Mary-Jo Stevenson, Volunteer
Though my grandmother and my mother, combined, fostered more than 200 children, I limited my involvement to children of my own, grandchildren, friends and neighbors' children, and children's groups at church until I moved to Waxahachie. Here I joined a "kids' at risk" organization and was assigned to a little easy-going 4th grader.
Near the end of the school year, we were jostling along on a bus at the end of a fun day for which the "risk kids" had been released from school. My assigned child was interacting well with the other happy, somewhat rowdy kids, when I heard the desperate plea for help from a young girl who sat by herself in the last seat of the bus. Her tears did not come rolling down her cheeks; instead they came in verbal defiant tones of all she was going to do to get even with life. She was venting to no one in particular - because no one was willing to sit with her.
I requested to be transferred as mentor to her. That was 2 1/2 years ago. Earlier this year, I attended her hearing in Juvenile Detention court and knew when I left the court room I had to be involved in something which saw better results than the limitations the current organization afforded. I look to CASA to find that personal satisfaction of knowing a child can be rescued with the right intervention, through the right channels, at the right time.
