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Ever Onward Podcast
The Ever Onward Podcast is your go-to business podcast, offering engaging discussions and diverse guests covering everything from business strategies to community issues. Join us at the executive table as we bring together industry leaders, experts, and visionaries for insightful conversations that go beyond the boardroom. Whether you're an entrepreneur or simply curious about business, our podcast provides a well-rounded experience, exploring a variety of topics that shape the business landscape and impact communities. Brought to you by Ahlquist.
Ever Onward Podcast
Idaho Youth Ranch: A Story of Vision, Leadership, and Healing | Ever Onward - Ep. 75
Scott Curtis, CEO of Idaho Youth Ranch, has spent the past seven years leading one of the state’s most ambitious transformations in youth mental health care. Scott's journey from math teacher to nonprofit leader embodies the powerful intersection of personal mission and community impact. In this deeply moving conversation, Scott takes us behind the scenes of the Idaho Youth Ranch transformation—a story of resilience, strategic vision, and unwavering dedication to serving vulnerable youth.
Growing up in a family that regularly opened their home to exchange students and unwed mothers, Scott witnessed firsthand how compassionate intervention can redirect lives. This foundation shaped his career path from high school math teacher to social worker, eventually leading him to the YMCA where he spearheaded the remarkable community transformation in Caldwell.
When Scott joined the Idaho Youth Ranch seven years ago, he encountered an organization with rich history but significant challenges. Founded in the 1950s on 2,500 acres of sagebrush land using repurposed barracks from the Minidoka internment camp, the organization had evolved over decades but faced financial struggles that threatened its mission. Scott's leadership stabilized operations while uncovering a critical statewide need: Idaho had no residential psychiatric treatment facility for youth, forcing families to send children to out-of-state facilities, sometimes as far as Arkansas.
The centerpiece of our conversation reveals how Scott and community leaders Robert Rebholz and Mark Miller launched an audacious $20 million capital campaign during the height of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. Against conventional wisdom, this campaign broke fundraising records, demonstrating the community's profound recognition of the crisis facing Idaho's youth and families.
Today, the 258-acre Residential Center for Healing and Resilience serves youth from across Idaho, providing specialized treatment in a setting designed for healing—complete with private rooms, therapeutic spaces, and an on-site charter school. The transformation in these young lives is already evident, with the center's first graduate progressing from severe anxiety to mentoring newer residents.
Listen as Scott shares the organization's continuing needs, particularly for compassionate individuals to join their team as youth care providers. His story reminds us that when authentic mission meets determined leadership, entire communities can unite to solve seemingly insurmountable problems.
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Today on the Ever Onward podcast we have Scott Curtis. Scott is a longtime friend. Everyone knows Scott in the entire Valley. He's the CEO of the Idaho Youth Ranch. He has just done tremendous things. His whole career at multiple nonprofits. Was at the YMCA for a long time and did wonderful, like legendary things there. Now has been with the Idaho Youth Ranch as their CEO for several years. It will be very fun to have Scott on today and to get the been with the Idaho Youth Ranch as their CEO for several years. It will be very fun to have Scott on today and to get the updates at the Idaho Youth Ranch and all things in the community because he is so connected. So today on Ever Onward, scott Curtis Scott, thanks for coming on. My pleasure, it's great to be here. How have you been? It's been like that Usually we catch up a little more than we have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've been really good. We're really now lifting our heads up completely above the fire from two and a half years ago. And that took a lot longer than I think any of us expected, but some great learnings and some great improvements, honestly from it. So really excited.
Speaker 1:Why don't you tell us a little bit about that, because it's not like you didn't have a legal going on. It was right when you were opening the ranch.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was right before.
Speaker 2:We were in the final construction stages of the ranch, trying to open our residential facility, and we have a pretty significant distribution center and trucking center that supports our 24 thrift stores around the state.
Speaker 2:That's where the fire happened and that's what becomes pretty critical here. Is that it actually wiped out the efficiencies that have been built into our thrift operations. Is that it actually wiped out the efficiencies that had been built into our thrift operations? So that's it just, and it just took a long time, took a long time to rebuild, took a long time negotiating insurance and things like that, and we're in a great place now, mission's fully supported and we're just running. And you know, you try and make lemonade out of lemons with these things. So there's some things about that campus that are so different now post-fire in terms of, well, one, safety and I'm not just talking about fire safety, that was important, yeah, because this was a pretty catastrophic event and fortunately no one was hurt but other safety issues just in terms of about how a trucking fleet operates on the same campus where there's a lot of staff and workless and we also have a store there.
Speaker 2:We have an outlet store there, so we have the public coming in and donating and those things used to intersect a lot more. There was a lot of overlap and now we've got the efficiency of the campus built in. So that's an exciting piece. But it's mostly exciting because those things take energy and focus from senior leaders to get through and really we want our focus on the youth and families of Idaho and what they're needing.
Speaker 1:So we're now fully back, so I've known you a long time. I want to talk a little bit about you and your dad and just your upbringing and being here. Let's just go back a little bit.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure, if I'm ready.
Speaker 1:But I want to start by talking about when I first met you. I remember I'd met you before, but I heard you speak at Caldwell at the YMCA. You won't remember this, but I was invited out, yeah you came on a tour with us.
Speaker 1:But you had an event out there and you got up at at the event it was our annual campaign celebration. Yeah, anyway, I, I remember walking out going oh my gosh, that guy is legit and seriously it was. It was so impactful on me because what you did is you got up and you just talked about the leadership to get there and what you've been doing and everything else and and, like you had all the stats of what that place meant to caldwell and and and it was really impactful. Scott and I remember going oh, wow, this guy's really, really the guy. And then I I watched what you did with jim and then you went to the ranch but before we get there, because it was so impactful hearing you that day, um, tell us about you and and and tell us, tell us, tell us what the DNA, where it's from. Wow, thanks for that opportunity.
Speaker 2:That's a privilege to be able to talk about that. One thing I'd say that's an overarching thing that I have come to appreciate more and more the older I get is really how blessed I've been in terms of the work I've been able to do. The reason I'm able to speak passionately about the things I've done is because they're so great and because I've been fortunate to be involved with them. So my background originally was as a math teacher, so I was a high school math teacher. I've loved youth my whole life, loved, loved working with youth, but I've been more drawn to those that were on the margins. You know struggling, but you grew up here, oh yeah you want me to go?
Speaker 1:way back. I want you to go way back. Oh boy, because, listen, I think I think like so it's. Let me just tell you like we've had this like a little bit of a. We always are saying, here we're doing with our time the most beneficial right. And I had that moment a couple weeks ago where, like I do this podcast, I've been doing it for a long time now five years and it's had a couple different things. And then it's a new thing is Ever Onward, is our new branding, with our rebranding of our company, and I like the name, I like what I do. And then I had this reset because we're looking at the next year's podcast. I'm like am I doing the right thing? I'm telling you a little thing. I'm like Great question.
Speaker 1:So I sat down and I went through what could it be? What has it been? Is there a way to make it more real estate focused? Is there a way to do it? And then I thought, screw this, it sounds like you. I just want to talk to people that I want to talk to. That's awesome, and I think one of the things that. So, if I think why I do this, what the best thing for me is, I get to talk to people like you and otherwise otherwise we wouldn't spend an hour because we're so busy to sit back. But I want to hear, because the people that I admire and Scott, you're at the top of the list I want to hear your story and I think people want to hear what, like it, inspires people.
Speaker 2:So I do want you to start from the beginning. Great, I was born on third base. That's what I'm going to say, and I really recognize that I've been blessed my whole life. So let's see, I grew up Meridian and Meridian had about 7,000 people in it in my early childhood and obviously changed a lot. Ours was the only residential street right off of Eagle Road, surrounded by farmland. You all will recognize that now as the place where the village has been built and Kleiner Park I could smell Kleiner feedlot from my bedroom window. So, grew up in rural Meridian had really wonderful parents and a real stable home and I appreciate these things more now because of the youth I get to work with and I recognize that when we talk about adverse childhood experiences, the gift I bring is how I was developed through my life and probably the gap is there's some of those things I cannot fully relate to, right, because I had so many and my house wasn't perfect, but it was good.
Speaker 1:But empathy is a weird thing, because I've thought this a hundred times, a million times in the ER where you want to be empathetic to someone's situation that comes in and you're caring for them, but there's times you just can't, because you know what I mean. As much as you want to listen to them and understand what they're going through, you can't imagine unless you've been through it. And I think that's one of the great mysteries of life is how do we listen to something, someone, connect with them, try to understand them, but know that we really never can understand what it's like to be in that position?
Speaker 2:And I think that's a lot of the definition of compassion Without being able to truly empathize because you can't feel it. At some level you can say I'm compassionate about this person having a very different experience. I love that military, so, you know, grew up with a lot of appreciation for service to the country, things like that. My mom and dad met in the Navy he was a submariner and she was a Navy nurse, and so that impacted them a lot. When dad left the Navy he got hired by Hewlett Packard and then he got he was part of the large Hewlett Packard development and relocation to Idaho. Um, I don't remember any of this because I I really was, was raised here. We, I think yeah, I don't remember any of this time of my family but, um, he was brought to Hewlett. He was brought to Idaho as part of what was back then the disc memory division that was getting developed, which became the largest, largest Hewlett Packard division at that time in the world. So it was all a part of when Hewlett-Packard became really involved in this community and I got to see that. And then my mom, as I mentioned, she was a Navy nurse and she really got into the birth support movement, so she became a birth and parenting nurse and eventually ended up working long term for St Luke's and being the head ofa birth and parenting development there. So what that meant is that in my early childhood we had a lot of women sitting around our house in the family room breathing in very funny ways. So I learned about Lamaze really early on in the 70s and that was great and I think I think, just like the things that have shaped us, I say I was born on third base.
Speaker 2:Part of being born on third base was having stability in my family. Right, and I, we we didn't have a perfect family and we didn't have, we didn't have everything and stuff like that. But you know, I don't remember ever wondering if we were going to have another meal, yeah, next, like where is that going to come from? Or shelter or things like that. And I also just was surrounded by so many caring adults and really representatives of caring for others. Right, my parents were great.
Speaker 2:So when we were young they did exchange students, right. So we had three or four different exchange students live with us, one of whom I consider my brother. Now he lives in the States. He's Costa Rican, so he's my Tico brother, and so we had great relational stuff happen in our house. But then we also had a couple things that were really formative for me as a kid.
Speaker 2:My parents called these well, it's Good Friday, so we talk about this getting a collect call from God, because they got reached out to. This was now the 80s, the early 80s, and you know the unwed mothers thing was big back then and that was still when the culture was, you know, send the girls away if they're going to have a baby and they're underage. And so over the course of probably about I don't know six or seven years in my childhood I first started remembering this about third grade, but probably through eighth grade or so my parents took in unwed mothers into our house and that happened about four, probably four or five times. It was just so fascinating to be a young person and see that, and so they would live with us until they had the, had the baby, and then most of them actually, by the way.
Speaker 1:This is why we go back yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 2:This is like and it's, and honestly it's, homage to my parents and honor, honor to them, um, you know. So, uh, boy, I don't know how much you might want me winging off into stories we're off into stories.
Speaker 2:We got an hour man well, we've got an hour, man. Well, let me come back to that because I will wing off in a story, because this is quite a story that still, I just love it about Idaho and grace and goodness. But I remember being a child and I think it was around fifth or sixth grade and one of these young women that came to live with us. It was around fifth or sixth grade and one of these young women that came to to live with us and she, um, I don't know how to explain it other than to say, as a fifth or sixth grader, I recognized my maturity was just greater than hers, right, I mean, just was. And I started to realize then, wow, I have had a different life than some people. Um, and I think that that that kind of exposure was really healthy for me, because growing up in Meridian Idaho, it was easy to believe that the whole world has this middle class somewhat rural play youth sports, go to church, have lots of caring adults in your life, and it was good for me to learn that that's not everyone's experience, right, and that shapes people and also there's decisions you make in life that can impact for a long time. So I told you I'd tell you a story about this because it came back when I was in Caldwell and I'm not going to use any names here, but when I was living in Caldwell there were these wonderful folks across the street and they had two girls that were sort of five years older than my young children, so just old enough to kind of be kind of like mentors. They were the older, cooler kids across the street right and so they did some things with my kids and they helped them do a lemonade stand together and, of course, they donated the money to the YMCA. Anyway, things like that happened.
Speaker 2:I'm just trying to think about how much detail to go into in this story. We had this young woman reach out to our family and she was trying to find my parents because she'd gotten their names. She was trying to find her birth mom and, uh, this birth mom was the one that had lived with us the longest, had really become part of the family. Um, she probably was with us five or six months, I mean she actually really lived with us and then lived with us for a number of months after she had her baby and um amazingly courageous woman and um gave a great gift in terms of having her child be adopted at a time when she could not raise this child. Anyway, this child came back. This is 22 years later, right, and so my folks were able to share what they knew.
Speaker 2:We as kids were always told oh, they were adopted to North Idaho or whatever. We didn't know anything about it, they didn't want us to know anything about any of these things, and this was back when adoptions often happen in different ways, right, um, but, um, so one story short. This, um, this, this woman is kind of reaching out with her birth mom, so she ends up reconnecting with her birth mom and her birth mom's living in another state and she's living in another state, and but they end up, they end up connecting, and that was cool. And then they decided they wanted to take a trip to kind of really connect together and they wanted to take a trip, trip, trip and and the the, the woman wanted her birth mom to meet her adoptive parents and also meet these other people that were formative in their life, right, and we were a part of that list.
Speaker 2:So we got this call and, um, they were going to be coming to idaho. They were, they were doing a road trip together. I mean it's really cool story. Right, great story. They're going to be coming to Idaho. They were doing a road trip together. I mean it's a really cool story right Great story.
Speaker 2:They were going to do this road trip together and we were on the list of folks that wanted to connect with right and my parents had maintained some connection with this woman, the mom who had gone on and had a fabulous life, so cool, great marriage, stuff like that.
Speaker 2:And so they were coming through Idaho and we were going to be up in Donnelly near McCall, and so they were going to come by and spend an evening there. So we're up there and I still remember it's a Friday night, we're sitting outside pine trees just chatting, just getting to know Well, one hear what's happened to this woman in the 20 years since he lived at our house, and then hearing from this daughter of hers about what she's doing, um, and her own great story, and then I'm like, where are you going after this? Oh, we're going up to, we're going to go up to mccall. I'm like, oh, yeah, what do you? What are you guys doing up there? Well, my, my, my, my parents are up there and this other family has a place up there and their family I was really close to and I said, um, oh, wow, who's that? And she said, well, they're from caldwell.
Speaker 1:And I I was living in caldwell.
Speaker 2:I said, well, who are they? And she says the names of the people that live across the street from us. Wow, they were going to their house. I said what? And? And so she kind of explained it that, uh, how she knew them and she had ended up being a nanny. Wow, for the two girls that were so influential on my kids. And I still remember. I still remember it was a, it was sunday night, I was, I was out, um at my house and and my neighbor across the street comes walking across. He says I need to thank your parents. I said what are you talking about? He said I heard what your parents did and he said you have no idea the impact that girl had on our family's life. When we were in a crisis in terms of a health crisis, we really needed help. She totally influenced who my, who my kids are, and I was sitting there thinking and your kids have influenced my kids.
Speaker 2:And it's just fascinating this whole how the universe brought that to me. It was so cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you hear these stories and that's not coincidence. Man, that's cool. That's not coincidence, I don't care. That's wow. Thanks for sharing that. You bet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, probably. Just took up about half your podcast with my little story.
Speaker 1:These are awesome. Hey, one other thing, so before we move on. So I had a guy that worked here with me. He's Kent Sager. You got to meet him, yeah, and he heard your last name and he's like, was he related? Because I worked with a guy at Micron, hewlett Packard I'm sorry, hewlett Packard and I said I don't know, ask him. And he went off about your dad. Yeah, so incredible people. Before we move on, what are kind of the legacy things you remember about your folks that are just like what comes to mind? What are the lessons you could share with listeners?
Speaker 2:Man, tommy, you should have warned me about this. We don't have any Kleenex up here and stuff. Like I said, I've just been so fortunate I already shared a little bit about just them opening up their home and things like that really really loving people very involved in community. I mean so involved in community in terms of and also their marriage was really important to them and they put a lot of time into it and we knew that priority and so they got involved in a lot of things which were helping other people in relationship and um things like that, and that ended up forming a lot of real formative friendships for them. So they they had a lot of other couples and families that they formed really close relationships to, and so they've had, they've been able to walk through life for decades with really really deep, deep relationships.
Speaker 2:I think part of that too is you know, I mentioned the military aspect right, my dad was from New England, so his family was in New England. My mom had actually grown up with career military, so she'd moved all over the country. My mom went to so community was family. They had to build it. They had to create family because there were no there was no other family here. Um, ironically, they really did that and most of their kids are all here, you know. So they've got family and all these, all these friends here. But, um, my mom's incredible about that, you know. I would just say, hearing her, hearing her story from her childhood. I mean, I think she went to seven grade schools and three high schools because her dad was a Marine and they traveled all over the place and it's so interesting, you know, that that made her able to adjust to new communities but also really want to have roots and stay in place and they really made Boise.
Speaker 2:They really made Boise and Idaho, where they wanted to be and then worked to create the community they wanted to live in. It was great. Yeah, I hear that stuff about my dad a lot because he was very charismatic, great speaker and he was involved at Hewlett Packard for a long time. So I'm actually on my way out to our ranch One of the donors helping us build the ranch. I never met this person, He'd never met me, but as part of our campaign and he shared about the impact that had had in his career in terms of some of the conversations with my dad. So he gave a gift that was at the level of a naming opportunity out there. He decided to name the thing after my parents, so there's a walking path out there that's being constructed for them. So that's what I'm going to get to work on a little bit this weekend.
Speaker 1:So there's a lot to get through Because I can, you, can you kind of get us to the YMCA?
Speaker 2:Oh, sure, yeah.
Speaker 1:Transition for you. Yeah, I had Jim on not too long ago. Oh, jim was great, jim was great, yeah, and we talked about you. And then big transition to the youth ranch and I want to hit the foundation of the youth ranch. You've told me the story and it's incredible. But then I do want to spend some time because I think I've been involved in a lot of fundraisers. Yeah, I mean I've done a lot. I mean it's kind of part of the world I live in and I have never been part of one more successful. So I talk every time, no matter who comes in my door. Now I'm like well, call Scott Curtis, because if you want to go to like anyway, I want to get to that and the impact that it's making, cause it's, it's. It was very impactful for me to be part of it.
Speaker 2:But but I'll talk a little. Yeah, and I think I can go fairly quickly through the um, the progression that gets me to the UK, because the story is fairly consistent. I have been so fortunate to be doing great work. I've always loved the job that I was in and not necessarily been looking for the next one, but a door has just presented itself. It's been like oh wow, this is what I need to do. So I had mentioned I was a high school math teacher and coach, but I really felt drawn to those young people that weren't making it and I don't mean not making it in math. I could figure that part out. I really loved teaching math, but it was a life stuff, right. So I went back and got a graduate degree in social work, which is a very unusual combination. You don't have a lot of math majors in social work, but you're really popular in graduate school because everybody else hates statistics. They can't get through. There's left brain, right brain and then there's that Exactly right.
Speaker 2:So when I first graduated with my master's degree in social work, I started working in the alternative schools. So it was right up my alley, this Caldwell project, from being just a dream people were talking about and they're never going to be able to get that done kind of thing. To wow, this is getting some legs to. Oh my goodness, look what this community is doing with the support of the what was then the Boise Y. Look what this community is doing for itself.
Speaker 2:So by the time that they got to getting closer to the opening, I was actually a part of the interview process trying to hire people to be the executive director of the Caldwell Y and they went through a number of iterations there and whether they didn't find the right person or the right person didn't want to come here, they ended up deciding we need to broaden our search and allow it to be people that haven't been YMCA professionals. And when they broadened that and my wife's been a big part of any one of these key decisions in my life she was one of the ones saying I think you should be thinking about this job. And I said what. I'm a social worker who works individually, doing counseling with kids and groups. I don't know anything about recreation and fitness and also managing that many people.
Speaker 2:But again, one of the major things in my life was that decision and I still remember when David Durow, who's now the CEO of the Treasure Valley Y called me it was April 1st, ironically, but we didn't get into that Said hey, we want you to do this. So Kathleen and I were so thrilled We'd already spent a number of days just coming out to Caldwell and sitting in the park or being in restaurants and it felt like a strong connection for us. A little piece to that is Kathleen and I both did volunteer work in South America. She was in a large orphanage system in Argentina and I was in rural Chile. So we both spoke Spanish, but also we had a kind of a passion for community development and building, and so what Caldwell was really trying to do was bring their community together. And for those that can go back 20 plus years, there was some serious statistics going on.
Speaker 2:It's unbelievable what was going on there. And again, such credit. Caldwell has such great people in Canyon County has such great people. They said we're gonna, we're gonna throw ourselves in and and the Y was a part of that, a big part of that, um, and the city leadership and just local leaders and business leaders and I can name the names, uh, here, because they're still a lot of them still doing it out there so got to work with the Y. That was an incredible, incredible gift, you know, and was there almost in Caldwell almost 10 years being the first executive director, starting from the, you know, laying the sod outside to hiring the first staff and having great people just come on and then watching that community transform, like, like.
Speaker 1:I think that, like that's the day I remember sitting there and you showing the statistics of phenomenal, like, like it is this precipitous drop off. Yeah, and you, you telling the story of hey, once we had a place that people could come together from all walks of life and feel a sense of community and ownership and belonging.
Speaker 2:It's incredible what happened, yeah, and a place for youth and a place where people were going to learn their names and an option for young people that were looking to belong somewhere and at that point we're choosing gangs and things like that, but for them to have an option and caring adults that would be there. Yeah, I mean, that wasn't easy. That was big work and a lot of work and that was phenomenal. That was phenomenal. You just look back and say how did I get to be so lucky to be a part of that.
Speaker 1:I loved it. You get to rub shoulders with Jim.
Speaker 2:Jim was great, david was great, billy Cliff I can name all the names of the people that I got to learn from. The other thing, tommy, is not only have I been blessed to have the opportunities I've had, but I've gotten to work with people that are passionate about mission, and that includes the people that work in the places, but it also includes people like you, because one of the things about the we'll get to that campaign, but one of the things about being involved in fundraising or community development in general, is you have to have the leaders stand up for it to be successful. You can't just be tooting your own horn, you need people to, and once that happens, it's like you take two steps forward, they take three, you take another two, and it's this momentum, momentum, right, yeah, momentum is huge.
Speaker 1:But, scott, it comes from authenticity, right, it comes from deeply rooted, genuine commitment to cause, for sure, for sure. If that thing can be witnessed through the hearts, minds and souls of the people involved, then it's just crazy when it happens and that's why I send so many people your way because people come in and they're like, hey, we're trying to raise money for this and we really are passionate about that, and you're sitting in a room. You're like, hey, man, it's gotta be. Like. I know the words, I see the brochure, I know the words, I see the brochures and I actually see the need. That's the other thing that people don't understand sometimes is the need can be huge, it could be palpable. The brochure can be polished in whether it's matte or a glossy finish. A lot of time goes into that decision. And now chat GPTs out there. You can write whatever you want to write, but if the values of the mission aren't deeply ingrained in the people that are selling this vision, it ain't going to work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I totally agree and honestly, that's what brought me to the youth ranch.
Speaker 1:So, so make that transition.
Speaker 2:Well, I had so much opportunity to grow um with the treasure Valley YM and I just owe so much to those experiences and to the people I worked with. So I had moved from Caldwell in my role to being a broader role across the organization. I was in a senior role, working directly with the CEO, jim, and then David, and I was doing strategic advancement role, working directly with the CEO, jim, and then David, and I was doing strategic advancement projects and things like that. So we were able to do the South Meridian YMCA, the Tomlinson Y, which was another fabulous experience with community, and those were the things we were working on and I was really loving that, not looking to do anything else.
Speaker 2:When a conversation happened with me about the youth ranch and my initial reaction was I'm not, I'm not really interested, because I'm in a great spot here and also I've lived here my whole life. I can't tell you very much what the youth ranch does. And so what was great about that is folks said, well, are you at least willing to have a conversation and take a look? And I said I said sure. So you know, the end of the story is I ended up deciding, wow, I could really, I could really grow. Coming to the youth ranch and I have some things to offer that are probably timely for the organization. Um, and, and decided to put my hat in the ring to be to for the open ceo position. Um, that was six, that was seven years ago that started. But let me go to the youth ranch because you wanted to hear a little bit about the history, because that's what drew me to it, but I also want to highlight something before you do.
Speaker 1:I think I've got a few mantras in life, but people follow people and I think of where the youth ranch was at that point. If you went back six years and said to me, hey, idaho youth ranch, what does it do? I probably would say not, not. I just would say I don't know yeah, that's why I know they have a few.
Speaker 1:I know they have a few thrift stores. But what I have loved about your hire and getting the right person in the right role, I think the story. I mean you're storyteller, you're passionate, your mission, your mission driven. And once you get, mean you're a storyteller, you're passionate, you're mission driven. And once you get that now you're like oh, that's one of the coolest things I've ever heard. It's like are you kidding me? But I think bringing that out of obscurity and telling the story and connecting mission with people is what you're. I mean that's what God's blessed you with, so talk. I mean it's been critical that that it's a great example of a leader hitting a mission and then taking off Right, right.
Speaker 1:And it's only been that long.
Speaker 2:It's been six and a half years, man, january.
Speaker 1:I'm just blown away. I just know where this is heading and what you've accomplished Well and it's a week.
Speaker 2:So when I looked at the, the first thing I looked at was the mission and you asked a little bit about that and we are on such a solid foundation in terms of wow, there has been grace operating here from the beginning. So in the 1950s, early 1950s, our founders, the Crows they were this wonderful couple. He'd been a military chaplain and was actually overseas while she was writing all the letters to senators and getting his name on everything and working to get this vision of a ranch that would be a healing place for what they called wayward boys back then. So that was a lot of effort and I could spend the whole podcast talking about just their efforts to get this. Eventually they got, they got. They were able to purchase, for like a buck a year or something, 2,500 acres in a sequa which is right outside of Rupert, idaho. This was sagebrush land and this was 1950s. And so this wonderful couple she was a full-time school teacher by day. They brought in in the boys, they got the original land and they started building the ranch.
Speaker 2:There's so many cool stories that, for example, a lot of people don't know this but the Minidoka internment camp, which had been a Japanese internment camp in World War II. Minidoka is not that far from Rupert. They actually dragged across the desert two of the original barracks from Minidoka, tied those things together and that became the original lodge for the boys on the ranch. So there's just so much stuff about the history of the youth ranch that is so cool like that. And it grew from there and it grew with really passionate people, the original people that went there to work. Reverend Crow went to University of Idaho and recruited young couples that were graduating. People came from other parts of the state and they'd go and live there with the kids and help the ranch grow. So it became a full-fledged nonprofit in the 50s and then started to grow throughout the 60s. In the 70s and early 80s was really when the organization started to expand significantly. Well, first they went co-ed at the ranch and that ranch campus is wonderful. At its heyday probably served 30 to 40 kids. It's very remote, it's 12 miles outside of Rupert, so this was a place to have the kids kind of get sent away to and get healed right, and there was a lot of love in that place. So then the youth ranch really over many I got to jump to today cause it's just too much history. But there's obviously pieces where the youth ranch got into in the early eighties adoptions Right, cause the state needed someone to really facilitate adoption. So and then the thrift store piece started in the early eighties cause someone from the youth ranch had heard about a place in California that had some revenue coming in through a thrift store and so, long story short, you jump up to six and a half years ago.
Speaker 2:What I was seeing about the youth ranch was they were in a real challenge in terms of the financials were really struggling. They'd been losing money, the thrift stores had been losing money, programs had been challenged because they'd closed the ranch in Rupert in order to build the new ranch here in the Treasure Valley and they had the property. But the program plan and the fundraising the initial fundraising campaign had really hit some walls. So I was looking at the organization and looking at this history and this mission. They had outpatient services in multiple parts of the state. They were running adoptions. The Hayes Shelter Home is the only shelter for runaway and homeless youth in the entire Treasure Valley and that has been operating since the 60s. There's all these things that Youth Ranch was doing and they were a little bit on the ropes and I thought, man, this is the place that kids that have fallen through the cracks. It's like the last safety net for some of these kids and families and this is going to be a problem. This goes away.
Speaker 2:And as I started to meet the staff and the board members that were involved, they had drawn a line in the sand and they were doing the hard work to get this place to be back. And so the um, I really have to emphasize that because a number of the returns for those efforts started to be seen right after I came. But things like you know, you, you're, you've done a lot of great business. You know you don't turn that in two months right. So when my first board meeting is showing positive financials, that had nothing, nothing to do with me. That had to do with a year and a half of really retooling the stores, doubling down on certain aspects of thrift, getting efficient, closing seven stores in order to become more efficient with the 24 that remained, so huge. That's been great. And the timing was all great because we needed the organization to be stabilized before asking other people to give to it. Yeah, and that was the magic of of timing was a couple of things I'm going to get to the. Let me get to the capital campaign.
Speaker 2:So you know my first board meeting, that the board made it clear you need to have a sustainable program that is a residential program, because that's our flagship, that's how we were founded and that's a huge need in Idaho. So we went to work developing the program and then we did a feasibility study and talked with a lot of people about what's going on and one of the things that happened, I think for me that felt pretty linchpin or part of the zeitgeist of five years ago. You know, 15 or 20 years ago, in my role at the Y, if I was talking about mental illness, right, or suicide or things like that, people would talk about it and have lots of sensitivity, but their own ability to, as you were talking about, truly empathize or, you know, just awareness, was different. When you and I started that campaign six, five years ago, when we actually launched the campaign in 2020, when we talk to people about stuff going on with kids and the mental health pieces, they all had their own story.
Speaker 1:They have a neighbor.
Speaker 2:They have a nephew or a niece or their own child. That was a big shift in a 10 to 15-year period, and that may have just been my own awareness growing, but I really felt like people were ready to talk about this, and then I think I just kind of skipped a whole piece there, tommy, though, and jumped into the capital campaign without giving people the background there.
Speaker 1:Just a little bit of what the need was. It is a significant need for families in Idaho and we were sending these kids out of state. That was what? Because there is nothing here, so I think that Nobody knew that.
Speaker 2:The youth ranch didn't know that. So part of the youth ranch is kind of figuring out how to survive and get through what were really big challenges. For whatever reason, at that point the ranch hadn't been taking Medicaid, hadn't been taking insurance, had lived off of donations and people paying as well as contracts. Well, as those things went different directions. They were in a financial crisis. So part of that was saying hey, we're serving low-income kids Some of the kids we're serving, should we be tapping into some Medicaid reimbursement? And what they learned from the Medicaid system was for a youth to get residential treatment right, it has to be an accredited, federally accredited facility for psychiatric residential treatment. Idaho did not have a single one. So what that meant is but we have kids here that need residential treatment. So Idaho for years had been sending all of these kids to other states, which the research is really clear that the more you can have families involved, quite frankly, part of the reason-.
Speaker 1:And just think about the significance if you're one of those families, at this point you've tried everything. Yeah, I mean you don't go straight to residential inpatient. I mean at that point you have battled, yeah, you have fought, you have done everything you can to make this thing work. And you now are like, okay, that is the story of a lot of these parents. We are hopeless, yeah, and we are too. And now you're like, oh, there's nowhere in Idaho, yeah, I met this woman and she's fabulous.
Speaker 2:She ended up being a part of our initial video, Husband's a doctor. They had moved to Idaho to a rural community because they wanted to be a part of serving the health needs in our state and they were really committed. They were up on the prairie, they had an adopted child that ended up having this level of mental health needs and they were basically told sorry, if you want to be near a child getting treatment, you're going to need to move to another state, and they were trying to stay here to live out their dream of serving here. Their child had been in three different states in residential treatment, you know, with them flying or driving trying to get to them, and she'd been in Arkansas.
Speaker 2:I mean that's tough from Idaho. So, anyway, that we we were able to part of the capital campaign was we were able to understand what's the data saying about mental health and what is people's awareness of it, and so when? And then what's Idaho's reality? And we really said and our co-chairs of the campaign were fabulous about this, mark Miller and Robert Rebholz, I mean I still remember them saying this is an Idaho problem, we in Idaho are going to take care of this. People rallied to that.
Speaker 1:So you had an authentic need that was deep and mission-driven, that you could connect with easily. And then you had you. I mean, I'm not being like it. You had the leader, because I think within an organization, if you have someone that can tell the story that it's not just words, it's not just glossy or matte, it's the thing. And then you had co-chairs. You had Mark Miller and Rob Revholz. Two of these legendary leaders, business leaders here in the community, connected and they were in it to win it. I mean, they were mission driven.
Speaker 2:They sure were. Still, the part of that story that I just shake my head at is we'd done the feasibility study. We knew it needed to be a statewide campaign. And the fascinating thing about the feasibility study I think we met with 60, 80 people across this state and that was just a listening tour. That was before we even had co-chairs. I kept thinking people, when we really got down to it, were going to be a little more provincial. So, for example, I kept thinking people in Sandpoint are going to say that would be great, but I'd, I'd support it if it was being built up here or whatever. We didn't hear that from a single person. They said are you kidding me? Yeah, we're sending our kids to another States. Yeah, and and I know kids, by the way, like that, I've got some in my family and how are we going to? How are we going to do this? So was a huge piece of it.
Speaker 1:So talk a little bit about the property, because you have.
Speaker 2:Oh boy.
Speaker 1:There's a story behind it, but it is unbelievably cool it is.
Speaker 2:It's amazing. So this is in. Its closest community is Middleton. It's a Caldwell property, caldwell address, but it's really close to Middleton, so it's in rural ranch farmland, right. The cool thing about this property is it was a tree farm that was established in the 60s by the Hopkins family and some of them people will remember the Hopkins Christmas tree lots all over the valley, right. So it was this. It's this kind of massive forest about 50 of the acres are probably just forest and tree farm and then it had become a private estate and so they had put in in addition to their home, but they'd put in a nine-hole golf course and what that meant is there's open space, there's streams and ponds, it's not a golf course now.
Speaker 2:It looks like you've driven onto this cross section of Idaho. There's ponds, there's streams, there's open fields, there's pasture, there's forest. We don't have a river rushing through it, and that's a good thing.
Speaker 1:But I mean other than that but it's just amazing. It's amazing, it's like a little oasis. You go out and you're like, whoa, this is perfect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's another piece that I say is just, it's just serendipity or grace, cause you know, there was a downturn here. You remember that in the in, you know, 2007, 2008, and this property had been on the market for many years. So in 2015, the youth ranch got it, but I, three months later, six months later, the turnaround had started and it wouldn't have come to us, cause it was an incredible really. It was later. The turnaround had started, yeah, and it wouldn't have come to us because it was an incredible really, it was a gift. 258 acres, no coincidences, so it's 258 acres. The property was great.
Speaker 2:So, one of the brilliant things, we had recruited Mark and Robert to be the co-chairs of the campaign and this was in 2019. I started in January, we did our feasibility study, finished that in fall, and so the winter of 2019, early 2020, robert and Mark had agreed to the campaign it was going to be a $20 million campaign and had recruited most of the campaign From that perspective, that's huge, it was a huge it was a huge lift, like it's massive.
Speaker 1:And we said Like you hear that number and you're like, okay, this is going to be hard, because, having been by several of them four, six, nine, 10, 12, you're like yeah, this was big. A lot of the same people get asked this is huge.
Speaker 2:And we had mapped out the campaign and said, okay, it's going to be a year and a half to two years of getting the initial major gifts and then you move to the community campaign level. Robert kind of looked and said I'm not sure we're going to be taking that long. If you don't know anything about Robert Redholtz, you should know that he's a pretty hard worker and he's competitive and he also likes to get stuff done, because he's got a lot of stuff going on and Mark's the same way. So here we are, winter 2019 to 2020, and we've recruited many of the cabinet members and people were being brought in by the message that property was a piece of it. When we wanted to recruit somebody, they would just say we have to take you to the property to see if you're interested. And once people came on that property, then they started to say, okay, there's something special going on here. And then they learned about the history and, of course, by that point we were able to share about the financials of the youth ranch and how those were stabilized and our impact on youth. So the timing was just perfect. But then we all know what happened in early 2020. We were supposed to have our first cabinet meeting in person in April 2020. Well, obviously nobody was allowed to meet anywhere and Robert and Mark were like, okay, we'll just keep figuring things out, we'll regroup, let's just let them know. And I still remember it was May of 2020.
Speaker 2:Most of the state was shut down and we were having a video call between the three of us and robert says well, we need to launch the campaign. I said, yeah, well, we're gonna. We're gonna have to launch it at some point. Let's see when we get through this. He said no, we need to launch it now. I said we can't. People can't even get together. He said there's some people that need something to be caring about. Yeah, so we're gonna launch.
Speaker 2:So you may remember this we we launched the campaign in June. We had a meeting. It was kind of open air meeting, but we got the whole cabinet together, launched the campaign. We had a little horse there that had on the side of it written the number of dollars we'd raised to that point, which was $2 million or whatever, committed but launched that campaign. And two million dollars or whatever, committed but launched that campaign. And, um, we had said we have to get to 85 percent of the goal to break ground right, and I'll be darned. We broke ground the next may and uh, and it just kept going.
Speaker 1:So that's what's like, I mean I I hope like, like, of all the things I've ever witnessed you have, have you join, you have this incredible goal. That seems impossible. You have COVID hit. Yeah, that was big.
Speaker 2:That was big.
Speaker 1:And you have this record breaking, like you broke ground, it's built, it's open. That's what I'm saying, like if you look about what's happened in a short period of time. So I can't wait to hear Like it's beautiful, it's amazing out there now and the and the and the ribbon cutting ceremony, the whole thing, and now you're seeing patients. Yeah, I'm dying to hear how it's going it's going.
Speaker 2:It's going really well in terms of transformed lives, right? So, um, the whole campus is is is running. We've got a charter school. That's there. That's running. We have youth coming in. A lot of the stuff we talked about, because we'd gone around the country and tried to take the best of everything we saw and then we built it into a vision and kept talking and talking and talking about it. There have been some things that aren't exactly the same, but for the most part, like we talked about, this is one of those programs. This is a family program like we need. We need the caring adults involved, not just the staff, but we need the, the kid, the parents, these kids are going back to, ultimately, that's where they're going.
Speaker 1:That's where they're going their engagement.
Speaker 2:I'm I'm on my way out there today for family we have. We have. We have 24 kids there right now. We have 38 adults coming to have lunch wow with their kids, all at the same time. The families are coming every week um, our first graduate.
Speaker 1:You tell us a little bit, so talk a little bit about the campus. How many buildings? Yeah, it's great, so just because. And then, um, is there a campus?
Speaker 2:if someone's here oh, geez, um, yeah, you want to go to? Um, I would go to. Uh, uh, let's, let's go to for youth. I we're on the website, everybody navigating it Go to.
Speaker 1:So there's Hayes House, there's Youth Work. Yeah, go to Safe Place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, go to Safe Place. This is actually good for me to be doing this. I don't jump on here and navigate this all the time. Go ahead, let's see. I think it's going to be Parent Resources actually. Oh no, I'm sorry, it's not Safe Place, that's a whole other program. Would you go to parent resources? Uh, come on. Yeah, jump to brochure. This is going to help. There should be a brochure on the residential center for healing and resilience. Goodness gracious, hey, we got a lot of stuff on this website.
Speaker 1:There's someone in your organization that is going to take you behind the woodshed. No, they're about to get me.
Speaker 2:So man.
Speaker 1:Hey, listen, the other problem we've got here as I'm sitting here looking through here, it's thrift stores, hayes House, equine therapy, there's therapy. There's youth rent, there's a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of stuff going on, yeah, but I want to be able to talk to it if someone's getting up there.
Speaker 1:But anyway to get back. You have so many buildings there. They all went up at the same time.
Speaker 2:It's this multidisciplinary program that wraps around these kids. In Idaho You're up to 26 kids. Here we go. Yeah, so it's called the Residential Center for Healing and Resilience. One of the things we learned was, first of all, the need in Idaho. So we did needs assessment. We knew that the biggest need was 11 through 17-year-olds. Really, the highest need, if you can believe, is 12 to 14-year-olds, and more need among females than males. There's some stuff around that I could get into, but so we decided to build really a state of the art campus with all individualized rooms. Every program that we went to across the country, if they had more than one youth in a room, they said if we could change one thing, we'd give them a private space.
Speaker 1:They are going through so much Huge deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a huge deal. So we really built this thing and said we actually we shrunk, we shrunk, we removed a whole building because we wanted the quality to be and we said we have to expand, we'll have to expand, but we can't. We can't do this on the cheap. So that's what people experience when they go out there the kids do not feel like it's an institution. They walk in it's it's. It's beautiful, like it's an institution. They walk in. It's a beautiful space. It's also very intentionally built. I mean, these are youth. Many of them come to us, are very high risk, right? So we can't have well, we just have to have spaces that, whether or not they look safe, we know that everything has been scrubbed and placed and built to not give them access to hurt themselves. Quite frankly, tommy Because I mean the majority of the kids that are coming to us there now their parents are scared, they're scared, they've tried to hurt themselves and we're going to try everything else and here we go right.
Speaker 2:So it's a 64-youth facility. So we have everything that's needed there. There are residential lodges and that includes the social space, green space and stuff. There's a, there's a great dining facility, there's a, there's a recreational gymnasium, there's a wellness, there's a wellness center. So that's where we have 24 hour nursing. We have a psychiatrist, we have therapists, psychologists, and then we we in terms of solving the education component, that was a big thing we figured out. We ended up getting a lot of support around the state, including from our local school district, middleton, to build a charter school because these youth have very specialized needs. So we're running a charter school there. It's a separate nonprofit.
Speaker 2:That has been huge and I just got to cut right to. Here's the miracle. That's happening. We had a youth graduate last week. She's had a. That's happening. We had a youth graduate. We had a youth graduate last week. She's had a pretty long stay. Eight months is a long stay. We really say, you know, four to six months is how people should probably think about this. And the whole idea is you're taking young people who, like you said earlier, they've tried other things. The parents have tried, they've been working at it. It hasn't worked. We need intense 24-hour control of nutrition, exercise, medications you know this as a doctor. Getting that balanced in a space where everybody can see what's going on and can tweak that, that's huge for these kids and then teaching them how to manage it and teaching them how to manage their emotional breakers. So we had this girl leave last week, going home successfully to her parents. She's already plugged into another one of our programs. When she came in August she could hardly leave her room, like curled up, not able to leave her room. And when I saw her last week before her graduation, I mean she's walking around the campus like she's an elder statesman and she's interacting with the other youth, kind of helping them along. So that's life, elder statesman, and you know she's interacting with the other, you kind of helping them along. So that's that's life-changing and that's that's what has to happen there. Um, so we have 24 kids there today. So our biggest gap and we have, we have lots of, we have lots of youth eligible to come our biggest gap is the staffing aspect right, the staffing and training, and if you could help with anything, it's just to have people know that I was going to get to that.
Speaker 1:So ways to help you, so a couple of things, like there's the website, go there and there's so many ways to give. There's a lot of ways to give. And look at all your programs you have. You have the youth ranch thrift stores. You have ways to give directly. But then one of the biggest needs right now, scott, is what you're going to hit on, because we've talked about this before. Yeah, it is staffing. So you built this facility. It's just hard to find, like, if you look at the world we live in right now labor has been fascinating.
Speaker 1:Labor is just hard, especially specialized labor well, that's what I want to.
Speaker 2:That's what I want. You can help me right now because I want to correct that like. This is a. This is a 64 youth campus. Yeah, 120 full-time positions some of them. Some of those are very specialized, right, we need therapists, we need psychiatrists, we need nurses. That's not our biggest gap, really. Over 60 of those positions are basically the people that do what you and I do in our own homes. They're the ones that are with the kids at day day out. They're walking to and from school with them. They're going to the dining hall and eating with them.
Speaker 1:That's the companion services. We call them youth care providers.
Speaker 2:And they're the ones that are there also when a kid starts to melt down.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And they're the ones because they are very highly trained. They're the ones reminding okay, this is what you've been working on, this is what you've been working on I would have not guessed that.
Speaker 2:So we need people that are 21 years old or older and want to be engaged with kids. We will teach them. We can't teach somebody if they tend to be really volatile or get angry or something like that. You just can't have that kind of person, because these kids need stability. They need calm adults that can talk them through stuff and like being with young people Over age 21 and up to any age you want. We've got some great people that they're retired. They've come back and said I just want to be with kids and I'll take the job that I can. Just I'm being with kids and I'm just talking to them about life Because we have to have 24. This is shift work. It's not like the old ranch where there were house parents that lived in the houses with the youth. These kids are in lodges of eight, but it's shift work. So meaning we have three different shifts. There's somebody working day, swing and then overnight.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so now you're recruiting people working swing and night shifts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so they need to have graduated from high school and be 21 years old and have relative balance in terms of being able to manage their own emotions. That's that's our biggest gap, that's our. That is we. We get them.
Speaker 1:And and then the training that's required, because we, we do put folks through a lot of training we don't want to so for anyone listening out there, uh, that that wants to know more scott is if you don't know him, you should know him, and if you, if you want to go take a little field trip. It is life-changing to see the work you're doing and, I think, the feedback I'm hearing from everyone. I mean, you think about the significance this is for our state and the families of Idaho having this resource here. It's tremendous. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2:I will tell you a couple of cool things we said. We said this is going to be for the whole state. I will tell you a couple of cool things we said. We said this is going to be for the whole state. In our first 18 months we served kids from 13 counties in Idaho, and the other piece is the caregivers of these kids. Our first graduate was from Sandpoint.
Speaker 2:Mom had adopted this child, unbeknownst to her, had a traumatic brain injury, so she was dealing with brain stuff she didn't even know about for years and the only place she could get seen was the emergency room where he would get medicated and stabilized and then he wasn't eligible for services because he was stable. But here's the important part of that story Mom drove to the campus every week to be a part, yeah, of the family therapy week, to be a part, yeah, the family therapy. So we are excited. You knew about this cause, we talked about it before, but we are excited. Our next, our next big push is we're building family visitation lodging right next to the center so that parents can come and be there for weekends, be there for overnights and get time with their kids so they're ready to go home.
Speaker 1:Well, hey, Scott, like you're such an inspiration example to so many. I hope you know that. Hope you know how much we love and appreciate you. This community loves and appreciate you. Thank you for the work you do. Thank you for what you do for the ranch but for the community at large and for just your overall example to so many. It's been an honor having you on today. I appreciate you doing this.
Speaker 2:I'm glad you decided to do this with the show Seriously and it's awesome knowing you. You're a huge part of this. Thanks, brother. You've intersected a lot with a lot of pieces of that story I told. So thank you and your family, thanks for coming on, you bet. Thanks everybody, it's great.