Here's a blast from the past, from back when Mike Parr was just two years removed from his Probation Officer days.
This article was originally published in
The Los Angeles Times on September 23, 1982, with the title of "
The Pursuer: Runaways Are His Business;" and also on September 27, 1982, in
The Anchorage Daily News with the title of "
He rescues runaways by keeping them away from home." Copied below is the version from
The Toledo Blade, published 'bout 2 weeks later still.
The two paragraphs in brackets were added in from the
Anchorage Daily News version (there were a couple of
other paragraphs missing from
that one). I presume the
original version is the most complete, but that is in a pay-per-view archive.
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The Toledo BladeOctober 8, 1982Runaways Given New Start Away From HomeParents Hire Ex-Probation Officer To Deal With Chronic OffendersBy ANN JAPENGA
The Los Angeles TimesLOS ANGELES — It was his 17th birthday. Tony was enjoying a rare restaurant meal and a reunion with his mother, who he had not seen much of since he ran away from home a year ago. His mother, however, had something in mind besides a birthday get-together.
Tony was halfway through his meal when a tall stranger slid into the booth next to him. He said his name was Mike Parr. He said that Tony was going on a ride.
Tony (not his real name) motioned the waiter over and asked him to call the police. "I'm being kidnaped," he said.
Officers arrived shortly thereafter and Mr. Parr explained himself. He said that he was a former probation officer now in business privately. He had been hired by Tony's parents to rescue their son, a chronic runaway. He tried to convince the officers it would be best if they would let him do his job and take Tony to a ranch in Redding, Calif., which boards and educates problem adolescents.
"The way it stands now, the kid is cooked," he said. "He has no future here."
With the police on his parents' side, Tony realized he was trapped. He climbed into the back seat of Mr. Parr's Saab for an all-night drive.
With hordes of runaways each year, parents resort to police and psychiatrists to keep their children home, often spending thousands of dollars in the process.
(Mr. Parr had one client who said he had spent $125,000 trying to cure a wayward youth. "They hadn't done one thing right," Mr. Parr said. "Parents always make emotional decisions at a time when you can't do that.")
AT ONE TIME parents may have gotten results from county probation departments, but cutbacks in the last five years have meant that cases get less individual attention and are often referred to private agencies, Mr. Parr said.
In 1977, California legislation passed saying that runaways no longer can be institutionalized if they have not committed a crime. So when a runaway is reported to the probation department, he is listed as missing, and it is up to local law-enforcement agents to spot the child. If found, he may be placed in a temporary shelter. Spokesmen for Southern California county probation departments in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles said their main goal is to reunite the family.
Mr. Parr does not work that way.
"My objective is to get them as far away from home as possible," he said. "It's always the parents' problem. It may look at first like I'm blaming the kid, but I'm not."
Although a father of three, Mr. Parr has not much faith in parenting instincts. "Adults don't like kids much," he advised Tony, once they were alone in the car together. "You get in their way, they're gonna get rid of you."
Two years ago Mr. Parr left the Santa Barbara County probation department and got a call which would be the start of a new career. The caller, an attorney, said that he had a juvenile client who had been arrested for selling cocaine to an undercover officer. His parents were looking for a way to keep him out of juvenile hall.
First, Mr. Parr placed the boy in a drug rehabilitation program. Next he fulfilled the boy's lifelong dream of learning to fly by enrolling him in an aviation school, where the boy is to this day.
SANTA BARBARA chief probation officer Alan Crogan said that it is becoming common due to cutbacks in the department for retired probation officers complete probation reports on a private basis — although he said that he had not heard of anyone else offering Mr. Parr's complete service of locating and rehabilitating runaways.
Mr. Parr charges $500 and up. Tony's parents paid $1,000 to have their son escorted to a new home.
Included in the fee is an ongoing followup. Mr. Parr said that he strictly avoids counseling or therapy — he just tells the parents and child what will work.
"The ones that fail are the ones whose parents come to take them home," he said. "Sometimes the parents just can't stand to see the kid change for the better."
There is no job title for what Mr. Parr does, and no way for parents to find him, except by word of mouth. In this manner Mr. Parr's reputation has spread throughout affluent suburbs around the country. In a typical case he might be asked to track down a runaway on the streets of Hollywood, or pick up a punk in a Chicago nightclub. He finds a school or a home for the child and persuades the youth to go there. A favorite way of persuasion is to visit kids at dawn. Before the child is fully awake, he is on his way.
[In the two years he has been in the business, Parr said, he had placed teen-agers in small boarding schools, ranch homes, sports-oriented schools and "emancipation homes" (for young people who are capable of living independently). He has also located specialized training courses and placed kids in the Marine Corps.
"This is a business, man," he told Tony as they drove over at dusk. "I'm not trying to jam you. Parents are big showoffs. Having a good kid is like having a good car. I want your parents out there bragging me up to their friends so their friends will call me."]
MR. PARR advises runaways to try to curb their wanderlust until they are 18 and to take advantage of their parents' money while it's offered. "I say, 'Your parents' lives are set, but you can do wonderful things'."
Tony listened to the advice from the back seat, dozed awhile, and woke up plotting how he would escape from his new home.
"You come back, I'll catch you again, and you'll go to Provo," Mr. Parr warned. (Provo Canyon School in Utah has a reputation as one of the toughest juvenile facilities in the country.)
Once Mr. Parr locates the runaway, it is a battle of wills to get him to go along. He never uses force. It is not legal for him physically to detain a child.
In Tony's case, Mr. Parr talked to him until the boy understood there was really nowhere to go but into the waiting car. If he ran, his parents would commit him to a psychiatric hospital or a prisonlike school.
"Usually there's a little whimpering," Mr. Parr said. "Then they listen to the deal."
Driving on an Interstate at 2 a.m., Mr. Parr played a cassette tape of the University of Michigan marching band at high volume to keep himself awake. Tony slept through the commotion.
At 4 a.m. he pulled off an Interstate onto a country road and drove past miles of fenced fields and pear orchards. He turned into a dark driveway. A dog barked, and a man came to the door wearing a bathrobe and carrying a Coleman lantern.
Tony went right to bed. Mr. Parr sat around the kitchen table and talked with the house proprietor by lamplight. His manner had been matter-of-fact when talking with Tony about his future, but a real concern came out in his voice now. He pleaded with the proprietor not to let the boy's parents back into his life. Let him start over again living here, he said.
After less than a week on the ranch, however, Tony ran away. This time Mr. Parr will be back on his trail with the plan of sending him somewhere too far away to run home.
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