Bryan Wells

News Reporter

A group of men and women, all in casual blue uniforms, not completely sure of themselves, stand together in a room with 50 to 60 other people. The others in the room — children, teenagers and adults alike —  are visiting and laughing. Card games are being played in the center of the room. Tables are set up instead of bunk beds.

Gradually, the group in blue eases up. They begin to visit with the others and laugh too. One holds up a box and asks “Who wants ice cream?” Children immediately surround the group but wait patiently as the ice cream cones are handed out. The people in blue are an instant success.

They are cadets of the Western Colorado Community College Police Academy offered through Mesa State College. They are soon to be Peace Officers (not to be confused with police officers). This was the scene of their volunteer project on Nov. 11 at the Homeward Bound Homeless Shelter in Grand Junction. In the afternoon the cadets spent hours raking and cleaning up in front of the Homeward Bound Center. Later that evening they held a social at the shelter.

“The cadets chose and coordinated this volunteer project and I’m extremely proud of them,” said Bill Gardner, the Tech Instructor for the Peace Officer Academy.

Gardner, who recently retired as Grand Junction police chief, said that police officers need to maintain a positive relationship with their communities. This volunteer project, he said, would do a lot in the way of building ties between future officers and the communities they might end up working in.

The cadets commented on the importance of building ties with the homeless community, especially since it wasn’t long ago that three Grand Junction police officers were fired for tearing up tents and other property owned by a group of homeless people.

“We decided that we would do this in an effort to try and gain some rapport with the homeless community after all that business with the tent slashing,” said Jadea McCarty, the cadet who suggested the idea and organized the volunteer project.

McCarty had volunteered at the same shelter for two years before she joined the police academy. She explained that by doing the volunteer project at the shelter she hoped her fellow cadets would gain a better understanding of the homeless community in Grand Junction.

“Society has such a negative view of people that are homeless,” McCarty said, “In Grand Junction they see the five percent that are in the parks drinking and hanging out and assume that’s what all homeless people are like.”

G.I. Moon, the executive director of the shelter and an MSC graduate, explained to the cadets that the majority of people at the Homeward Bound Shelter today are in a different situation than those who were being served three years ago. She attributes the current situation for most of the people at the shelter to the economic downturn.

“One message I’d really like to give to you guys is that the people we’re serving today could possibly be you, they could possibly be me. It wouldn’t take too many missed paychecks and I could lose my home. They don’t want to be here, they’re out there every day looking for jobs,” Moon said.

In addition to looking for jobs, there are those at the center who are working towards a better education. According to Tracey Johnson, Case Manager for Homeward Bound and a sociology freshman of MSC herself, there are students enrolled at Mesa State who are homeless. Many of them, she says, stay at friends’ houses or stay in tents in the warm months. She added that people would be surprised at how many students are actually homeless.

“Just from the people I know that are here (the Homeward Bound shelter), that I know are outside of here, and this is probably really low but I’d say there are at least a hundred that I know of,” said Johnson.

On top of that, a number of teens who might be looking to attend college are dealing with difficult living situations. Johnson said that last year over 20 kids who were living on the street graduated from high school and that of those twenty some of them received scholarships to go on to college. In total she says there are 350 unaccompanied and homeless minors in Grand Junction.

Including all ages, Moon said that there are believed to be at least 2,000 people in Grand Junction who are homeless. The Homeward Bound shelter is usually at capacity and serves 100 to 115 people a night. With such a large number of people to serve, help and supplies are in high demand, Moon said.

“We’ll take all the volunteers we can get,” Moon said. “Sometimes groups from the college come over. The Psychology club came over and hung out with the kids and that was really good but a lot of the groups we try to contact to come over again never get back to us.”

Moon added that the shelter would be set for a long time if every student from Mesa donated a canned good.

bwells@mesastate.edu