Choosing the adventure and giving back to teens
By Julia Lyon
The Salt Lake Tribune
November 13, 2010
Steve Griffin | The Salt Lake Tribune Mary Phillips talks with Navajo weavers as she looks at a rug during the 21st Annual Navajo Rug Show and Sale in the Snow Park Lodge at Deer Valley in Park City on Friday. After her teenager daughter was killed by a drunk driver years ago, Phillips decided to find a way to give back during the holidays to other teenagers – who are often left out of mainstream Christmas programs. Each year her family helps another family with teenagers during the holiday season. In her other life, she does development work for the Adopt-A-Native-Elder Program.
After a drunken teenage driver killed her daughter in 1995, Mary Phillips faced questions during the holidays no parents should ever have to ask themselves.
“Do you sit down to do the Christmas cards and leave her name out?” said the mother, whose 15-year-old was among two girls killed on a sidewalk in Cottonwood Heights.
Now the mother of only boys, she couldn’t buy jewelry and makeup for Christmas for her daughter, painfully reminding her of the loss.
So Phillips made a choice.
“You can be a victim, a survivor or figure out a way to love the adventure,” she realized. If she couldn’t shop for her own daughter, Phillips could spend money on other teenage girls instead.
Christmas is the children’s season, when young believers sit atop Santa’s knee and whisper hopes that can be wrapped and placed under a tree. Many holiday programs for Utah’s poor focus exclusively on the youngest, often age 12 and under. And those that do serve older children frequently struggle to find enough gifts and clothes for those in junior high and high school.
So Phillips and her mother stuffed hand-made Christmas stockings for teenage girls with a diary, makeup and a craft. Teenage boys received stockings containing a wallet, lip balm and a pack of cards.
The first year, they donated about two dozen stockings to the Salt Lake County Housing Authority, which provides housing to low-income households. Social workers told them teenagers often received little or nothing at Christmas.
Eventually they received permission to contact families directly and began to shape their giving around a family’s wants and needs. They typically weren’t extravagant gifts — clothes, CDs, used video games — and often Phillips’ family found help through websites like Craigslist and neighbors. One year, a donor contributed bunk beds to a family without enough beds.
Phillips always remembers the teenagers.
“My thought in doing this is they actually need it more than the little kid,” she said. “The little kid can be pleased with little, tiny things. Junior high school is so brutal —if you don’t have a nice T-shirt or a good pair of shoes, those things are really important.”
A small group of families has begun to follow Phillips’ lead. Karena Jackson, a small-business owner, has bought everything from skate shoes to a dining-room set for families Phillips helped her find. The Jacksons budget about $1,500 for presents for these families and others, far more than they spend on themselves.
“Christmas to us is about memories,” she said. “We really have learned that our lives are not built around the material [things] that are in it.”
Though she dislikes the Christmas Eve crowds, Jackson and her two teenage daughters go out each Dec. 24 and buy gifts for the remaining teenagers listed on the gift trees at Walmart.
“The relationship between parents and a teenager … there’s more struggle when there’s also financial situations in the home,” she said. “If we can give them a little bit of comfort and a little bit of their wants and needs, I’m hoping we can also open up the communication lines.”
The mother has noticed that generosity can be infectious. When she’s at Smith’s Marketplace towing three grocery carts filled with gifts and food, people in line sometimes hand her money when they hear her story. Store employees provide their personal discounts.
As a mother on the receiving end, Catherine Thompson can’t recall Phillips’ holiday zeal without beginning to cry.
She hopes her three teenage girls won’t have to struggle like she does when they grow up.
“Or feel guilty for wanting something,” Thompson said. “For wanting a soda from the store or wanting a pair of tennis shoes that aren’t falling apart.”
She tries to shop for Christmas throughout the year but often finds by autumn that money is short. By then, it’s sometimes too late to sign up for help from community groups, or her teens no longer qualify because of their age.
“It’s so hard to be a teenager anyway with your hormones and your emotions,” said Ella Turner, who has also been a beneficiary of Phillips’ Christmas spirit.
A car accident left her with a traumatic brain injury and paralyzed from the chest down, making work impossible. Now she lives in public housing, relying on food stamps and other benefits to take care of her family. She feels embarrassed by the dependency.
But she welcomes Phillips’ calls each year before Christmas. “She made me feel like I was a human being,” Turner said.
jlyon@sltrib.com
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Do you want to help teenagers?
I Families of teens are in need of adoption. For more information, contact Mary Phillips at 801-455-4339 or at maryphillips1000@gmail.com.
Utah Foster Care is in need of donors for its giving tree program. For more information, call 1 (877) 505-5437 or send her an e-mail to nikki.mackay@www.utahfostercare.org.
How to help
To donate to Toys for Tots, drop off gifts at participating locations, including Fresh Market and Toys R Us. Go to www.toysfortots.org for more information on volunteering or to make a donation online.
To donate or volunteer with Salvation Army, call 801-323 5888 or go to salvationarmyutah.org.
Nonperishable items can be dropped off at Riverton Motors Group, Jiffy Lube and Smith’s Food & Drug. More drop-off locations can be found online at www.UtahFoodBank.org/dropoff-locations. To donate a frozen turkey, bring it to the Utah Food Bank or local food banks. For more information, go to www.utahfoodbank.org.
For other ways to help, visit www.sltrib.com/giving.
