http://bozemandailychronicle.com/articl ... bzbigs.txtNew wilderness program for troubled teens
By KAYLEY MENDENHALL Chronicle Staff Writer
As Bob Weimer sat through a memorial service for his 27-year-old daughter Jackie near the headwaters of the Missouri River almost a year ago, he felt he was experiencing the final chapter of her life.
But he couldn't let the story of his daughter, who he described as an "amazing person," just end.
"I wanted to see something go on that would be a legacy to her," he said in a phone interview from California last week. "She had a tremendous influence on people."
Until a few months before she died in a rock climbing accident at Devil's Tower National Monument, Jackie had worked with Alternative Youth Adventures in Boulder, Mont., helping troubled teens through wilderness therapy. Due to state budget cuts AYA lost its funding and shut down last winter.
Jackie and her coworkers were out of jobs. She died a few months later on May 17, 2003.
"Amazingly, just a little over a year ago today, she and I had been talking about her long term plans and goals," Bob Weimer said. "And her long-term goal was to open a wilderness high school."
While visiting with Jackie's friends after her memorial service, Weimer kept those goals in mind. Through a discussion with Mark Parlett, who had been Jackie's supervisor at AYA, Weimer realized an effort was already underway to start a new wilderness therapy program in Montana.
He wanted to be a part of that effort.
"It seemed like a good way to start participating in something that has some meaning in terms of what Jackie was doing in regard to wilderness therapy," Weimer said.
As an accountant, Weimer began helping with a business plan for Three Rivers Wilderness Programs. He has the business experience to balance out Parlett's wilderness training and Marylis Filipovich's therapy skills.
The three became founding partners of the nonprofit, which is based in Bozeman and is scheduled to start serving troubled teens on May 27.
Wilderness therapy
Three Rivers Wilderness Programs has leased more than 300 acres along the north end of the Bridger Mountain Range to serve as a base camp for its wilderness therapy programs.
Teens ages 13 to 17 will go on 42-day backpacking trips into the Gallatin National Forest with trained staff members. They'll learn basic survival skills, leadership skills and ways to work together to solve problems.
"We will have therapists in the field each day," said Parlett, who has taken on the role of operations director. "Our approach is very relationship based. We want the child to take responsibility for their actions and behaviors."
Most of the kids enrolled in the program will have had problems with alcohol and drugs, problems at school and at home. Executive director Filipovich said, in the beginning families will have to pay for the program -- which may cost hundreds of dollars a day -- out of their own pockets. But eventually the nonprofit hopes to offer scholarships.
"We really want to serve kids regardless of income," Filipovich said. "And we really want to serve Montana kids."
She said the program is not like a boot camp, kids are not forced to do things but are presented with challenges and asked to come up with their own decisions. They then have to face the consequences of those decisions and learn from their choices.
Teenagers in the program do not go through the experience alone. Instead their families, especially parents, are involved through every step of treatment.
"We feel it is very important to include the whole family in the problem," Filipovich said. "It is not just the child's problem."
At the end of the 42 days, some teens may not be ready to go home, she said. In that case, they can stay longer at the camp or if things go as planned they can enroll at the soon-to-be established Jackie Weimer School near Belgrade.
Completing the goal
When he started working with Parlett and Filipovich, Weimer still envisioned Jackie's school as a long-term goal but he put it on the back burner to focus on the wilderness therapy program.
"We decided we should talk to as many people as we can in the Bozeman area about what we're doing to get some input and advice," Weimer said. "We went around talking to people and actually the first person we talked to was the headmaster out at the Bootstrap Ranch High School."
Little did they know the Bootstrap Ranch, which was started in the late 1990s to provide an alternative high school for troubled teens, had closed down. Ron Woods, who donated and started the facility, was looking for a new tenant.
"They had all kinds of ideas on the table. The thing that made the most logical sense over there was to continue running that place as a high school," Weimer said. "This is exactly what Jackie would have wanted to have done."
At the time, Weimer, Parlett and Filipovich weren't prepared to open a school. They put the Bootstrap out of their minds until another partnership with the nonprofit Anasazi Foundation of Mesa, Ariz., started to take shape.
"I think they were quite taken by our approach and our philosophy," said Mike Merchant of the Anasazi Foundation. "We were also impressed by them."
Anasazi run wilderness programs for teens and young adults in Arizona, and Merchant explained the group had hoped to start a residential school. By partnering with Three Rivers Wilderness Programs, the groups are sharing resources and working together to raise $1 million in working capital to open the Jackie Weimer School at the former Bootstrap Ranch by September.
"It's an incredible story how we got from where we started last June until where we are right now. I really do feel there is kind of a spiritual guidance component to this whole thing," Weimer said. "I think with what we're doing here (Jackie's) influence is going to live on for a long time."
