AMYA grad turns life around

She hadn’t always made the best decisions in the process of growing up.

She’d made poor choices in friends, poor choices in substance abuse, poor choices in where to turn. She’d a family who loved her, and even she was aware that she was slowly breaking their hearts. But she wasn’t certain how she could break the cycle she’d found herself in. There were times when she was at her darkest point when she wasn’t even certain she wanted to.

But last Saturday, this 17-year old young woman from Palmer marched proudly down an aisle at Buckner Gym on Fort Richardson with over a hundred other cadets and received her diploma from the Alaska Military Youth Academy.

She has been a part of this rigorous program that challenges at-risk youth both mentally and physically for an intense and grueling five and a half months. For almost half a year, she was up before 6 a.m. and had her bed made, three to six miles run, and worked on her homework all before breakfast. And then the rest of her day got hard.

My part in all this began at the end of last summer, when this young girl approached me before church and asked if I would consider being her second mentor as she attended the AMYA. Her primary mentor was a close, adult friend of hers who had known her since she was small. I was her Sunday School teacher and I had watched her make one poor choice after another over the years and struggled in my helplessness to counsel her about what she was doing to her future.

Being a mentor is not a job to take lightly. It means weekly visits and carefully monitoring a student’s schedule. It means hearing some stories that break your heart and make you want to stop listening, but keeping a straight face straight continuing to hear. It means nights and days of worry and concern and visits and community service hours punctuated by laughter and a maturing of body and spirit that one never expected to see.

The rewards of being a mentor are so much more than the trials, and are completely intangible. But they are worth every single moment of a mentor’s time.

With my husband in Iraq for most of the time she was at the academy and two small children and a teenager at home, my visiting opportunities with my cadet were severely limited. Fortunately, her primary mentor could see her weekly and talk to her in person and be there physically where I could not. Her primary mentor spent hours upon hours with this cadet, because she saw something special in this young woman needed to be brought out and embraced.

While I wasn’t there physically was often as I would have liked, my cadet and I kept in regular contact through letters and cards, and an occasional phone call. I had over a dozen of teenagers in my Sunday School class pick out cards and letters to mail her as well, and she admitted to me, after her graduation, that every time she was at her lowest at the academy and thought she was done, she would get a note from one of us in her mail and it would say exactly what she needed to hear. Some things made her teary, some made her smile and one particular redhead’s letters made her cry with laughter every time she read them, and re-read them over and over. The interesting thing about that was the fact that these two girls did know each other well before my cadet left for the academy.

When she started the academy last fall, this petite blonde was defiant, rebellious, a high school drop out who had a chip on her shoulder the size of, well, Alaska. When she graduated last Saturday, she held a diploma in one hand from the AMYA and for the next several days she juggled calls from recruiters with the other. She made contacts with various military branches before finally deciding to enlist in the US Air Force come August.

She has decided to go on to college, and study nursing. This laughing, blonde young woman with the sparkling blue eyes who graduated Saturday wants to help people, just as she was helped. And I could not be prouder.

The woman who graduated with poise and confidence last Saturday was as different from the scared, frightened and angry little girl who started in the fall as day is from night. She has acknowledged her severe past mistakes, and more importantly, accepted full and complete responsibility for them. She also has clear goals both in her mind and written down of where she will take herself in her future, and recognizes that everything she does, she is responsible for. She knows no one can make her do anything, and armed with that knowledge, she is intent and adamant about never repeating past mistakes.

This new young woman is a joy to know, uplifting to speak with, and very eager to prove she has changed with her future actions. The Alaska Military Youth Academy is responsible for bringing about this change, and if this organization can make such a change in the life of a single young woman I know, I can only imagine what it has done for the almost 175 students that graduated a week ago. These students have so much pride in themselves and their accomplishments, with some of them being recognized for the first time. They are all planning futures for themselves that include college, employment, volunteer service, the armed forces, and almost anything that can do to become productive members of society. They all have dreams: Something they almost all lacked when they started the academy in the fall. And, more importantly, they now know for the first time that their dreams can be achieved, the power to do so is within them.

Anyone interested in mentoring a cadet with the Alaska Military Youth Academy is encouraged to call the Mentoring Office at 384-6101. You do not have to be affiliated with the military to mentor: Just a have a desire to make a huge difference in the future of a youth in Alaska.

Believe me when I write, it’s completely worth it.

Every minute.

Tiffany Horvath is the mother of two and the stepmother of one. Her husband, Drew, was deployed to Iraq and returned home in December. She writes every Sunday abut life at home as a wife and mother.