Helpless, not hopeless: Parents of criminals face a roller coaster of emotions

By Jackie Valley

Saturday, June 2, 2012 | 2 a.m.

Nancy Cologna is busy settling into a new home in northeast Las Vegas, where she’s raising three children. She’s unpacking boxes, keeping tabs on homework and running the household.

She turns 60 in July. The children — 6-year-old twin boys and a 13-year-old girl with special needs — are her three youngest grandchildren.

Cologna is like other grandparents across the Las Vegas Valley raising grandchildren for a variety of family reasons. In Cologna’s case, her daughter’s downward spiral into a life of crime led to the decision.

Her daughter fell into the wrong crowd as a teenager, started abusing drugs and has never recovered, Cologna said. It’s a vicious cycle, she said, and one that affects loved ones. After her daughter’s repeated arrests, Cologna finalized the adoption of her three youngest grandchildren in August 2010.

“The kids keep me young,” she said. “They keep me moving, and I don’t know what I would be doing if it wasn’t for them.”

Even so, Cologna admits the situation presents constant emotional challenges — the sadness of watching her only child make poor decisions and guilt about not providing her grandchildren everything they need.

“I would love to go back to that role of grandmother,” she said.

Her daughter, 38-year-old Christine “Chrissy” Gulick, was arrested in early April after a three-hour standoff near Boulder Station that involved Metro Police’s SWAT unit. Police say Gulick’s partner, 33-year-old Devon Cooper, who has a lengthy criminal history, barricaded himself in an apartment after a three-week crime spree. Officers arrested Gulick outside the apartment on counts of conspiracy to commit burglary, attempted burglary and resisting an officer.

The story made headlines, prompting Cologna to write a moving letter to the Sun. In it, she described her long struggle to help her daughter, who, despite being raised in a supportive home, ended up on the wrong path in life.

Shera Bradley, a licensed psychologist whose private practice is near Warm Springs Road and Spencer Street, said parents with children arrested or convicted of crimes face an uphill emotional battle.

“Every parent has dreams for their kid and hopes for their kid,” Bradley said.

When those dreams seem shattered, Bradley said feelings such as guilt, anger, sadness and embarrassment surface. Parents wonder: What did we do? What didn’t we do?

“Some parents get to the point where they give up,” Bradley said. “They are feeling helpless and they don’t know what to do.”

Cologna knows the feeling. She hasn’t given up hope for her daughter, but she’s moving on — physically and emotionally.

•••

In mid-May, Cologna rested in her former living room surrounded by boxes. It was shortly after 9 a.m. and the kids were off to school. More packing awaited her.

A Diet Coke can and smoking materials sat nearby in her former southeast valley house. They’re her two vices, fuel to get her through each day, she said, adding that she doesn’t drink or use drugs.

As she surveyed the packing in progress, Cologna said her four-member family needed a fresh start, a home to create better memories.

“There are just so many memories in this house, and they’re all bad,” she said. “We need to start over on our own.”

It’s not the situation she would have dreamed of 38 years ago when she gave birth to her daughter, the only child she and her ex-husband were able to have.

“She was a sweetheart when she was little,” Cologna said of Gulick. “We did all kinds of stuff together. We were just your typical middle-class family.”

Gulick was born in Germany, where Cologna’s then-husband was stationed in the military. Eventually, the family settled in Lancaster, Calif., a desert community northeast of Los Angeles.

When her daughter reached middle school, she began dabbling in alcohol and drugs. Cologna said she reined in her daughter. Then came self-destructive behavior, including an overdose and a separate suicide attempt.

“The most horrible thing a mother could ever see is looking through a window and seeing your daughter who has overdosed and seeing tubes come out of every part of her body,” Cologna said. “She looked dead.”

Cologna said she and her ex-husband sent Gulick to a therapy center in Utah for about a year. Afterward, her daughter slipped right back into the wrong crowd.

“The drugs just got worse and worse and worse,” Cologna said. Her daughter’s drug of choice: methamphetamine.

By her early 20s, Gulick had two young children and moved to Las Vegas with her new husband, who was her youngest child’s father, Cologna said. The young family bought a house and drove new cars. Gulick worked as an exotic dancer. They had another baby.

“She was doing well,” her mother said. “She was making good money. She was putting money away.”

By the mid-2000s, their life crumbled when Gulick started using drugs again. Her husband was arrested for a robbery. Run-ins with Child Protective Services followed, Cologna said. Then Gulick gave birth to twin boys.

“All this time, I’m trying to help, but all I seem to manage to do is enable her,” said Cologna, who had moved years earlier to Las Vegas. “If there were no kids involved, I’d probably still be out there trying to help her.”

•••

Cologna and Gulick have limited contact now. After several violent episodes, Cologna said she sought and received a restraining order against her daughter.

“I love her to death. I do,” Cologna said. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to her.”

It’s such internal struggles — feeling torn about doing what’s best for her daughter, her grandchildren and herself — that led Cologna to seek therapy. She goes every few months, if only for someone who will listen. She wishes a support group existed in Las Vegas for parents in similar situations.

Fritz Reese, director of juvenile services for Clark County, said he wasn’t aware of any support groups specifically for parents of children incarcerated or arrested. Bradley didn’t know of any either.

“There’s just not enough services here period, for anybody,” Bradley said.

Still, Bradley said parents should seek support wherever they can, whether it’s through church, friends or extended family.

“I think sometimes parents will feel embarrassed their kid is getting in trouble,” she said. “They don’t want to bring it up.”

That’s a mistake, Bradley said. She likens support to airplane oxygen masks, which parents are instructed to put on before helping their children.

“A lot of times, they get so bogged down taking care of their kids, they don’t take care of themselves,” she said.

Cologna’s advice for parents in similar situations mirrors her own journey with her daughter.

“Don’t give up until it comes to the point where you can’t help,” she said. “Throw everything at them. Something might stick.”

In the end, that’s what Cologna wants: her daughter back.

“My hope for her is that she gets clean, gets the help she needs to fix why she’s like this — and maybe even raise her kids,” she said.