Indiana Jones and The Three Lost Boys

Yesterday was my once a month visit - volunteering at St. Mary's Food Bank with my good friend Hester. During each visit the experience is unique, eye opening, educational and always humbling.





In the middle of our shift three young boys walked in with an older gentleman wearing an "Indiana Jones" type outfit. It was hard not to notice them. It turned out that the older gentleman was a parole officer and the three boys were fullfilling their community service hours. Hester and I didn't flinch at the situation, mainly because each visit we have made to St. Mary's has been working side by side with mostly "community service" type people if you know what I mean! However, they are usually a lot older and their crimes are on the more luminous end of spectrum (driving w/o registration etc...).





Indiana and his boys were different.





These three boys, Scoti, Dave and Luis were each around fifteen years of age. Each boy had served up to three years in juvenille detention and had been arrested a minimum of four times. The program they were partaking in with Indiana was basically their last chance to turn their lives around.





Next stop is the big house.





You could tell Indiana really cared for those boys and they seemed to have genuine respect for him.





Indiana said his program had a 50% success rate. He said his program is mostly comprised of intense therapy on a multitude of levels dealing with each individuals situation. It is a graduated therapy process. He said his program was probably going to be cut this year - as we all know Arizona is in deep financial trouble.





I spent about ten minutes visiting with Scoti. It was hard to believe that he had such a troubled history. He was very excited because on March 21st a group of kids from his church are going to do a break dancing performance at the Phoenix Suns Game. He has been practicing non stop. He did a moonwalk for us! He wants to finish high school. He wants to attend ASU and eventually get a PHD in psychology so that he can be a therapist for kids like him.





Scoti only has five more hours of community service and his parole will be complete. I assured him that he can definitely do all the things that he told me he wanted to do and that I was so excited for him. His face lit up like the fifteen year old boy that he was. He looked like he was ready to take on the world.





I am praying for you Scoti. You can do it.



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