Kevin Doar said he doesn’t like to think about the what-ifs of his youth.
He remembers a decent childhood, he said, but by age 16 he was living in an RV behind an Anaheim pool repair shop, just a few miles from Disneyland. To escape the “total squalor” and distract from being hungry, he spent hours at the Anaheim Central Library, he said, “reading books, or newspapers, or magazines that were free,” going home only to sleep.
That’s where police eventually intervened, taking the “shell shocked” teen from the library to a youth shelter in Laguna Beach, run by the nonprofit Waymakers.
On Monday, March 6, the now 45-year-old Seattle resident was back, thanks to a computer search and a safe deposit box full of cash.
Carol Carlson, now director of the Youth Shelter Program, said she remembers the strawberry-blond teen from when he arrived in 1993 and she was a young volunteer. She still has a photo of them taken in the shelter’s living room. Doar now holds two master’s degrees and works in IT at the University of Washington.
Standing inside the center’s bright, airy living room with his wife, Sarah, Doar recalled the memories of his life-changing two months there.
He said he remembers the shelter’s refrigerator and the luxury of opening its door and having food whenever he liked. He remembers the basketball court in the backyard and missing a lot of his shots despite his 6-foot-2-inch frame. He remembers his third-story bedroom with the ocean view and field trips to an art museum and the beach.
Carlson said she remembers the lanky boy’s head hitting the door jam on his way into the kitchen.
“To go from a beat-up RV to this, was pretty amazing,” he said.
“When you arrive, you’re on a path, and if you keep going it’s not good,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to see that future … I don’t want to think about it.
“It gave me an off ramp,” Doar said. He didn’t have to think only of his survival. “I had a sense of normalcy….
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