Photograph by Robert Scheer
Starhouse residents take time out during the week to shoot some hoops.
By Katherine Petersen
Friday afternoons bustle with activity as everyone prepares for the weekend at 892 Ticonderoga Road, a group home for juveniles run by Star House of San Jose.
On a recent Friday, Joe, 18, rushed in from school and a few minutes later was out the door again to work. Tom, 16, lounged on the couch waiting for his mother to come pick him up for the weekend. John, 15, got a ride to visit his mother, and Mark, 12, left with a pass to spend time with his brother. (The names of the residents, most of whom are juveniles have been changed to protect their privacy.)
However, Matt, 12, had committed major infractions and so had to stay home. He sat on the couch mumbling that the counselors don't like him and if he could only go for a five-minute walk. . .
Star House is a nonprofit organization that operates four group homes, two of them in Sunnyvale, and oversees 16 foster homes for kids, many of whom have bounced from shelter to shelter and family to family after being taken from abusive family situations by the courts. Kids come from all over Santa Clara County and from varied backgrounds.
Kenji Bleicker, regional supervisor and former counselor at the Ticonderoga house, said many of the kids, like Matt, really don't want to be there. They are in transition. He said that if the kids know counselors care, it makes their stay more tolerable.
"If the staff there enjoys it, they feel it and feel better about themselves," Bleicker added. "It's a rewarding job, although it can be chaotic at times."
He said getting the kids to do chores is a constant struggle, and they talk back a fair amount. "It's a thankless job. There's a lot of verbal abuse. Occasionally, there's some infighting. We'd always have a counseling session afterward to deal with anger and turn it into a positive."
Many times, as with Matt, the kids' self-esteem is so low that they just assume they aren't liked, Bleicker said. "You have to break through that and get to a level where he can learn that people care," he added.
Kids who misbehave are often guilty of "major infractions." According to 16-year-old Tom, violations include smoking cigarettes and going AWOL.
"We have to do hard labor," said Tom, referring to weeding and gardening chores. "It can take an hour, but if you're a real jerk about it, it can take up to three."
Tom added that some Star House residents, like Joe, are successes. Joe will leave the organization after he graduates from high school in June.
"We can help him in any way he wants," Bleicker said, "but it wasn't always that easy. We had to work through it. He can trust us."
"For the most part, it's pretty good here," Joe said. "It's not like most institutions where you're locked down. You can get freedom if you earn it."
Star House focuses on teaching independent living skills, such as cooking, cleaning and maintaining a budget, which will help kids with life after they leave. Counselors look through the newspaper with them so they can see how much it costs to rent an apartment and how much certain jobs pay.
While some of the kids believe they aren't allowed to do anything, they can participate in after-school sports and pickup basketball with counselors at night, and they take numerous day and weekend trips.
Activities Director Mike Weeks said the most valuable outings are with Inner City Outfitters (ICO), an outreach program of the Sierra Club that gets the kids involved with outdoor activities including cross-country skiing, river rafting and mountain biking.
"I personally like outdoor activities," Weeks said. "I think they're more valuable than trips to Great America. They teach lifetime skills, and that's my concern."
Jon Wurl, a volunteer for ICO, said these are kids who barely have emotional needs fulfilled because they're been separated from their families..
"There's an enormous amount of need in their lives for someone to show that they care about their well-being," he added. "You will not get immediate gratification [on the trips]. It's much more subtle than that."
Wurl said the signs are visible. Sometimes he'll see a smile on a kid's face when he's told he did a good job. "It's nice to know that I can walk in and some of them will recognize me as the guy who took them out and had a good time," he added, "and they're willing to share what's going on in their lives."
Wurl said that while counselors are torn in many directions, ICO volunteers have the freedom and opportunity to focus on fun. He said that ICO has rules, too, but they rarely have problems .
"We're never the bad guy," he added. "Counselors have to be bad guys even though they're good people."
Star House also takes kids from its four group homes to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and to events ticked by Bass Ticketmaster, which gives the group freebies.
Weeks said Star House tries to keep the residents as busy as possible so they don't gravitate to the television.
Star House tries to help the kids formulate goals for their future. For instance, Tom said he wants to be an audio technician.
John has been in the program about seven months and has seen his grades rise after switching schools. But he said he can't go home to his mother because she is not in a "good environment."
"My mom has diabetes," Tom said. "She can't just get better out of the blue."
Stuart Samuels, Star House's executive director, founded the organization 20 years ago in Cupertino with his wife, Shannon. Their first house had no cupboards, no plumbing and few doors. Samuels and his wife lived there with kids for three and a half years. Samuels decided in the beginning to have no more than six boys per house to stay out of an institutional category.
"Six boys are noisy enough. We're already not loved by our neighbors," he said, adding that kids have thrown oranges over the fence and lit fires in dumpsters.
"These guys wear earrings and baggy pants and don't look like mainstream people," Samuels said. "They look scary to seniors, and we live in some pretty nice neighborhoods."
When a neighbor complains, the counselors respond and do the best they can. Samuels said it is hard because new kids come in so often.
"These kids are getting a message from the world that they are no good, and they go about validating that message," he added. "The biggest chore is to turn them around and give them a message that they're worth something and have redeeming qualities, and sometimes they surprise themselves with some success."
Samuels called Star House a long-term project with short-term money. The group draws many of its resources from donations from churches and other organizations to supplement its $1.25 million operating budget.
Star House's first obligation is to get the kids to a point where they can be emancipated as adults or sent back to their homes. Some of Star House's counselors and other workers have gone through the program.
"Some come back and say, 'You remember you said I would end up locked up and all by myself? Well, you were wrong,'" Samuels said, adding that he's glad at these times that he was wrong.
"Every day that we survive is a minor miracle," he added.
Samuels said living in a community situation is a good experience for the kids. "They have to make their own decisions," he added. "If decisions are made for them, then they won't learn. The pain the community feels is a necessary evil. The kids come from communities and will return to it. If they don't live and learn it, they will fail again.
"We keep them as busy as possible," Samuels continued. "Left to their own devices, they can get self-destructive."
Samuels said he wishes Star House were more successful. He said that just 20 percent of the time do kids leave the system successfully. "Other kids go deeper in and then leave. You can't tell much of the time. Some grow out of their problems."
Samuels got the idea to begin Star House after working as a resource counselor for 80 women between the ages of 18 and 80 in St. Paul, Minn. "They had grown so accustomed to living in this large institution that I had the hardest time prying them loose," he said. "I realized that that wasn't the way to treat people."
Samuels had problems with dyslexia growing up so has a good idea of what it's like to not be a "mainstream kid."
"I fooled a lot of teachers for a lot of years," he said. "I didn't want to be uncool.
"Everyone wants to belong," Samuels added. "That's why some kids join gangs. It's a family where you can go and belong. Sometimes relationships are built on dangerous activities, but they are relationships nonetheless."
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, April 10, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.