Area Residents Join Forces For Good Of Kids

The Nevada-Lidgerwood Neighborhood Council hosted a “Take Back the Park Campaign” at Thornton Murphy Park.

Volunteers and members of the Explorer Program spent last Tuesday night in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood park. The message?

“The park is for kids. This is where the kids play,” said Deborah Wittwer, Nevada-Lidgerwood’s neighborhood council director.

“We went to help the Southeast neighborhood do their part,” said Wittwer, who created Spokane’s “Take Back the Park Campaign” four years ago.

The event brought youth, community and service groups together. The Explorers, Girl Scouts, Search and Rescue, COPS Southeast, Side Steps Jump Rope Team, “Hug A Tree,” and the McGruff Safe House program offered fliers and demonstrations for area neighbors who drifted in and out of the park all afternoon.

Laura Craner, 20, and Shalonda Tate, 15, said they sometimes visit the park on their break. The women work at Zip’s Drive-In on Regal.

“I’ve been here a couple times. It (the park) looks safe,” Craner said.

Police said the park, which closes at 11 p.m., is relatively safe, but after dark it sometimes becomes a playground for teens who take to its darker corners to party and drink.

“Most problems involve public nuisance - noise, disregarding the curfew or going in the woods and drinking,” said Spokane Police Officer J. D. Anderson.

To illustrate the dangers of drinking and drug use, paramedics staged a mock accident. A car full of drugged and drunken teens plowed into two pedestrians, one walking, one skateboarding.

“It attracted a big crowd,” said Shannon Ennis, a registered nurse, who bandaged the two injured pedestrians during the mock accident.

“You could see the kids pointing at the drug paraphernalia when the medics pulled them out of the car,” Ennis said.

Roger Burt, chairman of the Explorer’s Program, a career interest group for teens, was on hand to offer an alternative to “hanging out.”

“We give kids between the ages of 14 and 21 a chance to focus on careers. If they’re interested in a career in aviation or medicine - we pair them with an adult,” Burt said.

The Explorer program is administered by the Boy Scouts of America. The program is open to boys and girls, Burt said.

Younger kids got a chance to meet McGruff, the trench-coat wearing hound dog.

“We encourage neighbors to become McGruff houses,” said Wittwer. The program asks neighbors to volunteer their homes as safe houses where children can go if they are lost, frightened, or feel they are in trouble, she said.

Younger participants were treated to two plastic rain gutters filled with vanilla ice cream and topped with chocolate, strawberry, caramel and whipped cream.

Paramedic Suzy Ripplinger declined an invitation to partake in the ice-cream parfait.

“I think it was the kid who sneezed in it four times,” Ripplinger said.

, DataTimes