Detour Into Trouble Helps Teen Fly Right
It was lucky Josh Nelson was so inexperienced.
He was the hard-working kid in his Post Falls class, the one whose brain cranked out new ideas as quickly as other kids spit out cheeky answers.
He’d won kudos from congressmen, teachers and employers, held school offices and headed his own corporation before he could shave. He even was invited to the White House.
Josh hadn’t strayed once in his 17 years. So when the cops stopped him last year as he walked in the middle of the night with a friend, Josh admitted to the vandalism the two had just committed.
“It was pretty traumatic. He’d never been in trouble before,” says his mother, Penni. Josh looks away, uncomfortable.
Even in trouble, Josh rises to the top. Probation officers picked him for SOARING, a select program to motivate kids who’ve broken the law to stay straight. Josh was SOARING’s first youth of the month and recently earned a ride in a biplane.
For most of his life, he’s filled Penni with pride. He invented a device five years ago that enables her to narrow her wheelchair while she’s in it so it’ll fit through doorways.
Penni broke her back in a car accident 25 years ago while she was in veterinary school. Josh’s seventh-grade invention won him national acclaim and interviews on the Today Show and the Discovery Channel.
A year later, he invented a lightweight cane with lights for people with vision problems. Friends urged Josh to incorporate. He did, and became vice president and chief executive officer of Open Access in the eighth grade. Penni is president.
Josh had just finished his junior year as a top student at Gonzaga Prep last summer when his anger at his estranged father - a man he hardly knew - finally erupted. He took it out on things that didn’t belong to him. His one night of vandalism could have cost him time in jail.
Josh cooperated with police. His mother shared with the judge a half-inch stack of letters praising Josh’s character and potential. She’d collected the letters to help Josh get into the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.
In court, Josh hung his head, embarrassed and ashamed. The judge ordered him into an anger management class and to pay several thousand dollars for the damage he’d caused.
“I’ll be paying ‘til I’m dead,” Josh says, with a grim chuckle.
Now, he’s in college full time and works full time. He doesn’t really need SOARING’s incentives to keep him on track. His escapade threatened the promising future he envisioned - and shook him to the core.
“I’ll never do it again,” he says.
Muchas gracias
Coeur d’Alene apparently caught a whiff of Casa Maria’s primo Mexican food last month and flooded the tiny restaurant with the customers it desperately needed.
Remember Maria Zamora who cooked for the California crowds before she was burned out in the 1991 riots? Her struggle to make it in Coeur d’Alene isn’t over, but last month’s rush of customers helped her pay off debts and keep her doors open.
She and her daughter, Jacqueline Melendreras, thank every customer who waited and waited and waited. Some things are worth waiting for…
Clean up your act
The messier, the better. No, that’s not my motto. It describes the person Sue Swanson is looking for in her “Get Organized” contest. She organizes messes and is looking for the worst one in North Idaho.
Take a picture of your chaotic closet or disgusting garage and send it to Sue with a paragraph about why you deserve free organizing services. But let me warn you - I’ll be hard to beat.
Contest entries are due Sept. 20. Mail them to P.O. Box 2811, Pullman, WA, 99165.
Take your best shot
What’s your funniest, scariest or most bizarre hunting story? Tell no tall tales, just the outrageous truth to Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene, ID, 83814; fax to 765-7149; or call 765-7128.
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