Teens hang out Dec. 14 at the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth drop-in center on Maryland Parkway in Las Vegas. Photos by Isaac Brekken. Conrad Pangan, left, and Terry Blakeney carry donations Dec. 14 into the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth drop-in center.

Eric is not his real name. But the former runaway -- now considered an adult because he's 18 -- has re-established a relationship with his family and doesn't want to embarrass them.

That wasn't always the case. Once, Eric chafed under his parents' care. He considered them extremely strict. They wouldn't let him hang out with friends, he recalls, and grounded him for long periods for minor offenses, such as not cleaning the crumbs from the dinner table.

By age 15, he frequently slept on couches at his friends' homes. His parents, he says, "had a problem with it, but I would do it anyway."

By 16, he talked with his school counselor on a daily basis.

"It's not unusual for school to become the respite for the youth," says Kathleen Boutin, director and founder of the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth, which operates a drop-in center for teen runaways at 4800 S. Maryland Parkway.

"Most high school youth will develop relationships with a coach, teacher or counselor."

Because of that close association with school, she adds, such teens frequently have high grade-point averages.

One day just before school dismissal, Eric's counselor called him into his office. He had heard from Eric's father and told the teen that he didn't think he should go home. Eric's parents had found some contraband in his room and had emptied it of everything but his bed and a few items of clothing.

He went home anyway. Seeing his stripped-down room, he punched a hole in a wall. When his father saw that, Eric says, he beat him. The police were called. Because Eric was cooperative, they left without taking him into custody.

After the police left, his father hit him again, Eric says. He hit back. His mother called the police, who took him to juvenile detention. And he promptly was sent back to his parents.

About a week later, Eric recalls, the scenes were re-enacted. This time he was sent from juvenile detention to a mental health facility.

"As soon as I got home, he started beating me again," Eric says of his father.

He left for good, resuming his habit of couch-surfing at his friends' homes. But once the other parents realized that he was homeless, he no longer was welcome. And so Eric took to the streets.

Where did he sleep?

"Anywhere," he says. "Behind stores, in Dumpster enclosures. It's nice and warm right there."

Asked about a report that homeless teens live in a wash in northwest Las Vegas, Eric can't help but smile and shakes his head to indicate that it's not true.

"You'll hear a lot of rumors," he says. "Some are true and some are not."

They're spread, he says, to divert attention.

"A lot of decisions have to be made," Eric notes, such as dark versus light. In darker areas, he says, runaway teens are less visible but more vulnerable.

"They'll sleep on rooftops, patios. They know how they're going to be treated once they get found, so they're really careful," Boutin says.

Her agency tries to make several points of contact with runaways before they are asked to visit the drop-in center, a strategy employed to build trust.

Some youngsters, Eric says, move to remote desert areas. He knows of one area, which requires a walk of several miles from a paved road to reach, that's home to about 50 homeless people, 12 of them kids. Eric stops by occasionally to keep in touch.

And he once knew a runaway who slept in a portable toilet.

"To find a homeless kid, you have to think like a kid," Boutin says.

After a couple of weeks on the streets, Eric was picked up by police and sent back to juvenile detention.

"Nobody ever asked me my story," he says. "I never had a cop ask me for a statement."

"The system is not victim-friendly at all," Boutin says.

But along the way he had acquired a probation officer, and the officer told him about the Southern Nevada Center for Independent Living.

He stayed 10 months to a year, he figures. He was thrown out for making weapons out of pieces of steel he found on the street. Eric saw them as a productive use of his time. The agency saw them as shivs.

"I got into a lot of trouble for that," he says.

He headed back to the streets, where he stayed for about a week and a half. He was involved with the church of a friend who was killed in an accident, and he became acquainted with the church's youth pastor. He moved in for several weeks with the youth pastor, who tried to get him to talk to his father.

Because he hadn't been reported as a runaway, Eric was able to go to school. And when he saw his counselor again, the counselor gave him a flier for the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth.

"Thirty minutes later, I was in an apartment," Eric says. He stayed for a year and a half, until he was ready to be out on his own.

Today, Eric has his own place. He had his own business, which failed. Having studied graphic arts in vocational-technical school, he is hoping to find work in his field. In the meantime, he is working at the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth's drop-in center.

In the middle of an interview, Eric receives a call on his cell phone. It is his father. Although he says he was on bad terms with every member of his family when he left, fences have been mended, and he sees one brother almost daily.

Boutin notes that in the five years Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth has been in existence, three parents of runaways have been interactive with the center, visiting their children and expressing interest in them and how they were living. One of them was Eric's father.

"Most of them, when you call them, you either don't get a phone call back, or they just say, 'You can keep them.' " Boutin says.