Keeping cool during crisis

Lissette Rivera sits in one of the bedrooms at the Challenge shelter of the Alaska Youth and Parent Foundation. The facility, which houses up to five teen girls at a time, is in need of a new refrigerator.

Teenage girls arriving at the Alaska Youth and Parent Foundation's Challenge shelter are surprised to find their temporary lodging is not an institution, but a typical four-bedroom house in a residential Anchorage neighborhood.

The girls always come in the middle of crisis, sometimes in the middle of the night. Some were taken from homes where they or their siblings were sexually or physically abused or neglected. Some are runaways. All are assigned to the shelter until courts decide where they should be placed permanently. The typical stay is less than three months.

In the meantime, says shelter manager Lissette Rivera, all the girls deserve to feel at home.

Teens may arrive defiant and guarded. "When they get here, they expect to be stuck in a room and fed bread and water or something," Rivera says. There are rules, but there's also a refuge where they'll have no more than one roommate, eat around a family-sized dinner table and even have someone to share their sorrows and joys with: the house dog, Scooter, a schnauzer.

"You have your attitudes, your clashes," Rivera says. But in time, the girls relax.

"They say, hey, this is a home away from home," she says. In addition to Rivera's main administrative duties, she often fills the role of surrogate mom or big sister.

"(For) some of them," Rivera says, "it's the best they've ever had."

Challenge is the newest shelter run by the Alaska Youth and Parent Foundation, a nonprofit organization that operates two others: one for teen boys and one for children younger than 13. The girls' shelter, licensed for five beds, opened this year and is staffed 24 hours a day.

To protect its residents, the location of the Challenge shelter is a secret. But neighbors know it's there, Rivera says, and they've taken to the girls. One neighbor helped the girls pitch a tent for a backyard slumber party. Another donated Christmas lights.

Staffers appreciate every gift. The organization is partly supported by grants but also depends heavily on the United Way and other donors. There isn't much they'd turn away, Rivera says -- inline skates, girls' bikes, CDs. If it's something a typical teen girl would like, she added, "we'd probably find a use for it."

They could also use a copier, says Rivera. Any kind will do, as long as it works. The house takes in tons of paperwork; an intake form for a single resident can top 75 pages.

One specific item tops their wish list: a refrigerator. The old Hotpoint that came with the house doesn't maintain the proper temperature, says Rivera, and sometimes causes food to spoil. For the safety of the residents, a new refrigerator is needed immediately.

Girls may spend no more than a few months at the shelter, but their lives do change in the short time they spend there.

Rivera, a former runaway herself, takes special pride in talking residents out of a life on the streets. To help drive her message home, she sometimes drops hints of her own past, when she spent two months on New York City streets. "Things seem bad," she tells them. "but they're not as bad as hanging out on the street, eating out of a dumpster."

When they change their minds, Rivera says, she feels proud.

"I know I did good."

Alaska Youth and Parent Foundation's Challenge shelter

C-1 New refrigerator, $450

C-2 Bowling coupons and movie tickets, $150