Women’s Center gets new home

Kootenai County’s constantly growing population brings more than traffic jams and a larger tax base. More people mean more reports of rape and domestic violence and a greater need for protection orders and counseling.

“We take about 16,000 calls a year,” says Chris Everts, the Coeur d’Alene Women’s Center’s outreach coordinator. “Not all are in crisis, but that’s a lot of demand.”

The women’s center sheltered 150 women and children last year, responded to 130 calls to its rape crisis line and counseled 742 adults and children. Sometime during the year, center workers realized their offices didn’t have enough room for all the people and activity that occurs there.

“We were tight to start,” Everts says. “Our numbers keep trending up. We had no extra room for children’s play and art therapy.”

When a building became available next to the Women’s Center Thrift Store on Fourth Street, the center board took the plunge. It moved out of its quarters on Lakewood Drive at the end of August and into temporary quarters around town. The new building wasn’t ready for occupancy. A week after the move, the center’s new executive director, Linda Kincaid, took over.

“Getting everyone moved has been quite an experience,” Kincaid says. “I look at it as my first big challenge.”

Luckily, Kincaid has a background in finish carpentry because the Women’s Center’s new offices at 815 N. Fourth St. need substantial work. The center needs two toilets, material for a 2,500-square-foot ceiling, a small refrigerator, kitchen sink, garage door opener and carpeting. Kincaid believes people in Coeur d’Alene will donate the items because she’s had good luck so far with the community.

She lost her golden retriever-mutt in Coeur d’Alene when she was considering moving here from Missoula two years ago. For four months, people in Coeur d’Alene kept her hopes alive by reporting to her when they spotted the dog. When she reunited with her dog, she decided to make Coeur d’Alene her home.

The opening of the director’s job at the Women’s Center was another sign to Kincaid that she belonged in Coeur d’Alene. She had run a program in Missoula for seven years that helped women start businesses, build homes for themselves and train for jobs. She started at the Coeur d’Alene Women’s Center Sept. 7, six months after director Lisa Randall left.

The center’s new home is twice the size of its old offices and will allow a separate room for the children’s counseling center that opened four years ago. While it’s under construction, the Women’s Center is working out of the Kootenai County Courthouse, Kootenai Medical Center and the First Presbyterian Church, 521 Lakeside Ave.

“We’re available by phone and offering everything we always offer,” Everts says.

To smooth the move, the Coeur d’Alene Soroptomist Club has scheduled a benefit basketball game with the Harlem Ambassadors performance players for Oct. 1 in North Idaho College’s gym. The Soroptomists pledged $20,000 a year to support the children’s crisis center when it opened in 2000.

Children who arrive with their mothers at the Women’s Center protective shelter start five weeks of free counseling in the crisis center the following day. Most women who are victims of domestic violence grew up with violence in their homes, so counselor Bette Magnus teaches children how healthy families function.

For the last two years, the Soroptomists have raised money for the children’s crisis center with productions of “The Vagina Monologues,” a play in which women relate their positive and negative sexual experiences. When Soroptomists heard the Women’s Center was moving, it looked for a way to cover the costs of moving the children’s center.

“The children’s center is kind of our baby,” says Soroptomist Shirley Thagard. “We felt it was appropriate for us to belly up to re-establish it in its new home.”

The Soroptomists invited the Harlem Ambassadors, an exhibition basketball team in Colorado, to play in the benefit game. The Harlem Ambassadors are former college and professional basketball players who promote a message of staying in school and off drugs through their entertaining ball-handling. They’ve performed in 43 states and 19 countries, helping local organizations raise money for special causes.

The team plays a basketball game, first with its own players only, then versus local players. Soroptomists are collecting the names of potential local players now. Thagard said invitations have gone out to school principals, coaches, mayors, police chiefs, business owners and other people in high profile positions, but anyone 19 or older is welcome to play.

Local players need sponsors, who will pay $150 per player.

“Anyone who wants to play should call and we’ll work with them to find a sponsor,” Thagard said. “If there’s someone who doesn’t want to play, they can sponsor someone else.”

Soroptomists need at least 20 local players to raise about $10,000, the club’s goal. Spectator tickets for the game will cost $8. Game time isn’t set yet.

The Coeur d’Alene Women’s Center opened 30 years ago to give women a caring place to report domestic violence. At the time, family violence drew little reaction from police or the courts. Much of the community immediately linked the center with feminism, which still was considered radical.

The center evolved, adding a rape crisis phone line, a hidden shelter for battered women and children, counseling, support and representation in court and protection. It became a major push behind legislative changes to protect women from spousal rape and domestic violence.