Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Five long days in Idaho

Friday, June 8, 2001 | 9:49 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

YOU ARE A TEENAGER living in the backwoods on a small piece of land with five brothers and sisters. During the past few years your father has been ill and unable to operate his small sawmill. Last September some of the family land was auctioned off at a county tax sale and this May your father died. Then a few days ago the sheriff took your mother to jail because welfare people said she was neglecting you and your siblings. Now they are coming to get you and the other children.

Yes, you are frightened and so are the other kids. Are they going to put all of the kids and you in jail, or a detention center, and then scatter you among foster homes? All you have is each other now that dad is dead and mom is locked up. There aren't many creature comforts in the little house, but at least it is yours and a home for all of the kids.

Mom might not be the best housekeeper, but really she hasn't had much to work with in recent years. There have been some mighty slim meals at times, but it was all that she could get to cook. When the kids are sick she does her best to nurse them and keep them warm. The welfare workers and sheriff may think she acts strange, but who wouldn't with all of the problems and few resources she has had to juggle for so many long months and years.

The family has been isolated back there in the woods for the past couple years, and the only experience you have had with authorities has been negative. They took your land, your mom and are now coming to get you and what's left of the family. No, they have never hurt any of the kids and several times they came out here to help but mom and the dogs wouldn't let them in the house. With both mom and dad gone you just can't trust them coming into the house and taking the kids away.

Get the little kids in the house, lock the door and turn loose the dogs and maybe the sheriff's deputies will back off. If they get past the dogs and try to break in the door, use the deer rifle to protect the kids. You don't want to hurt anybody, but you also don't want your brothers and sisters hurt or scattered to the winds into different foster homes.

It soon became apparent that the deputies weren't going to kick in the door. Your heart jumped when a deputy, bitten by a dog, discharged his gun. He didn't wound the dog. The next five days were long and lonely but nobody was going to hurt you, and they promised they would keep all of you together if you went with them. They also agreed to not hurt or kill the almost 20 dogs.

None of us know what you are thinking right now but it looks like the authorities are going to keep their promises. When an outsider wondered aloud if the Idaho authorities would really keep their promises he was told "we don't tear families apart up here. This is just another welfare case for us that some media people have blown out of proportion."

The Bonner County Daily Bee newspaper in an editorial noted that:

"Dozens of shelter care hearings, child welfare and custody cases fill local court dockets, not just in Sandpoint, but in Everytown, USA, every year.

"And the McGuckin children were not the first Bonner County youngsters to be made wards of the state because one or both parents was arrested.

"Unfortunately, scared children with guns who sic their half-starved dogs on the cops are news."

There are always two sides to every story but there are some of us raised in the backcountry who have given much thought to what has been going through your mind the past several days. Here in Nevada we have watched child care services promise to keep siblings together but as soon as they were out of the public eye social workers found "reasons" to split them up. This happened when legislators closed our state homes for children.

So we will keep thinking about you along with your brothers and sisters. Come Christmas we'll check to see if you are all still together and if the authorities have kept their promises. We want to believe that Idaho, unlike some other places, really doesn't "tear families apart."