up first-year students with older ones to help them make the transition to high school.

In her spare time, Lorena plays soccer and is on the diving team. And she dreams about going to New York University to study film so she can become a movie director.

"I think the biggest challenge for kids right now is finding what they need to do after high school," she says. "I know so many who are so lost. Every day that passes, they lose hope. They try things, but they give up before they make it. Before they figure out what they really want."

She met a younger girl who needed a friend to help her past her own pain. So Lorena became that friend.

"For a year, I've been hanging with her, making her feel loved," she says. "She's had an incredibly hard life. Now she has someone she can talk to about it. And who will listen, and not just be like, 'I don't care.' Because I really do."

Lorena knows a family who can barely afford rent or food, so she spends money from her part-time job to buy them groceries. She doesn't talk about it freely. She doesn't want to embarrass anyone.

"The daughter knows I do it, but the mom doesn't," Lorena says.

But now that other people know, maybe it will change the way they treat teen-agers and think about them.

That's the best way to change the world, Lorena says. And change is coming in the next century.

"Adults will start respecting us more. They'll be more welcoming, more accepting. You hear on television, 'Kids are our future.'

"I think people will actually start believing it."

December 26, 1999

Colorado Millennium 2000 is a yearlong project by the Denver Rocky Mountain News, NEWS4 and the Colorado Historical Society
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