It is not known whether they still dress youth on runaway risk in orange jumpsuit as it is described in this article...
The Deseret News — FAMILY extraWednesday, January 10, 1996Growing teens in the tall grassRustic 'campus' in Koosharem offers troubled kids the direction they've been lacking.By Lois M. Collins ·
Deseret News staff writerPhotos by Carmen Troesser ·
Deseret News photgrapherLaughter and the sounds of singing split the early morning air. Three teenage girls harmonize "My Guy" and it echoes in the bowl formed by the mountains surrounding tiny Koosharem, Sevier County. They don't seem to notice the blanket of snow on the ground — snow the 7,000-foot altitude promises to keep until late spring.
By 7 a.m. the lights are on in all the cabins at Sorenson's Ranch Schools as teenage boys and girls get ready for breakfast. Some have chores to do. Season Archer sweeps the walk as the singers clown behind her. Halfway across the ranch, Louis Madrill pours feed for the pigs and horses and cattle, stopping occasionally to scratch a goat or pig under its chin.
The setting is deceptively pastoral.
Sorenson's Ranch School represents the last hope for more than 100 families in crisis. Almost all of the youths who stamp playfully through the snow have dabbled with crime or taken drugs or given their parents fits with erratic and disrespectful behavior. A few have done all three, although the vast majority have never been to court. A handful are orphans.
"Most of the kids were creating some kind of havoc and their parents want to nip it in the bud," says founder, Burnell Sorenson, of the private school/residential treatment program.Matt Holliday, a Texan, doesn't remember a time when he wasn't in trouble.
Nine months into his stay at the ranch, he's working in the sawmill, unmoved by the snow. "I lived in Canada before," he quips, never taking his eyes off the wood as it comes off the saw. "This is T-shirt weather."
He's different than most of the youths; because he's 18 he has more say in his treatment program. He's no longer subject to the "point" system that drives most of the youths. He could leave, if he wanted. But he's agreed to stay because he hasn't completed the program and the longer he's away from former friends, the better his chances of staying drug-free back home.
Most of the boys at the mill say their drug use forced their parents to take action.
Jay Markowitz, 16, of California, figures he's here because of the friends he chose and the activities they pursued. But he admits he's only recently started thinking about the choices he's made.
J.C. Peraldo is halfway through his stay. From Miami, the 16-year-old believes he's alive because his mother finally said, "Enough."
"If I wasn't here.... My mom saved my life. Too many drugs, gang problems. I was bad."
Not all the youths at the ranch are immediately amenable to change. And some have been pretty creative in their resistance to "going straight." One boy tried to operate an on-site brewery. Staff ended the budding career of a locksmith wannabe who thought he'd create his own "keys to the future."
"Sometimes they get us. And sometimes you can't help but laugh," Shane Sorenson says. "They have all this creative energy and we have to find ways to channel it in a right direction."
Students move through levels, earning points and privileges with good behavior. The bottom of the trust system — a dreaded Level 1, with no privileges, total structure and no privacy — must be "earned." Everyone starts out as a Level 2. That way, there's room for improvement or decline.
How do you get to be a Level 1? a reporter asks a petite, blue-eyed blonde of 16.
"Well," she says, "I pierced my belly."
"Oh yeah. And I tried to force another girl out a window."
It'll be a long climb back to Level 5 and the choices and free time she craves, she admits.
Burnell Sorenson's great-grandmother Karen was the first Sorenson to settle on 40 acres of land that later grew into today's 500-acre ranch, back in the 1890s. She bought the land for $1.25 an acre. She lived there in a sod hut among the tall grass from which Koosharem takes its name, with her 10-year-old son Sorn.
She and her husband Ole had joined the LDS Church in 1882 and immigrated to Manti. He stayed behind to work for a time after she and Soren moved to Grass Valley.
Today, the tiny towns of Koosharem, Burrville and Greenwich combine to form a community of about 100 families, "all shirt-tail cousins because of all the intermarrying in the early days,"Burnell Sorenson laughs.
The townsfolk speak to each other in half-sentences — a shorthand born of easy and long-lived familiarity.
Most of the town's adults work at Sorenson's Ranch, which Burnell and his wife, Carrol, converted to a summer camp in 1959. Twelve years ago, it evolved to a residential treatment program, now directed by their son, Shane. Their other children work around the ranch. Burnell's brother Chad administers the on-site school.
Carrol and Burnell Sorenson both had long careers as teachers. "In a way, we were preparing for this our whole lives," Burnell notes.
When hard times strike, townspeople wander over and have lunch or dinner in the ranch's big dining room.
And whatever happens in Koosharem, everybody knows about it before school gets out for the day. "We're not snoopy," says Chad Sorenson. "We're just all right here."
Andrea Fuller believes historians will be able to research the disintegration of the American family and trace the genealogy of a generation torn apart by temptation and the need for self-gratification.
"It started with '60s parents who thought drugs, sex, love and peace were it, with no responsibility," says Fuller, head therapist at Sorenson's Ranch School. "A lot of youths have no good parent-child relationship; no adult role models they can depend on."
Chad Sorenson agrees.
A student sits at a desk in the corner of Sorenson's spacious office, working on an assignment. The door opens and shuts frequently, bringing in a steady stream of kids with questions. They call him Chad, but there's nothing uncomfortably familiar about that.
There are simply too many Mr. Sorensons on campus.
"They're the same kids you'd meet in public schools," he says. "Maybe their problems have escalated more. And their parents are financially able to say, "Let's try this."
"Academically, these kids are above average. But all kids like boundaries, whether they'll say it or not. It's a thing they need and we provide. Parents get caught too often trying to please a child. They don't want to be pleased; they want to be directed."
Youthful misbehavior isn't the only thing that brings youths to the ranch. Often, Chad Sorenson says, "it's a lack of parents' skills in knowing how to direct them. Parents in some way need more direction. And it's not the fault of the parents, either."
"I tell them, don't let the children put you on a guilt trip. You've done the best you can."
When it comes to drug abuse, crime and general mischief, he says, money and education levels don't make a difference.
This is Sorenson Ranch:
A barn, tall and plain, the biggest this side of Nebraska, the wood milled locally by crews that included teenage ranch residents. The school's math teacher owns the mill.
Kittens wild on the streets and waiting on the steps of the four room Grass Valley Inn next door, in case a traveler wants to cuddle.
Tidy four-person cabins, built by youths learning hopefully life-changing skills.
Teenage girls standing on the cold, hard floors in pre-dawn hours to curl their hair. They could be up to their hips in pig slop, but their hair and makeup would be just right.
The same girls sleep in the fields, ready to serve as midwives during foaling season.
Two boys walking up and down the half-mile driveway as penance for tardiness. "Time to think," Burnell Sorenson says. "Good exercise."
Young men and women sweating as they stack hay. Later, they'll sit up a little straighter and joust about which stack is higher or neater or fatter.
Classes, then therapy, then classes.
On excursion days, Sorenson's Ranch School is a campfire and a night under the stars.
"Are you going to tell the truth about this place?" several girls ask as they climb onto the horses they're training.
What's the truth? It's hard to tell in a one-day visit to a program that will absorb a year of their lives.
Asked about the truth, they laugh. A couple shrug.
One truth emerges in the course of the day. These kids smile more than most at treatment centers. And they're arm huggers.
It's a fine line, Shane Sorenson explains. Kids need affection, but it's dangerous to hug or touch them. Too many times, someone cries "improper."
The teenagers have found their own solution: They wrap their arms around the arm of teachers, counselors, staff. It's a mini-hug, full of affection and very "proper."
The program has hints of an outdoor work philosophy, with plenty of rules and labor and expectations. But it isn't an outdoor therapy program. "We're more love than tough love, I'm afraid," Shane Sorenson says. "We kind of treat them like they're our own."
What does the $100-a-day fee buy at Sorenson's Ranch School? Most of the teenagers stay between a year and 18 months, so the cost is not for the faint-hearted.
First, there's the staff: The school employs 11 certified teachers, five administrators and is certified by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations. The therapy staff — most youths are in therapy two or three times a week — includes a psychiatrist, a psychologist, two social workers and a pair of therapists.
The place is overrun with townspeople who come in to help with tasks like cooking.
The science room is a zoo. Birds sing and fish swim in the midst of a miscellany of rodents and snakes. A horse skeleton dominates the back of the room; students took a couple of years gathering the bones in the fields, before assembling the eerie creature.
Besides core subjects, the school fields athletic teams that compete against some of the state's smaller schools in several sports. For elective subjects, students can choose to learn saddlemaking, leatherworking, construction, framing, electrical, plumbing, farming, ranching, carpentry, woodworking, auto mechanics, small engine repair, clay crafts. They find and polish their own rocks, create their own jewelry.
And the children who are lucky learn to take responsibility for — and live with — their own choices.
"This is rustic," says Shane Sorenson. "We don't want youths to be too complacent or comfortable. If you never want to leave here, what then?"
"We have kids hating it. 'It sucks.' We'll agree, it kind of does. Part of (a child's) success is the ability to come to terms with it."
You don't need a lock-down facility when you're miles from nowhere, according to Shane Sorenson. And everyone — and everything, from the people to the pigs and goats — roams the grounds pretty much at will on Sorenson Ranch.
Amid the Levis and casual clothes, a sprinkling of orange jumpsuits stand out. Those youths wear orange because they are "runaway risks." The hunter-orange is easier to spot on the open road or along the mountain trails.
Tony Ellington holds the runaway record among the current students. "He toured the whole West Coast," jokes Matt Holliday with mock admiration.
"I'm through with that now," Ellington adds. "It gets tiring after a while."
The 16-year-old Las Vegas native has been at Sorenson's Ranch School a year. Once, he ran all the way to Richfield.
Most runaways don't get very far. Everyone in town knows everyone else, including the youths at the ranch. A "hitchhiker" who gets a lift may find it takes him straight back to the ranch.
Burnall Sorenson worries about runaways — something every residential treatment program has. Koosharem is so remote. The temperature, because of the altitude, mirrors that 1,000 miles north.
"We're careful," Burnell Sorenson says. "We don't want anything to happen to these kids."
If you're interested, Shane Sorenson will offer you a soft drink and show you turn-of-the-century photographs.
Then he moves to the present. The walls of his spartan office are covered with photos of the youths for whom they've cared. A boy catching his first fish. A girl, head thrown back in laughter, riding a once-wild horse.
"Fellow incorrigibles," is how Burnell Sorenson affectionately describes the bond between the girls and horses at the ranch.
Sometimes a car will pull into the driveway and a former student, now older and wiser, will usher his children in.
"This is where I grew up," he'll say.
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