Mother Teresa-McKay Outreach Center to close

June 15 last day for youth center after 51/2 years

SOAP LAKE — October 23, 1999 was an important day for the Soap Lake community.

It was the day the Mother Teresa-McKay Youth Outreach and Wellness Center began offering services to youth. Five and a half years later, the center will close.

The decision came Thursday after administration from Grant County Hospital District No. 4 notified staff at the center that it would have to close its doors June 15 due to financial hardships that fell upon the district, which provides funding to operate the center.

Mary Prentice, administrator for the McKay Healthcare and Rehab Center in Soap Lake, said the Hospital District had budgeted no more than $45,000 for the center's operations this year. That amount has already been reached, leading to the district's decision to close the center.

The hospital district has recently been battling its own financial woes, and has lowered its debt to Grant County to roughly $250,000 from an initial debt that exceeded $500,000. It also received an additional $229,000 in ProShare monies from the state in May. Prentice said the district has no say on how that money is spent as the state deposits that money into an account with the county.

"This was not a decision that the board made lightly," Prentice said of the move to close the center.

The first priority of the hospital district has to be to reduce its own debt. "Getting the debt reduced and McKay (Healthcare and Rehab Center) financially viable is the first priority," Prentice said.

Prentice said discussions are continuing to find alternate programs either through the school district or other agencies where students can go now that the center will be closed.

Prior to the Hospital District's decision to close the center, Georgiann Mueri, director of the center, had already given her notice of resignation five weeks earlier.

At the time Mueri didn't know for sure whether the district was going to close the center, but believes her resignation was a necessary step to protect the health and safety of the students and volunteers who use it.

With a leaking roof, mold growing on the floors and walls, and an expired boiler system that didn't provide adequate heating in winter, Mueri wanted her resignation to bring about one of two changes: Improvement of building conditions or a closure of the center. The center, previously known as the Delancy-Houghton Elementary School, was built in the 1930s.

It was not an easy decision to make, Mueri said, but the conditions are not safe or healthy for the volunteers and youth who use the center.

The center opened in 1999 as part of a project for "Make a Difference Day."

In the first days and months of its opening, Mueri remembers waiting for days on end just for one student to walk through the door.

It took 16-hour days, seven days a week, to raise awareness about the center's existence.

"Consistency," Mueri said has been the key to making the center a place students feel welcomed and safe.

Remembering students who came to the center as a last resort when home wasn't a place of safety or comfort, Mueri worries about where they will go now without the center.

"I worry about the kids tomorrow and the kids the day after tomorrow," she said. "Is there going to be anyone here for them?"

In the years following the center's opening, donations have been instrumental in supporting its services without requiring additional money from the hospital district, Mueri said. "I don't believe it's been a financial burden," she said of the center.

In more than five years, the center has provided services and a place to go for a few thousand students who have walked through the its doors. In that time more than 20,000 volunteer hours have also accrued, making the impending closure a hard reality for many to face.

Volunteer Shari Stockenberg, a mother of four, found not only a second chance at the center when events in her own life turned for the worse, but a place close to home where she could work and still watch over her children.

From annual harvest festivals held at the center to bringing troubled youth off the streets and starting an Alcoholics Anonymous group, the loss goes deep for Stockenberg.

"It's terrible for the whole community," she said of the closure.

Even for Stockenberg's 20-year-old niece, Kelsey Overall, who has been using services offered by the center since the age of 10, before it officially opened at its current location at 4th Street and Canna, and volunteer Steven Swanson, the closure brings a flood of memories of the past five and a half years.

One of the most memorable moments Swanson remembers was in 2001 when the center expanded its outreach to Wilson Creek, where Swanson and other volunteers would go every Thursday night to provide activities for students.

"2001 was a very good year," he said.

Combined with the news of the center's closure, Mueri's resignation is not an easy reality for Stockenberg or Swanson.

"She really gave to a lot of people," Stockenberg said. "I've seen her sell a coin collection, property for this place; seen her spend days where she was up all night writing grants," Swanson said.

And for Mueri, a resident of the Basin for 20 years, time spent at the center has been her most cherished time in her working career after having been a nurse for 30 years.

"I was never more content in my life," Mueri said.

At this point, Mueri doesn't know what she will be doing next or if she will stay in the Basin.

She only knows youth will remain a part of her life, as she has plans to start volunteering with a youth group in Wenatchee.

"I don't know what tomorrow is going to bring," she said.