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Juvenile inmates of Spring Mountain Youth Camp gather into line formations on the facility's basketball court before a dedication ceremony Sept. 28. Felons between ages 12 and 18 are sentenced to the camp for as long as nine months, but the average stay is 135 days. Photo by Ralph Fountain. Math teacher Ernest Scott helps a Spring Mountain Youth Camp inmate with a computer problem. The school, which is operated by the Clark County School District, has many of the same classes found in other county schools, but also features courses in electronics and general maintenance. Photo by Ralph Fountain. Spring Mountain Youth Camp Assistant Manager Dave DeMarco talks about probation officers' approaches to rehabilitating youths. DeMarco -- who began working at Spring Mountain 24 years ago -- says each boy at the camp has specific needs that are addressed individually by staff members. Photo by Ralph Fountain. Billy Sanders, 16, talks about his sentence at Spring Mountain Youth Camp. Sanders, arrested for possession of marijuana in February, will complete his six-month sentence this week. Photo by Ralph Fountain.

Monday, October 09, 2000
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

SECOND CHANCES: Camp offers alternative

Young felons have opportunities in Spring Mountains

Billy Sanders displays so much confidence in discussing his ambitions, it's easy to forget his age.

Clad in a baseball cap, sweatshirt, jeans and sneakers, the teen-ager hikes up a gravel path in the east Toiyabe National Forest while talking about his aspirations in a voice filled with certainty.

"I'm going to become a chef and open a restaurant," he says, mentioning Mexican and Filipino cuisines as possible concentrations. He pauses for a moment to inhale the mountain air, and a smile creeps across his face. "Later, I'm going to run for mayor."

Just a few weeks shy of his 16th birthday, Sanders was arrested in February for possession of 2 pounds of marijuana. But he says those days are behind him, and he's ready to start realizing his culinary dreams after he's released this week from Spring Mountain Youth Camp, the wilderness home of Clark County juvenile delinquents for nearly three decades.

Twenty-five miles northwest of Las Vegas and more than 8,500 feet above sea level, Sanders and 79 other young felons go to school, receive counseling, work hard and play hard in the county's unique alternative rehabilitation program for troubled teen boys.

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There are no fences or razor wire at Spring Mountain Youth Camp.

Instead, the isolated clearing and dozen buildings that sit atop Angel Peak are surrounded for miles in every direction by ponderosa pines, white firs, pinyon juniper and wild scrub brush.

"They can walk away anytime they like," says Assistant Manager Dave DeMarco, who joined the staff as a probation officer in 1976. "It's not advisable, but they try it anyway."

For nearly half the year, snow and freezing winds make escapes especially punishing for youths raised in Las Vegas' mild winters. "And during the rest of the year, there's nowhere to go," DeMarco says.

Not surprisingly, most of the 10 to 15 boys who do make a break for it -- about 200 kids are cycled through the camp annually -- are rounded up by probation officers or turn themselves in after briefly braving the elements.

But most appear to enjoy their time at the camp.

"Yeah, it's kind of like a nice vacation from down there (Las Vegas)," Sanders says. "It's like a summer camp. It's not like they're punishing us. They're working us."

Some youths will even commit crimes during late fall in hopes they'll get sent to the camp during Thanksgiving and Christmas, staffers say.

They come from families that have drug-addicted parents or another serious problem that ensures the youths will enjoy a better holiday season at the camp than at home, one staffer says.

"It's a sad phenomenon, but, unfortunately, that's true," says Fritz Reese, assistant director of the Department of Family and Youth Services, the county child welfare agency that operates the camp.

Built as a U.S. Air Force weather station in the early 1950s, the federal government sold the installation to the county child welfare agency for $1 in 1970 to help deal with a burgeoning youth crime problem.

One of the last relics of the Air Force's time there was retired from use this summer, when inmates began moving out of early Cold War-era barracks into new, $9 million dormitories that increased the camp's capacity to 100 teens.

Armed with figures showing the camp is reducing youth crime, the county will lobby the 2001 Legislature for millions more to make additional improvements to one of its most successful programs.

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Family Court Judge Robert Gaston, one of the camp's most vocal advocates, has sent scores of youths to Spring Mountain since he became Clark County's lone juvenile judge in January 1999.

"Normally, the kids that go there are boys who've really exhausted their remedies of trying to stay in the community and in their homes," Gaston said. "They've not taken their problems seriously when they're placed there."

While there's no typical profile of a Spring Mountain inmate, most youths there have been arrested for felonies more than once, have failed at a county probation program and were convicted of gang- or drug-related crimes, Gaston said.

Kids accused of serious violent crimes are transferred to the adult court and penal system or are sentenced to a youth facility in Elko or the new juvenile prison near Nellis Air Force Base.

The boys at the camp are educated at a Clark County School District outpost where they learn math, computer skills, basic electronics and mechanical engineering and practical maintenance tasks such as how to fix a toilet or install a yard sprinkler system.

But it's sports and physical work combined with intense counseling sessions that go the furthest toward changing attitudes, administrators believe.

"A lot of these kids have never competed in organized sports," DeMarco says. "It teaches them cooperation and a healthy sense of competition ... plus it's a positive outlet for pent-up aggression."

The camp's Golden Eagles football team competes against high school squads as close as Indian Springs and as far away as Smith Valley. Other kids play baseball or basketball, run track and field or wrestle.

Sanders didn't pursue a spot on the football team. One of his big toes was amputated earlier this year, which slowed his running.

But he has no complaints about earning about $125 a week during the summer months working in the camp's forestry program.

In a 25-year partnership with the U.S. Forest Service, about 40 young men such as Sanders toil each summer enhancing and maintaining hiking trails that have been washed out or damaged by hikers, as well as building new ones throughout the Las Vegas District of the Toiyabe.

Those not in the forestry program cook, clean, do laundry and help maintain the camp, and despite the tediousness of those tasks, inmates say the work is more enjoyable than drug counseling or family therapy sessions.

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It's difficult for Reese and other Family and Youth Service administrators to tout the camp's success without acknowledging the problems Spring Mountain faced just three years ago.

A nine-month audit from 1997 showed the number of kids arrested for another crime after being released from the camp was a whopping 88 percent.

And while critics might have jumped to call the camp a failure, that rate was in line with nationwide figures, which stay around percentages in the mid-80s.

But between July 1999 and June 2000, county tracking statistics show Spring Mountain's recidivism rate dropped to 29 percent.

Reese says the numbers are no fluke.

"It's a combination of things," he said, citing increased focus on inmates' risk assessments and more therapy.

Reese says part of the credit goes to increased participation in Functional Family Therapy, a program piloted at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. After teens are released from the camp, they go to counseling sessions in which parents and relatives are actively involved in the teens' rehabilitation.

Brad Donohue, an assistant professor in UNLV's Psychology Department who specializes in juvenile delinquency, calls the camp's recidivism rate exceptional.

"Across the board, studies have shown that family-based interventions are much more effective," says Donohue, who is authoring a study on treating drug abuse in delinquents. "There's usually a lot going on in the kids' lives, especially at home. So it's exactly the direction you want to go -- bringing more of the kids' lives into the therapy."

In comparison, county methods of juvenile delinquency treatment ranging from minimally supervised probation to maximum security lock-up have recidivism rates between 50 and 62 percent.

"What's amazing to me is that after they're up there for a couple of months, the kids in gangs start acting like kids again," says Gaston, the juvenile judge.

But two high-profile cases that ended with two camp alumni dead and another spending at least the next 20 years in prison show not every kid that comes out of Spring Mountain is a success story.

Just a few months after he left the camp, 19-year-old Emilio Rodriguez took his final breaths Dec. 5 on a sidewalk outside Mr. D's sports bar, 1810 S. Rainbow Blvd.

Rodriguez had entered the bar with two other robbery suspects about 1:20 a.m. and began randomly firing a handgun.

In January, a Clark County coroner's inquest jury found off-duty police officer Dennis Devitte, who was shot eight times during a face-to-face gunbattle with Rodriguez, was justified in shooting the teen to death.

In the other case, Cesar Valenzuela was sentenced to at least 20 years in prison for firing a fatal shot into the back of Edgar Pichardo, a rival gang member. The two served time together at the camp in 1997.

Valenzuela was 16 when he killed 17-year-old Pichardo.

The stories wouldn't surprise Donohue, the UNLV psychologist.

"They (programs like Spring Mountain) seem to be pretty effective while kids are attending the camp," he says, "but, unfortunately, after they've been out a while, studies show they have a tendency to get in trouble again."

Spring Mountain staff members hope they can reverse that trend by keeping parents involved in their sons' rehabilitation.

"These guys (probation officers) are close to the kids, and they're getting closer by getting to know their families," says DeMarco, the camp's assistant manager. "We think that's the way to keep them from ending up back here or somewhere worse."