A week or so into their new arrangement, John Campbell confronted Kevin — why wouldn't he try to get all that help? "He'd just had enough, I think," John says.
The Campbells soon found that Los Angeles, with all its riches, has few places for those fresh out of foster care. The Salvation Army was booked. Bridge of Faith in Whittier, run by a former foster child, houses only women. Dream Center in L.A. wasn't prepared to take aged-out foster kids.
PHOTO BY CATHERINE GREEN
Linda and John Campbell: "We just felt like, Kevin is brilliant," Linda says.
PHOTO BY CATHERINE GREEN
Kevin: "My first foster father stole my birth certificate."
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Other programs were too restrictive, or refused because Kevin was on antidepressants — too high-risk. "Weeks were clicking by," Linda says, "and everywhere we went, there were closed doors."
Then Linda found a possible solution on a flier tucked away in one of Kevin's folders. The two-year program at First Place for Youth in L.A. promised comprehensive support for former wards, including life-skills training and, most appealing, apartments for those selected to participate.
Stacy Peters, a First Place program specialist, says that when she met Kevin, "I looked at him and I said, 'You better go back to school. Do not waste your time. You're too smart for this.' " Weeks later, she can't help but smile when she talks about working with him: "We all love him up here."
Kevin signed up for the agency's Step It Up preparatory boot camp, which kids must complete before being considered for the full program and apartment. For three weeks, he and 11 other former foster kids went over budget basics, building credit, résumé tips and tools for identifying "circles of support" in their lives.
On graduation day, each kid was expected to speak. Kevin didn't dwell on the details of how exactly the father in his first foster home stole from him, or what prompted "one of my coked-out foster brothers" in his second setup to attack him.
Instead, the self-described "philomath — a lover of learning" talked about the day Peters showed them a clip of actor Will Smith talking about how his father made him build a brick wall — it took nearly 18 months.
"I believe [his father] was trying to show him that that which seems impossible is simply not," Kevin says. "I want to put my life on track again. ... I want to build my brick wall."
But Kevin wasn't among the few chosen for the program, another setback in a string of disappointments. His first "foster father," he tells L.A. Weekly, was "not a good foster parent. Yeah, he stole from me — my birth certificate and my Social Security card," he alleges. "Then he took off to Mexico."
Kevin learned that this particular guardian — an adult who is paid public funds to house, watch over and feed foster children — had implicated another foster kid in attempted robbery. Kevin didn't tell DCFS. "Where I come from, you don't ever complain," he says. "There's a Spanish saying" — Kevin is fluent, with grandparents in Mexico — "that the fish dies by his mouth."
His next stop was a prearranged "rest bed," a backup to foster homes. "I tried to stay there," he says. The woman who ran it "drove me to school. Like, no one ever drove me to school. And she would bring me snacks. She was really nice, but one of the other kids she had was a little gangbanger."
One night, Kevin got up to turn down the TV, and his "foster brother" hit him. "I woke up in a pool of blood, and I couldn't talk. Like, I thought I was saying things right, but no one could understand me."
He spent the night at Children's Hospital L.A. before going to DCFS downtown — he calls it "the tower" — to find a new home.
Kevin bounced around rest beds before ending up at a house in South Central. Something reminded him of the place where he'd been beaten unconscious by the gangbanger. "I got there really late," Kevin says. "The guy was already asleep but ... he was dressed kind of similar to the guy who beat me up."
It was a disastrous new placement by DCFS for a traumatized kid, sticking him in a rough neighborhood. "I took off that night," he says. Two days later, Kevin turned himself in to DCFS. He was driven to what was to be his last foster home, in La Puente, where things went fairly well.
Kevin says he was given two weeks' notice by DCFS that he would be kicked out because of his 18th birthday.
Still, looking back on the difficult year to follow, he says, "I prefer my own counsel, and being by myself. I just don't really like relying on other people."
At the Campbells' townhome, he abides by the rules, calling to say he'll be late when he's out with friends and keeping his space tidy. Inside, there's little evidence he's staying there at all. His belongings are kept out of sight. His bed is the living room couch. Someone has spread out a white blanket, smoothed down in anticipation of visitors. Kevin's a guest here himself.
