Grateful Youth Survives Tough Times, Hilltop He Sought Help After Dad Died, And Community Responded

A year ago his mother died of a drug overdose. Two weeks ago his father died of complications from AIDS.

Even so, Kris Coble, 17, is anything but alone in the world.

A black man and nationally recognized Christian advocate, an Indian woman political activist, community service workers, a butcher, a funeral home owner and even a prison inmate rallied to save what Coble calls his “hopes and dreams.”

Saying, “I need to take care of myself,” he recently took a high school equivalency degree exam, works at a restaurant, is trying to raise money for driver training so he can get a car, plans to attend community college and has set a goal of becoming a chef and owning his own restaurant.

In the obituary for his father, James Coble, 50, the teenager thanked friends, doctors and others for helping his father, his brother Nick, 18, and himself, especially “in the last hard year.”

Living in the crime-infested Hilltop neighborhood, both brothers dropped out of high school.

Nick works as a dishwasher at a retirement home and has had some minor run-ins with the law. Closer to his mother and less outgoing than his younger brother, he is less willing to seek help or talk about his problems.

Kris began helping at home as his hard-drinking, heroin-using father’s health deteriorated.

“My family wasn’t the greatest in the world, but my dad took care of me the best he could for me, even when he was sick,” he said. “He loved me.”

AIDS was diagnosed four years ago. The parents were divorced in 1995 and his mother, Joyce, remarried. Her death was a shock.

“That didn’t work out right. I knew Dad was sick, but I thought I’d have Mom to fall back on.”

Instead, he turned to Charles Carson, youth programs coordinator at the Tacoma Center YMCA, and former Puyallup Tribe chairwoman Ramona Bennett, now director of Rainbow Youth and Family Services.

“If it weren’t for Charles and all these other people, I can’t imagine what would have happened to me,” Kris said. “I’d probably have been a gang-banger, selling crack to make extra bucks.”

Carson, whom he had known from age 12, pushed him to get his equivalency degree. Bennett helped arrange decent clothes for his mother’s funeral and Social Security survivor benefits after his father died.

Both drew on widespread community contacts for other help.

“We needed to help,” Bennett said. “Kris knew he didn’t have a secure, stable family, so he went beyond his family unit to people who appeared to have direction.

“He had to blaze his own trail in a real tough urban situation - and he’s done that. I believe that’s why Charles bonded with Kris - he saw in him a desire not just to survive, but to live.”

Another YMCA official and a funeral home director paid cremation and obituary costs. A butcher brought meat to the Coble home.

Working on their own time, community service workers are trying to preserve the low-cost housing arrangement their father obtained.

“This is what true, grass-roots community is all about,” Carson said.