Chapter 4 - THE FIRST TIME THE TURNERS SAW ME
I learned later that Robert and Helen Turner had seen me long before I ever saw them.
They owned Turner Hardware on the south side.
Not a chain store.
One of those old neighborhood places where there were wooden bins of screws and handwritten labels taped to drawers.
The grocery store where I took the delivery van was two blocks away.
Robert had been there that morning buying coffee.
He saw police arrive.
Saw me sitting on the curb in a sweatshirt with no coat.
Saw an officer give me a blanket.
He did not know my name.
Two weeks later, Helen attended a community justice meeting at the courthouse. She had volunteered with youth literacy programs for years and served on a neighborhood restorative-justice board.
Judge Cole spoke generally about teenagers cycling through unstable placements.
No names.
No confidential details.
Helen later told me she went home angry.
Not at me.
At the idea that everybody had a role once a kid failed, but nobody seemed to have one before.
She and Robert applied through an approved mentoring organization.
That was the “local program” Helen referred to.
But there was a problem.
By the time they completed screening and orientation, my formal mentoring slot had already been assigned to somebody else.
The Turners could have gone home.
Instead, Helen asked whether there were other approved ways to volunteer.
Eventually, through the facility’s visitation process and my caseworker, they received permission to visit me as community support.
Nobody assigned them.
Nobody required weekly visits.
There were no service hours.
No payment.
No report they had to submit.
The first Saturday was their choice.
So was the second.
And the fifteenth.
I learned all of this much later.
At thirteen, I simply thought there must be some adult form they signed every week requiring them to sit across from me.
May you like
Because the alternative was impossible.
Why would two people who did not know me keep choosing me?
