A lifeline for families in crisis

Her only child, a 17-year-old son, hadn't come home, and Patti Smith sat at the kitchen table at 6:30 in the morning, paralyzed by worry, fear and lack of direction.

Then her eyes wandered to the Godfather's Pizza box from last night's dinner, and a 1-800-number printed on the cardboard jumped out at her. The Boys Town National Hotline.

The Bellevue mother picked up the phone, dialed the number and spent the next 45 minutes sharing how she and husband Scott had clashed with their son, Philip, for what seemed like his whole adolescence. He balked at following house rules such as curfew. He smoked marijuana. And now he was missing. She didn't know what to do, she told the counselor.

Smith's call in 2005 was one of the 8 million phone calls the Boys Town National Hotline has taken since its inception in 1989.

Last year, Boys Town counselors fielded 174,000 calls, and just over 3 percent, or 5,705 of them, were from families and children in Nebraska and Iowa. Calls from all 50 states, U.S. territories, Canada and Europe have come to the Omaha center.

Created to provide free, first-tier help to families in crisis, the hot line marks its 20th year this month, and Boys Town will mark the occasion Wednesday with a reception featuring the Smiths.

The hot line, which costs about $500,000 a year to run, is based on the Boys Town campus south of 144th Street and West Dodge Road.

During peak times, the hot line is staffed by 12 counselors who, in addition to fielding phone calls from all over the U.S. and beyond, now answer e-mail requests for help. A new Boys Town Web site aimed at youths is expected to generate more requests for help.

On one recent day, a nine-year hot line staffer named Linda took a call from a Canadian teenager who called herself Ellen.

Ellen could have been calling a kind aunt.

“Honey, how old are you?” asked Linda, a 48-year-old mother of three and former Boys Town house parent.

Linda, taking notes on the call, then typed in “17” and the words “Boyfriend has started to hang out with best friend.”

“I won't be able to give you a solution, but I can work through what you want to do about it,” Linda told Ellen.

“Are you having thoughts of hurting yourself or ending your life?” she asked. She then typed in that Ellen had considered suicide before, though not recently and not for this. The counselors have a way of flagging a lead counselor to act immediately if necessary.

Linda empathized with Ellen: friendships with girlfriends can be hard and this situation could be hurtful, but girlfriends tend to “be there forever; boyfriends come and go.” She urged Ellen to consider the situation temporary and find a good friend “and at least one adult” to talk to. Ellen agreed she wouldn't hurt herself.

The call, which ended at 3:46 p.m., lasted six minutes — about the average. It marked the 15th call Linda fielded since logging on at 6:08 that morning, a relatively slow day.

Her calls included four hang-ups, a grandparent phoning in to say thanks and a 15-year-old boy from Florida who wanted to know if he'd gotten a girl pregnant after just kissing her.

The most common youth call is about a relationship issue, followed by someone suffering from mental illness such as depression. The most common call from parents has to do with children not following the rules.

“American families just need more help,” said the Rev. Steven Boes, the national executive director of Boys Town who's based in Omaha.

Boes said the hot line is envisioned to be preventative and avoid costly, more difficult intervention measures down the road. Boys Town's well-known on-campus services for families in crisis can involve the drastic measure of parents relinquishing their rights.

“The largest number of people in the U.S. will be touched by the hot line, more than (all) other (Boys Town) services combined,” Boes said. “We think (the hot line) will decrease ultimately the cost of the entire system, which pays a heavy price once we have to intervene and pull a child out.”

Patti and Scott Smith never had to take that step with Phil, but they eventually involved law enforcement. The clashes started in middle school. Phil hung out with friends they didn't know, bucked the house rules and was mouthy. But he remained a strong enough student, seemed to like school, was liked by teachers and was able to get and keep jobs. They chalked up his defiance to growing pains, but the relationship got so strained they had to seek counseling.

“We were constantly grounding him,” Patti Smith said.

Then, a week after Philip's 17th birthday, the teenager pulled something new: running away.

Patti saw the Boys Town number and dialed.

She reached a counselor and shared her struggles and jotted down notes. What to do when Phil called or came home. How to show Phil they were serious. How to get their son's cell phone records and drug tests.

Phil came home a week later. His only explanation: He couldn't take the rules anymore.

By his and his mother's accounts, the next year was a rocky one that involved nine more calls to the Boys Town hot line during two stints of house arrest, probation, getting caught with marijuana and two more runaway attempts.

His parents sought and won detainment at Sarpy County's juvenile detention center, and he spent parts of his senior year there and in rehab in Grand Island. He was able to complete an alternative program and graduate from Bellevue East with his class.

That fall, two years after first running away, Phil Smith started a civil engineering program at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and moved in with friends.

But he frittered the semester away by partying and had to withdraw.

Then he got a girlfriend who told him it was her or the drugs. Phil chose her and told his parents: “I'm really going to work hard. I am different.”

So far this has been no hollow proclamation.

Phil repeated the civil engineering classes but, with a deepening faith and an eye on being a minister, switched majors to speech communications. He and the girlfriend parted, but Phil dove into a new church, Christ Community, and a campus church group.

“It was always about me,” he said, referring to his teen years. “Everything I did was to please myself. The more (my parents) tried to help me and get me to stop living a destructive lifestyle, the more I resisted and the more angry I got at them.”

Phil, now 21 and in his third year at UNO, has repaired the relationship with his parents.

They talk every day. And Patti's son says four words she didn't hear during those trying teen years: “I love you, Mom.”

Phil credits a Christian he met in detention and his relationship with God. His mother credits Phil's school, the court system and the Boys Town hot line.

“I was floundering,” she said. “They gave me hope, basically. That this is not a hopeless situation, that kids have done this before, would be doing it in the future — and that there are people to help.”

Contact the writer:

444-1136, erin.grace@owh.com

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