Oral History Program Kristen Mitchell Interviewed by Melissa Francis 30 September 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Kristen MItchell Interviewed by Melissa Francis 30 September 2019 Copyright © 2022 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Beyond Suffrage Project was initiated to examine the impact women have had on northern Utah. Weber State University explored and documented women past and present who have influenced the history of the community, the development of education, and are bringing the area forward for the next generation. The project looked at how the 19th Amendment gave women a voice and representation, and was the catalyst for the way women became involved in the progress of the local area. The project examines the 50 years (1870-1920) before the amendment, the decades to follow and how women are making history today. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Mitchell, Kristen, an oral history by Melissa Francis, 30 September 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Kristen Mitchell 30 May 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Kristen Mitchell, conducted on September 30, 2019, in the Stewart Library, at Weber State University, by Melissa Francis. In this interview, Kristen discusses her life, her memories, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. MF: Alrighty. It is Monday September 30th 2019, we're here today with Kristen Mitchell, the executive director of Youth Futures. We are at the Weber State University Stewart Library and this is part of the Women 2020 project. So to start off, Kristen, the first question we ask is: tell us when and where you were born and and a little bit about where you grew up. KM: Okay, I was born in Mesa, Arizona in 1969, May 26th. Man, people don't usually start all the way from birth. My parents lived in Tempe for about five years. They got divorced when I was five and shortly after, my dad moved to Utah with us and my mom stayed in Arizona. He was remarried very shortly after and my stepmom had twin daughters that are nine months older than me, and I have a younger sister that's 18 months younger than me. We moved to Ogden, 22nd and Gramercy in Ogden and lived there for quite some time. My dad traveled back and forth to BYU and Provo to work and school. We lived with my grandpa, my stepmom's dad. My grandpa is a Scoville and he owned a couple houses there on 22nd and Gramercy, so my roots come back all the way back to Ogden and I have some really good memories from Ogden and growing up there. I went to the old Lorin Farr Elementary School before it was torn down. So, I recall that school as just being this monstrous 2 school. It seemed like it was tall and lots of stairs and but you know, can't go back and look at it now, 'cause now there's just houses where it was so, anyway. MF: So you attended elementary school at Lorin Farr. What other schools did you attend? KM: After a few years, I don't know the timeline exactly, second grade, we moved to Clinton and I went to school at Fremont Elementary, there and Sunset Junior High. And then my family, in eighth grade, moved to Centerville and I went to Centerville junior high and then Viewmont High School. So, graduated in 1987 from Viewmont High. MF: So fair bit of moving around for ya there in the early days. So why did your dad decide to move to Utah after the divorce? KM: Yeah. I'm gonna tell you but I don't know that I wouldn’t add this: to get us away from my mom. So it was a ... it was a challenging time for them. And my stepmom is from here and they met and moved us here and... Little bit of a rough childhood, going through all that as a five-year-old and MF: Uh huh, big, some big changes KM: Big changes and leaving my mom in Arizona. MF: Yeah. I've, I've done a little bit of reading, and again, you tell me what you're comfortable talking about. KM: Can I step over here and grab these? MF: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. KM: Sometimes I get emotional. 3 MF: So, I'm a little bit aware of why your parents divorced but if you're comfortable with that, are you willing to talk about that? KM: So both of my parents are still, they're still alive so I tend to kind of try to stay a little bit .... well not too public about all of that stuff. So, you must have had a conversation with someone from the diversity Center I work at. MF: I have been reading every newspaper article about you that I could find. KM: Really? MF: I've been doing some, some prep work and, and… KM: So, yeah, so my mom is lesbian and it was, you know, we're talking about 45 years ago, certainly not as accepted as it is today, and their divorce did not go well, and I did not spend ... I didn't, I didn't spend very much time with my mom growing up. So, which is tough. MF: Yeah, yeah. KM: Okay, now I don't need to you know... MF: No, I completely understand. It's, it's, it's challenging, difficult things to talk about and so… KM: I don't need to cry, seriously. MF: It is, it is totally fine and, and if you ... we can stop if you'd like, if you'd like a minute. KM: Yeah let me just compose myself a little bit. MF: Yeah, yeah, we'll pause it for just a minute. MF: All righty. Well, we'll continue. You mentioned that you had some step-siblings and a younger sister as well. Why don't you tell us a little bit about them? 4 KM: Yeah, so, um, I have twin sisters that are 9 months older than me and then a sister that's 18 months younger. So it was kind of an, it was kind of interesting growing up with the four of them because we were basically kind of all the same age, wear the same clothes, the same size. The twins are a grade ahead of me, but for part of the year, we're the same age. It was interesting describing that to people who would ask, you know, “well, how did that work?” They'd say, "oh, your parents were, must have been pretty quick," and we would all kind of giggle, because we knew the real story. But we didn't, back then we didn't share that, that we weren't all just a family. It was, um, it was we were all born together and we didn't... Often, my dad didn't like us to share um that we weren't full siblings so. My, the twins and I sort of ... Growing up, I didn't get along with one of them super well, and then that kind of flipped, and then I got along with the other one well and we've spent, kind of, some time off and on. We get along really well now as adults. My younger sister, my real sister, I have sort of a protective feeling for her. You know, she's 18 months younger than me, I kind of took her under my wing as my parents got divorced and she was still almost a baby, I mean, she was three. So I've sort of protected her kind of our whole lives, and so yeah. Then, my, not too long after my parents were married, they, we had a, they had a brother together. So my brother Stephen is, gosh, he's probably four years younger than my, my sister. Then they had three more kids after that. So there's three more girls. So there was eight kids total. MF: With a boy right in the middle. 5 KM: The boy right in the middle. My dad got his boy. I think he was trying for more boys. So, seven girls and one boy. Then for a while, we had an exchange student from the reservation, and then we had my cousin that lived with us for a while. My stepmom did daycare, so it was what you might call chaos at the house. We had a large house but not necessarily big enough for that many people, so it was a lot. It was kind of crazy growing up. MF: Yeah. So, you said that you graduated from the Viewmont High School in 1987? KM: Yeah. MF: Did you attend college after that? KM: Yeah, shortly after I graduated, I, I went I moved to Arizona. I wanted to get close to my mom. So the second that I could, I moved to Arizona. My grandpa was sick at the time and then my grandma needed some help, so I planned to move to her, to her to help her with my grandpa. He actually passed away a couple of days before my move was planned, but I went anyway. It was kind of an excuse for me to get to Arizona. I went, as soon as I got there, I started at Mesa Community College and I went to a few semesters. I worked for, in Arizona for Arizona Respite Services, which I did, I took care of medically handicapped kids and it was in home care. So it's like a family who does foster care for medically handicapped kids and I would go in and give the family respite so they could leave. It was kind of like a glorified babysitter, except for with skills. So respite services came in and specialty trained me in those things and then after I'd been doing it for about a year, they decided that I needed, we needed a nursing 6 degree, then I went to school. I was, I was already in school but then I started sort of leaning towards nursing in my degree. Of course I was dating a boy when I left Utah, and he decided that he didn't like the fact that I had moved all the way to Arizona, and so he moved to Arizona to too and we got married. He was a, he was a guy who was a very good friend and had been for a really long time. He was my best friend. We maybe shouldn't have gotten married, you know, we were best friends. Didn't work out. We, very shortly after, we got divorced, but we stayed friends. We stayed very, very close for many years. He's since passed away, but. MF: What year was it that that you got married? KM: I got married in 1990 and then we got divorced in-- Sorry! I'm sorry, I got that wrong. I got married in '88 and then we got divorced in '90. So, yeah. MF: Um, did you have any children? KM: I did not have any children with him. I did get remarried again shortly after that and was married for 12 years to my, my kids' dad. I have two kids, two boys. One is ... let me see if I can get ... my son turns 24 on Saturday, my oldest, and my youngest is, will be 22 in November. MF: Great, so you said you were kind of leaning towards nursing. Did you continue with school once you got married? KM: Yeah, after I got divorced, I moved back to Utah and then I started going to Weber, continuing on with the nursing degree. How much school did I get done? I didn't even get to the associates level and I ended up buying a business, that, it was it's a manufacturing business. I still own it today and still just run it. When the 7 economy crashed, it basically lost the majority of its business and I just had a few orders here and there, but it didn't require a degree and so I stopped school and started running that business. It required more than full-time work and I had my babies. So, I stopped going to school at that point before I had an associate's degree. MF: Growing up was education something that was encouraged in your family? KM: No. Kind ... There was really nobody pushing me or encouraging me to do anything. I mean anything that, any schooling or even finishing high school, I had to be self-motivated and keep myself in school, and keep my, get myself graduated, and going to college. I enrolled myself, took care of all of it myself I didn't really have... My parents, were, they just had so many kids that just didn't really have the time to. My dad went to school but he didn't have a degree, never finished his degree. My stepmom didn't. My mom didn't. So, I was really a first generation student. One of, a couple of my sisters did go to college back then, one of my sisters graduated. She was the first, one of the twins and then no one else went to college until I graduated so and I came back after 20 years, so. MF: Yeah, I also read that you ran a gallery in Park City for, for a little while. KM: I did. MF: How did you get involved in that? KM: I, I love art. I always have. It's kind of a hobby. When I was running my manufacturing business, I was partnered with the guy who was an artist-- fabulous, fabulous artist and my mom was also an artist, and so I took their art and I invested in a gallery opened the gallery for, to sell the two of them's art in 8 Park City, and man, it was just amazing I would... it's just too bad that the economy crashed and I just couldn't sustain it, but I still continue to, I mean, I could sell every piece of art that they put, that they put out. I just, I love art so... It's sort of a side ... love. MF: A side passion. KM: Yeah. MF: Yeah. So, how long was the Gallery open? KM: Three years or so, so yeah. MF: So you're, you're raising your kids, running the manufacturing business, and opening a gallery as well. I'm assuming there were some challenges in and all of that. KM: Yeah. So I was married to my kids’ dad for 12 years and that ended in flames. It was a pretty tough marriage our whole, our whole marriage. So literally, divorcing him and having to pick myself up and figure out how I was gonna make ends meet, and manage everything by myself, and raise the kids and, yeah. I worked a lot of hours. My, I think my kids were very patient. I've had a lot of good friends who've helped keep me going through a lot of that, so. MF: Who-who would you say were maybe some mentors or inspiration for you while you were going through, you know, running these businesses and everything? KM: Um, I think in my grandma, my dad's mom is definitely a mentor for me. She, she was a school teacher and taught special ed and she always encouraged me. So I say nobody really encouraged me, but she went to college and she encouraged me to you know go for my dreams, and, and she was always a support. So my 9 mom also. You know, I didn't get, really get to know my mom until I was an adult and we had a little bit of a challenging time after I became an adult, getting to know each other and sort of getting on the same page but I realized that I got my sense of humor from my mom, I got my drive from my mom, I got my passion from my mom, I got my love for art from my mom, I got, you know, I got a lot of, a lot of things from my mom, so. She was, once we really engaged back and were in touch, she was my biggest cheerleader. MF: Good. So, you said you were away from school for 20 years. What made you decide to go back to school? KM: So, after the economy crashed, I ... my business just tanked. 75 percent of the business, I run a 20 ton press, it's a manufacturing business making screen printing stencils. So it's a very specialized little business. A lot of my customers were these little mom-and-pop screen printing shops that would order stencils to make t-shirts. All of those shops just, one by one, just closed. I just kind of watched them dwindle away and the money kept getting tighter and tighter, and, of course I was doing really well running the businesses, and I spent every penny that I had, right? I mean, you know, you, you buy whatever you want when you have plenty of money and yeah so I ... don't remember the question. What were we talking about? MF: What made you decide to go back to school? KM: Ah yes, yes what made me go back to school. So um as I was running the businesses, I always had, sort of a passion for service, service projects. I did kind of any little service thing that I could get my hands on. I, I sort of had this dream 10 that I could make things better for kids who were going through some of the tough things that I was going through. You know? I had many a day that I wanted to run away from home and go find my mom, and I never, I never really dared to run away from home. I took off on my bike one day and I thought, "I'm gonna ride my bike to my mom's house" and I didn't get very far. I realized it's a really long way. So I sort of I had this idea. My mom and I were sort of formulating this large-scale community center plan for, you know, a place that kids could go. Kind of 24/7 that would kind of have everything and anything that kids could need to keep them safe, keep them off the streets, kids who ran away, kids who didn't connect. It was called Give a Kid a Break in the beginning. But what I realized was that I didn't have a college degree, and I really, if I really wanted to pursue that since the business wasn't gonna... the gallery had closed the business wasn't gonna sustain me any longer, I needed some credential to get me on my way towards this path. You know, when I was younger, I'd worked for Respite Care and I had worked in group homes and I'd, I'd done some of those social service things and I really enjoyed that kind of work and I knew that I wanted, that's what I wanted to do. This job, it was a great job, it sustained me. It was a great little business, it really I ... My shop was attached to my house, so I could stay home with my kids. It really did what it needed to do for me to get through that, but now to move forward, I really needed to go back to school and get a degree. I wasn't exactly 11 sure if I was gonna go to nursing or... and then I found social work and that was the obvious answer. So. MF: It was just the right fit. KM: Yeah. MF: Yeah. KM: So I went, I started out at Salt Lake Community College, to be honest, at that point I couldn't even afford Weber. So basically, my ... Everything crashed. I pretty much lost everything I had: a couple of vehicles and a motorcycle and I've filed bankruptcy, and I almost lost my house. Actually, they told me my house was in foreclosure and, I moved out of my house and then it sat there empty for like ten months, and I went, "what's going on?" My attorney, my bankruptcy attorney, was kind of incognito by that point, and I hired a new attorney and I, and he basically threatened the bank and said "if you don't modify this mortgage, we're gonna sue you," because the banks were kind of refusing to modify mortgages, but then the modifications had just started happening. So they modified my mortgage, and I went in and cleaned up the yard and the house, and rented it out. I had already moved, and I was happy. I was away from my ex-husband, which I lived right around the corner from him. So I was I was happy where I was at. So we just rented the house out for five years. So... MF: Well, great so you started a Salt Lake Community College. When did you come back up to Weber? KM: So I got my associates at Salt Lake Community College and then I got into the Social Work program at Weber and finished my degree at Weber. 12 MF: Okay, either at Salt Lake Community College or here we at weber, were there any particular professors that have helped and encouraged you in pursuing social work? KM: Oh, yeah. I don't even know how to name them. I'm trying to think her first name but Pettingill at Salt Lake Community College. Jonathan… Jonathan... Oh, I shouldn't have forgot his name. MF: What kind of encouragement did they give you as a student? KM: I think really early on, several professors saw leadership ability and I had several professors who encouraged me to ... I was on the Service Council at Salt Lake Community College and.. S.L.C.E, it's called, Student Leaders and Civic Engagement. I had and ... I had tons of encouragement there. And, really, I think my running a couple of businesses, my life experience, sort of gave me this, maybe, leg up to to be able to, you know, be in leadership positions. I was asked to speak at, at the Civic Engagement graduation ceremony at Salt Lake Community College, and that was super fun, but super terrifying. One of my first real speaking engagements. I, I don't love public speaking. It's ... In fact, I avoided the communications classes at all costs. I got my communications credit by taking a conflict management course, so that I didn't have to take a public speaking course, which probably would have done me well, because I just don't love public speaking. Lots of encouragement, and then the same thing happened at Weber. I was on the Social Work Club leadership and I got really close to a lot of 13 professors. Vigil, and Bonella, and Bigler and um ...You know, they're ... I love, I love them. Bonella is actually my clinical director at Youth Futures now so and I'll hire a Weber student over anybody else now. So. Anyway. Um, yeah. MF: I just wanted to look over my notes here just a little bit. So, you're, you're attending school and you're... you've got this, this dream of this, this Youth Center, which is now a reality. So how did that happen? How did this dream that you had had for years become, become a reality? KM: So, a lot of work is the long and short of it, but ... So, it's ... You know, it started like I said, it started as a, as a dream, as a great , big, huge idea. Drawing pictures, talking to my mom. I met a super awesome guy named Scott, he's been my partner ever since. We had similar goals. He came to Utah to start a non-profit to help kids feel better about themselves. I wanted to start a community center. So the two of us together, it was sort of serendipitous how we kind of just, one day, realized that we sort of had the same idea about what we wanted to do for kids. He has a, he has a few different little things. I kind of look at the taking care that basic necessities and he sort of looks at taking care of the emotional necessities. So it's really been a good pairing, the two of us. I kind of don't take no for an answer, so if one person tells me no, I'll go talk to someone else, and then I will talk to someone else. I spent many years kind of only talking to the people who I knew already loved me because it was like a crazy big idea, and it was kind of out there. A lot of people told me I was crazy. Really, I'm not sure without Scott and my mom encouraging me and... You know, Scott's kind of, he's behind the scenes a lot, but he really is, like, he's there 14 to cheer me on and help me do stuff he's way more a part than anyone else sees. I tend to be the one that's in the public eye and tells the story, and then I dragged him along, kicking and screaming, sometimes, I came to go onstage too. I'm like, "Hey, if I have to do this you do too." So, there was a lot of planning that happened, realizing as we got in to a certain point, that there was there was a law called harboring a minor that, you know. We were ready to start thinking about opening this facility and everybody's like, "No, no, no. You can't do that. That's called harboring a minor." I'm like, "Ehh, you know, we'll just let these kids stay. It's just open 24/7." They're like, "No, you actually can't do that." So, you know, we had to, we had to work on that law. Um, there was quite a few--quite a big conversation that was started happening, that I was part of about homeless youth, and about LGBT kids getting kicked out, and, and about, you know, taking care of kids. So, I had to, I really got involved in that conversation. Then as people started talking about this law, and we started ... I was, you know, I'm right up there on the hill, I'm talking to the legislators, legislators that are working on this law, and then I'm talking to the office of licensing. And I'm going, "Okay, so, what do we need to put into this law, licensing-wise? As far as, you know, how is this gonna work?" And, so, I just really kind of forced myself into that conversation, even though it felt like, to me, they're looking at me as an outsider, and I'm like, "Oh, no, no. I've had this idea for a really long time and I'm gonna be in the middle of this, and now I want to start this." And, you know, I think a lot of people were just kind of like, "Yeah, okay. We'll see what happens with that." And there was a lot of people, there was 15 a lot of different people, at that time, that, you know, had sort of different ideas about "I'm gonna do this thing and I'm gonna do this thing, and I'm gonna start this thing." And Scott and I just kind of kept waiting to see, you know, people who had maybe more means than we did, to see if it was gonna happen, and it just didn't seem to happen. And we kind of looked at each other one day and we said, "We're gonna have to do this. If it's gonna get done, we're gonna have to do this." And we just jumped in. MF: Yeah. So how long was that process of getting that law changed, getting that, that bill passed? KM: The conversations that, the kind of community conversations were happening for a couple of years prior to the law getting changed. I had been conceptually ... So, from when the law changed, we had been conceptually thinking and talking about it for about six years. So, it literally, like when the law passed, it was like six years prior that I had drawn up the first little sketches of what things were gonna look like, where it was to be and all the stuff we were gonna have. It kind of really, like... It feels to me, kind of childlike back then, you know. This, like, drawing out your house type of feeling, you know? MF: Kind of a ... excitement but naivety as well? KM: Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Had, had that big, I mean, it was a big project. Had that gone through .... that was a, that was a huge project. We really had to scale it down to something that was manageable, that we could really handle. And we do, we still do a lot of the things that I had the idea of, but it's not this great big 16 huge community center complex idea. It's just, it's a little cottage in the middle of Ogden. MF: One of the things that I thought was interesting, because I was looking at, at the bill and I saw that it passed both the House and the, the Senate unanimously. So it seems like there was, you had laid a good foundation in, in having those conversations. KM: Yeah and there was a, there was a lot of people. So, it tends to be that people say, "You passed this law," and I have to, I have to remind people that there was a lot of other people that were working on this. It wasn't ... I didn't pass the law right, all of us passed the law. So, you know, I gotta, we got to give credit where credit's due. There's legislators, and there was community advocates, and there was ... You know, it was a big conversation that was starting to happen with the community, so, um ... Again, I forgot the question. MF: I didn't really have a direct question there, more of an observation, but who were some of those other people that you worked closely with? KM: Um, so Gage Froer, Laura Warburton, Diane Moore, who was the Office of Licensing Director at the time, Marrion Edmonds-Allen, Rachel Peterson. There was the VOA. There was just ... There was a lot of, a lot of people that were … There was committees that were put together. So, the... Literally, the state office. So, Jeff Harris and the people who were directing the Office of Licensing at that time, because, really, what had to happen with that, with that bill, was they added a licensing component to the harboring a minor statute. So, we just barely 17 hanged the harboring a minor statute, we just added licensing so that we could get licensed to harbor a minor. MF: Yeah, so that's... I ... Like I said, I ... It was interesting to me to read about the, the bill, because, you know, you think, "Oh, yeah, why not just you know have a shelter for youth?" It just seems so obvious, and then to go well, "Wait a minute, there's, there's some laws in there." KM: Yeah. MF: You know. So like I said, I, I was I was intrigued by that process, kind of reading about it. So, when did you open? So, okay let me back up a second. So this law has changed, kind of opening the door for you to, to start this process. How, how quickly did things start rolling for you? KM: Yeah, so the law passed, you know, as the legislative session is ending, which is February timeframe, and then it, it goes into effect in July. It took them from July until October--the end of October, to get that licensing written and to, you know... We had committee meetings, and to really write that, it took some time. So, a lot didn't ... The July law didn't take effect in July until they ... October 22nd is when they got that law. But in the meantime, I had been looking for a different location than our original location, was, we were thinking. So my, the house that I almost lost, is I have six acres of ground in Syracuse, Utah and that was really what we were thinking, is, you know, this big... But, I ... We were like, "We got to scale it down." So I kept looking for, you know... I, I'm thinking it's gonna be a shelter home. It's gonna be a big house with a lot of bedrooms. So, I would go on the MLS and I punch in eight plus bedrooms or six plus bedrooms, and I'm looking 18 for a property trying to find a place. No clue how I would buy it. No money. Literally ... No idea how it was gonna happen. And a friend of mine had mentioned that they were selling their mom's house, and I knew it was big house, so I went look, to look for that house just to see, you know, how much money I didn't have to spend on... How much it was gonna cost me for this house. And I punched in eight plus bedrooms and I saw this house, and I'm looking through the pictures and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, that's a big house. That's got eight bedrooms." And the price was really reasonable. I mean, it was, like, less than I was thinking. So I called the realtor, as I'm putting my shoes on, I'm getting in the car, I say, "I'm going to see this house." He's like, "I'll meet you there." And we got, I got literally like to the kitchen, in the house which is not very far in, and I looked at that realtor and I said, "Do not sell this house. This is my shelter." And he's like, I don't know what you're talking about." And then we went through the whole house and I told him what we were gonna do, and he was one of our first board members. He actually was immediately on board. It took us a while to figure out how we were gonna buy that house. It ... We went the entire ... To the very final deadline to figure out how we were gonna get that house. It was, broken windows and booted-in doors and house was literally in shambles. It needed a lot of work. We figured out how to get the money. Youth Futures had no, no money at that point. We had just barely started it, so Scott and I originally purchased the house ourselves, and, on a pretty expensive loan. So ... And then the community really came in. Standard examiner did an, a news article. Jenae Frances, she says, "Why don't you do an, 19 an as-is open house and let people come in and see how bad the house is and what needs to be done, and tell your story about what you're gonna do." And, oh my gosh, that was such a great idea. Everybody was like, "I could do this, and I could do that, I could do this," and the house just started coming together. MF: Yeah. One of the things that has always struck me about people in Ogden, throughout history. I've read lots of different groups organizing lots of different projects. There, there seems to be this knack for, kind of, getting to the heart of an issue and just saying, "This is what needs to be done and we're gonna do it." KM: Yeah. MF: It's, it's a great community in that way. KM: Yeah and I definitely felt that. So after that news article posted, the door just started being a revolving door, and Scott and I practically lived there. That is ... It's in a pretty bad area of town and we had to start .... So my kids were adults at that time and started staying there at night, a couple of my nephews, basically for security, to make sure that people didn't come into the house, because the doors were broken and the windows were broken, and people were coming in and trying to stay in the abandoned house, so. So, Scott and I were there from sunup 'til midnight working on things but the door would just... Like, people would come in, they would bring donations, and money, and "I can do this," and "I heard you guys are doing something." And then, I had a Macro Social Work class .. And one of my very good friends, she was in the class with me and she's, they ... Macro Social Work is about community planning. You have to take on a project that's about something 20 you're gonna do in the community. It's like a project thing. And she said, "You should tell about your project." And I'm like, "oh, no, no no. It's okay." She stands up, she goes, "Kristen and I have a project. We have a project. We think everyone in this class should get involved." And my, my professor was kind of like, "Ehhh... That's ...." Dr. Bonella, who is now my clinical director. He's like, "You know, I'm not really sure.. It seems like it's ... I don't know how you're gonna make it all fit into different projects." He's, he's like, "If you can figure out a group of projects, different projects that each group can take on, then I'll let it go as a project." So, Becky Rowe, my friend and I sat down and we figured out six different projects, and literally, 90% of the class took on one of those projects, and we raised a couple hundred thousand dollars that semester, and the house got finished. It really ... Had we not had those probably 30 Social Work students that were motivating other Social Work students, so they were pulling in, like, intro level social workers that needed their 20 hours of community service and all kinds of other people from the C.C.E.L., and it just really, just kind of got out of control that semester. I mean, literally, the house started filling up with stuff that we needed before the walls were painted. Um, so it was very, it was pretty amazing to see the community come together for the project, and, and really make it happen. And Weber State and the Weber State students really made it ... I tried ... The, the semester before, I had a couple of friends in the macro class before I was in the macro class, that I was like, "You guys just want to do a little fundraiser to try to help me get things going?" And it just bombed. They maybe 21 raised like $50 bucks. I mean, it was just, it was not the time. There wasn't the, there wasn't the momentum behind it, but ... It was pretty cool. MF: But, that's the, lesson of that: it was just, kind of, everything lined up. KM: Dr. Bonella and I have actually been to, um ... What's the name? In the C.C.E.L… What's the name of the...? The Campus Compact. Dr. Bonella and I have been to one of the Campus Compact-- Compact Conferences and I have done a presentation about that macro Social Work class, and how things can go if everybody works together, so. MF: Yeah, yeah, well, great. I'm glad you brought that up, because it was actually one of the things I was gonna ask you about, was that, that class. Just to back up a little bit, before you started Youth Futures. I also read that you were involved with a hotline for LGBTQ youth. How did, how did you get involved with with that? KM: So, when I was on the service council at Salt Lake Community College, I was in the Student Center and I saw on a bulletin board that somebody was starting the pride empathy line, a hotline for LGBT kids and offering empathy support and resources for kids. And I was like, "Oh, man that is a great idea!" There's sort of a different dynamic here, that talking to kids here, is different than, you know you've got the Trevor Project, which is a LGBT hotline. But there's sort of something different about Utah and knowing the dynamic here. And, you know, of course, I have a long history of LGBT advocacy, and you know, I'd done some service for Equality Utah and I was the chair of the World AIDS Day, and anyway. I saw this, I saw this ad and I was like, "Well, that looks awesome. I want to be a volunteer." It was calling for volunteers. So I called her up and I 22 said, "Hey, I'd like to be a volunteer for this hotline," and they had quite a few... They had a pretty good thing going, they had a lot of volunteers, they were staffing it with all volunteers, 24/7 hotline, taking calls. And, literally, like two days before the hotline went live, they had everybody trained, and everything was ready to go, she had a family crisis--the girl that started it, she had a family crisis, and she said, "I'm stepping down." She put out an email to all the volunteers and she said, "I either need somebody to run this or we're not gonna run this." And I was like, "Well.... that's not gonna happen, there's no way." I wanted... I was like, "Man, I should have thought of starting this myself!" So, I, I talked to Scott, and I was like, "How'd you feel about me taking this project on?" He's like, "If that's what you want to do, I'll help you do whatever you want to do." And, so it started out as ... There was a guy who also wanted to take over, and, so he took the chair position and I took the vice-chair position, and then he dropped off very shortly after, and I just stepped into the chair. And, as we're, you know, as we're answering these phone calls, and I'm still conceptually planning this other project, I'm listening to these kids, and listening to these kids getting kicked out and they've got no place to go, and I'm hearing that they have no place to go, and it literally was like the research project needed to, to make, like... We kept track of all calls that came in and what was kind of a basic summary of what was said on the calls. It was like, it was like the research that was needed to say, "Yeah, we need a shelter, because these kids have no place to go." So, there was some parts of me that thought initially that it was, the shelter piece of it, was gonna end up being mostly LGBT kids. I mean there was just this huge conversation around 23 LGBT kids getting kicked out. And I thought, "It's gonna be all-- it's gonna-- we're gonna open the doors and it's gonna be all gay kids." And I was happy about that, but I didn't want to just take LGBT kids. I wanted it to be open and inviting to anyone. So, basically, the pride empathy line, if we, we kept doing the pride empathy line for a long time and it was our hotline, it was our crisis line. Now Weber Human Services answers that line, so that line forwards into Weber Human Services, but the pride empathy line changed its name to Youth Futures and became Youth Futures. So our, our nonprofit was actually founded in 2012 and then the shelter didn't open until 2014-15, opened but changed his name in 2014. MF: Checking my notes here again to make sure I cover everything. So you opened, open the shelter in 2015. What was the response like once the shelter was opened? KM: So we had ... It's such a new concept. We had, you know, we had all the supporters, then we had all of the people fighting it and not wanting it to be there. I think we had, we had law enforcement and DCFS and, you know, a lot of some of those people that it was such a new concept to that were really like, "This is just not gonna work." They were concerned that it was gonna end up being like a flophouse, like, a place where kids could just run away from their families, that they would come there when they were using drugs, and that wasn't the concept, you know. It's the kids that are really in crisis. And I anticipated having a much higher drug use issue than we have. It's a very, very small number of kids have 24 drug use issues, but. You know, I, like, like I mentioned before, as kind of an outsider coming in, I'd kind of you know kept it a little bit quiet for a long time, and then all of a sudden: Here I am, front and center. And I, I, I think I felt, felt initially like a lot of people were just like putting their hands up and saying ... and I just kept persisting. I'm still gonna be here. I'm coming to the table. I'm coming to the meeting. I'll be at the meeting and then I just kept... We, we have to work together. All of us have to work together. This problem, these kids, it can't be solved with just us, or just you, or just you. It takes all of us working together to help these kids, to help their lives, to make a better future for all of us, to ripple effect all of their lives. And that's really what it is, because we touch one kid--one kid--and it changes so much in all of our worlds. MF: Yeah, yeah. So did that kind of help break down some of that resistance? KM: It did. I think it was just my persistence, My... Just... My face just was there and it wasn't going away, and now we have a great relationship with everyone. Ogden is ... It's amazing. And we have a great coordinating--local homeless Coordinating Committee, and, you know. We are, we started keeping data from the very second because nobody was keeping data on, on what we were doing. And we present our data and we're really known as the expert in this in the area is where we're at for what we're doing, so… MF: Good. So, kind of explain a little bit about what happens when a teen comes to the shelter. Kind of the the process that happens. KM: Okay, so, we get ... A kid comes to the shelter in a lot of different ways. We call it an inquiry when we're first, just learning about a kid. It may be a community 25 member who calls us, or a certain other service provider, or the kid might call themself, their friend might call, their family, some other relative might, might call, they might show up at the door. Our whole goal is to get it, for it to be safe enough for a kid to voluntarily present to our door. So that's when we talk in schools, and when we, when we present to kids, the idea is: this is safe. This is a place for you. This is where we want you to not land a day on the streets. We want you to come to us. We want you to reach out for help when you're in need. Because we know kids don't make a plan. You know, things are hairy at home, they're, they're upset, parent kicks them out, they decide they want to run away, and they don't have a plan. They have no, have no idea. And we want to be that, because we know as, in 48 hours after they land on the streets, they're gonna be hungry and tired and cold and they're gonna reach out to someone who's not safe. So depending on how they end up coming to the shelter, if they are, if they're calling or someone's calling about them, the first thing is we would just want to get them into our building. We want to get you here and then we'll assess the situation from there. If the kid voluntarily presents, the first thing we do is an intake. We get information from them about what's going on, we try to assess, you know, the story is somewhere between what the kids telling us and what the parents telling us. It's kind of somewhere in between. So, getting to the bottom of what's really going on. And our, our goal is not to like immediately, as fast as we can, get the kid to go back home; our goal is to figure out what the problem is and help the family, so that when the kid does go back home, they're gonna stay back home. 26 If they've been kicked out, we're gonna work with the families. Our number-one goal is to reunify. So if we can reunify that family and help them, give, give them some supports, it's another one of the reasons why I started Youth Futures because I had a super tough kid. My oldest taught me everything I needed to know. Gave me a run for my money and I didn't feel like I ever had any support, I didn't feel like there was anybody that I could go to to say, "Help me with this kid!" So I sort of got it from the kid's point of view and from the parents point of view. But we, we do an intake with the kid. We...our... One of the new pieces in the law is we notify parents within eight hours, so we're doing everything we can to get the kiddo to let us know how to get ahold of their parent or whoever their guardian is and we notify them that they're there. But, like I said, the goal isn't to be like, "Come get your kid," the goal is just talk to the parents, say, "What's going on?" You know? "How can we help? This is a safe place for the kid. If you guys need some time out for a few days..." Or you know, if it's a parent who's kicking their kid out, it's like, "You can't kick your kid out, so let's talk about what's going on." So. And then handling their basic necessities. When they've... When they come to us, a lot of kids are coming straight off the street. They're coming with nothing but clothes on their back. Have they eaten? Have they slept? What do they mean to care for their their basics? I mean, like some of them come and literally you can't even do an intake until they've slept, because it's been so many days since they've been awake. So, and there's so many different circumstances as to--it's hard to even say, "This is what we do when they come in." We just go, "What's going on and then we..." Still today, we sometimes scratch our heads 27 and go, "Well, that's new. What are we gonna do with this one? How we gonna figure this out?" And we put our heads together as a team and staff and figure out what to do with the kids. MF: I read that you guys have been... The, the family acceptance project, that you're kind of tied to that? KM: I don't know that I would say we're tied to that, but we definitely have the family acceptance project brochures in our facility, and if it's a family that's having trouble with accepting on LGBT side then we're gonna provide these brochure, brochures to them and help talk them through. We always hire therapists that are very diverse and know that we might have to talk through those kinds of things. To be really honest, the LGBT conflict is very minimal. About ... It started out much higher, we had a lot more LGBT kids coming in and I'm not sure why that was. We had outreach Resource Centers which is an LGBT Center in our basement when we first started. They ran their group program down downstairs and... But now we have about 28% LGBT kids and not necessarily all of its related... The reason why they're homeless isn't necessarily related to their LGBT status or conflict at home. And sometimes there's perceived conflict, so the kid may think that they're gonna get rejected and when we call the parent, and the parents like, "I'm totally fine! Let's just talk through it!" Or "Can I..." Sometimes they just need a few minutes to sit with the, the idea, you know. Sometimes when, it's brand-new and something to talk through. MF: Yeah. 28 KM: So, but the LGBT conflict is pretty minimal as to what we're actually dealing with. We're doing with some pretty, pretty tough, complicated issues. MF: Um, want to make sure... I think we've covered most everything... Oh, I wanted to ask about drop-in services as well. KM: Okay. MF: How does that work for, for the teens? KM: Okay, so our program is, is a wraparound approach. If you think of it as a circle ... So, we have street outreach, which reaches … We go out on the streets, with a van stocked with supplies, and we're looking for kids. And we're talking to homeless adults, and we're asking them where the kids are, and how we can find the kids. So we're, we're on the street and we're encouraging kids to come in for drop-in services, if we meet kids on the street. So then the drop-in services are daytime services. They're anything we offer, shelter-wise. You can get case management, meals, we have a research--resource room, which is basically a store or that kids can go through. So, it's basically daytime services, from 6:00 in the morning until 8:00 p.m. at night, kids can come in and, and it can be kids who are in unstable housing, living in extreme poverty, sometimes we have groups so kids can come in just for the group activities that we have. They can come in and get a meal. They can take a food box home. So say they have a home, but they're super poor, they can take food home to their families. They could take a sack lunch. And then, when they come in for drop-in… So that's kind of like, sometimes they want to just come get their foot in the door, and see what it is, see what it's like, and we do a really short intake. When they come in, they have 29 to fill out a little questionnaire. And then if they check the right boxes, then we might ask some more questions about, "So where are you going to sleep tonight?" "Do you have a safe place, to is it safe where you're staying?" And you may get things... It sometimes takes a kid two or three times to come in before they say, "Well, this couch that I'm sleeping on isn't really safe," or "I'm kicked out, I," you know, "only was able to stay there for two weeks." So, it's really a get their foot in the door and start having a conversation with the kids. That either they're at risk of losing their housing, or they've already lost it and they're not ready to say. They're, it's kind of building trust and rapport. So we're building trust here, we're building trust here, now we've identified that they need shelter, so we're like, "Okay, great let's do it intake. Let's get you into shelter." Then after they leave shelter, we're gonna do aftercare. So we're following them for as long as we possibly can. We're... If we get a kid housed, we're gonna--on street outreach, we're gonna go out to them, we're gonna check on them. We're gonna make sure that their place is clean. We're gonna make sure they've got food in the cupboards. Sometimes they'll call us and say, "Hey, when you're on the street outreach, can you bring me some peanut butter?" or whatever, "I'm outta toilet paper." So, you know, we're helping them all the way through. From getting them in, all the way to following them as long as we can. And those kids, after they've left shelter and they're in aftercare, they can still come back in for drop-in services, to access therapy or ongoing, you know, maybe they are housed, but they don't quite have enough for meals, so they 30 might come in for meals for a little while. And then... So, it really just kind of keeps them engaged with us for as long as we can keep them engaged. MF: That's excellent. It really is. How many staff members do you have now? KM: Youth Futures has 42 employees with both sites, so it's kind of crazy to think about, not even five years later. So we have 1:10 staff ratios. We have a program manager, we have a case manager full-time. We have a street outreach team, so that's the team that goes the street, we have the street outreach case manager. We have a nutrition coordinator that cooks the meals, and then we have two on staff at all times. And so, it ends up being, you know, it ends up being quite a few people to keep the thing going. MF: Yeah. You mentioned the other site. You opened the, the shelter in St. George in 2018, is that correct? KM: October of 2018. MF: What was, what was that process like as compared to the Ogden shelter? KM: So it was different. Um, still just as challenging but in different ways. I'm still kind of in that... We're just barely out of the opening of that so I'm still kind of in the middle of, you know, birthing a baby. You forget how hard it was. I look back and I go, "Was it this hard in Ogden?" I think it was a little different. The community actually invited us there. So they had a youth shelter committee that was set up. They were gonna open a shelter, they were trying to figure out what they were gonna do, and their homeless liaison found an article about us. He called me on the phone ... Thing... Things in my life just kind of happen serendipitously. So my development coordinator and I had just finished talking about kind of some 31 strategic goals and where was the next places we were gonna go. We were looking at, you know, do we need to open another shelter? We just we do these brainstorming things where we put the big white sticky note on the wall and we had just written St. George on the top of that sticky note. I rolled it up, got into my car and the homeless liaison called me on the way home to that. And I was like, "Well, let me tell ya." So we talked for the 45-minute drive home from Salt Lake back to Ogden and he says, "Could you come and present? Could you come down and talk to us about how you got this shelter open, and what we need to do to get things open. What's the process? How much does it cost? What kind of services do you offer?" And so we did that, was it February of seventeen? I think it's February of seventeen, and they were like, "Wow, that sounds so great." About a month later, they called us and said, "Actually, we just want to know if you'll do it. Will you just bring Youth Futures--A Youth Futures-- we don't want you to consult." That was the ideas, they were gonna, wanted me to consult and help them open it and they were like, "No, no, no, no, we just want you to do it." So then we started into that process. So I think, funding-wise, we started out in a different place, where we were more established, and so it was easier to get the house secured, and the funding secured. We applied for a federal grant within the first couple of months that we knew we were going to open. So funding-wise, getting it paid for was a little bit easier upfront then those financial struggles that we had with Ogden. It's a much more conservative community, so even though we were invited to come there, the acceptance of what we do, is really hard for people to understand. What low barrier means and what housing 32 first means, and what harm reduction means, you know. We're, we're basically trying to make teeny, tiny, baby steps with these kids, you know. Our goal is to handle their basic necessities and everything else that we do is bonus. If we keep them under our roof and fed and warm, we've, we're successful. And it's, it's tough down there. There's a treatment center on every corner and we're not a treatment center; we're residential Support Center. And, you know, we ... Harm reduction, harm reduction, harm reduction. So baby step. Tomorrow you… Tomorrow you're doing just a baby step better than yesterday. So and I think it was that, I think we had that in Ogden too. I just forget. I just forget. So two years down the road, I think everybody will be like, "Ahh, Youth Futures, yeah." MF: Yeah. KM: You know, yeah, we do the hard stuff, but we're literally the hole that fills ... There's no place else for these kids to go, so some of the kids that we get, you know, they're in tough situations, and it's even more, it's more important for us to serve that kid that's in that super tough situation that nobody else wants to serve than anything else. We have to take care of these kids, so it's better for all of us. MF: Um, I read that you said one of the challenges, one of the biggest challenges in operating the shelter was building trust with, with the, the teens. KM: Yeah. MF: How, how do you go about building that trust? How do you start? KM: Um, so you've gotta, you've got to meet them at their level. You have to come in- -our sort of "signature thing" is tie-dye. So we have tie-dye t-shirts, we do tie-dye t-shirt projects, and my staff dresses down. We, we come at them from, from a 33 place where they're at. We talk to them about, you know, things that are going on for them. Kinda I gotta have kid lingo. We present schools, but really not, not letting that shock value ... You, you really can't do this job with teens if you're gonna be, like, surprised and, and flabbergasted by all the things that they tell you. And anytime somebody swears, you just gotta get over it. It's just, you know, it's just not a big deal. This is not, "these are not our problems," you know? MF: Yeah. KM: So, I think my staff does an amazing job of building that rapport, you know. They really are there to help kids and, so, you know. My, my staff, my therapist, we do a lot of training. We do positive youth development training, and trauma-informed care, and harm reduction, and you know. It's, it's just coming to them from a realistic point of view of talking to a teen. MF: So you've already expanded to a second location Where do you see the future of Youth Futures, you know? What, what do you guys envision, envision, you know, in the next 5, 10, 15 years? KM: Well, so that depends on whether you're gonna hand me 20 million dollars, because my board, my staff, Scott, my development, my fundraiser, my development coordinator, they're all like, "Okay, before you do the next project, we gotta have the money there first--first!" Because we do the cart before the horse. You know, Ogden was for sure that the--the--the wheels--the cart wasn't even thought of. There was no horse. We were beyond that. But, we've got, we've got a lot of work still to do. Creating the shelter's kind of created another hole that, when a kid turns 18, we really don't have the next step, so we need 34 transitional living. We have several transitional living projects in Salt Lake, which are full a lot, and we refer our kids to them when we can, but our goal is to start transitional living in St. George. It's really ... People say, "Why not in Ogden first? That's where you started first." St. George's, the cost of living is so much higher and to house a kid, like we can find a reasonable place for a kid to stay at a much less cost than we can in St. George. So part of what they asked us to bring is transitional living there, so we're working... We'll be starting a capital campaign the end of the year for transitional living for 18 to 20 year olds in St. George. Then, of course, we want transitional living in the Ogden. Cedar City's been talking to us about shelter there. Of course I've gotten calls from Provo and Logan. Got a call today from Davis County. So, it depends on, you know. People go, "How are you gonna do all that?" I'm like, "You just, you just hire people to do it, you know?" We just, we just have to start it, and put a program manager in each spot and ... I would move a million miles a minute faster than everybody will let me go. I'm A.D.D, I can't sit still. I work a lot of hours, I like it that way. I got a lot of work to do and--but there's just, the money and the capacity and doesn't support me moving as fast as I want to move. But we've got a lot of plans. Um, we're actually, in October, our entire board meeting is doing a five-year plan and we're gonna lay out a timeline and decide when, when, when, when, when--all these next things are gonna start. MF: Great. I know we've, we've been at this for almost an hour and a half. I do have a few, a few more questions to kind of wind things down a bit. As we've talked, you know you, you faced several challenges throughout your life, in operating your 35 businesses, in getting these shelters on you know up and running. So what what do you focus on? What keeps you going when things are, are difficult, when you're facing those challenges? KM: You just have to keep going. I mean, today's challenge isn't gonna be there tomorrow. You just need to get through it today and pull those people together they can help pull you back up, and it is hard. There are days ... I, you don't want to be my partner, I'm telling you. Scott is just like, he's got my back. And, but you just can't give up. There's no, I mean, you got to be the one to do it. I was gonna say there's nobody else to do it but yeah there is. If you're the one that wants to take that, that big project on. Just because it's a big project doesn't mean.... And, and failure isn't really--doesn't really exist. So if you're going in this direction, and the way you thought it was gonna happen, this thing doesn't work out you just course-correct, then you go in a different direction, make a different choice. And if that doesn't work, you just make a different choice and you can do that throughout your whole entire life, so. It's just about persistence, and determination, and passion, and believing in yourself, and your community, begging people for money all of the time. MF: Well, I should ask, Reagan, if you have any questions as we've, as we've talked, at all? R: No. MF: Okay, is there anything that we haven't covered that you would like to talk about? KM: You know, I think I just want to thank my staff. You know, I just want to make sure that my staff and all the people--all the board members that I've had, all the 36 community partners that have helped us get to where we are, you know. I may be the face of this, but literally without this trail of people coming behind me and helping us do what we've done, it would have never happened. So you know, I just, I ... they don't get the recognition. I'm always the one getting the thank you and the thank you really just needs to be transferred on to those people because they're really the ones... I just guide them in the way that I need them to do and they just--organized chaos. They just make it happen every day, so. MF: Great. I have one last question: It's the question that we ask all of our interviewees at the end. As I mentioned, this project is kind of within the context of the 19th amendment and women having the right to vote. So, looking back, how do you think women gaining the right to vote has, has shaped history, the community, and your own life, yourself? KM: Well I used to have a bumper sticker, the one that says "Well-behaved women don't make history," or something like that. You know, I think it took those people taking that scary step forward and, and not taking no for an answer, and forcing the issue to make it so that women had a voice, because you know, even still today women still it, it's tough as a woman in business, you know, to come up against some stronger personalities, and to...You know, we're taught to be passive and we're taught to do what we're told and I'm really not very good at that so I'm really glad that those women kinda forced the trail for us to, at least get--I mean had they not done that, we would still be back where we didn't have a voice. 37 MF: What do you think having the right to vote, what does that mean for you personally? KM: I think it means that we have a voice. I think it means that we have the ability to make a difference. I think it's fabulous as we see more and more women stepping into power and being in the lawmaking... making policy, you know. We see more and more women in director positions, and like, I just think it's amazing. MF: Yeah, well, thank you very much for coming this afternoon and letting us pester you with a whole bunch of questions. It--like I said, I was very excited about this interview and I have enjoyed it thoroughly. We, we really appreciate it so thank you very much. KM: Thank you, appreciate it.