Agency helps seniors start "a second act" at parenting young relatives

At 89, Clara Perkins was content to live out her days watching one soap opera after another.

Then "the call" came two summers ago. Airianna Smith, then 14, her great-granddaughter, phoned to say she was OK, not to worry, but she had run away from her dad's house. She couldn't turn to her mother, a crack addict, who was homeless herself.

Perkins didn't know if she could muster the energy to raise a teen again but worried that Airianna would end up like her mother. So the matriarch told Airianna that day, "Come over, stay here."

Two years later, they are still living together in Perkins' two-bedroom apartment in Rainier Valley, each better off since that fateful call.

"She's not just my great-grandmother," said Airianna, a junior at Cleveland High School, "but my mother and father, my best friend."

Perkins, who has four children, 18 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren, said raising a child again has reinvigorated her, provided a second act.

For the last five years, Senior Services of Seattle/King County has helped thousands of seniors such as Perkins raise grandchildren or other young relatives. Often, these are youths whose parents have been incarcerated, have abandoned them or have died.

Through its Kinship Care Program, the agency last year helped about 1,500 seniors raise relatives who were 18 or younger, double the number from the previous year.

About 60 percent of the "kinship caregivers" are grandparents raising grandchildren. The rest are mostly aunts and uncles.

These seniors are providing a nurturing environment for children who, in many cases, would have otherwise ended up in foster care, said Terra McCaffree, program manager of Kinship Care.

Nationwide, the Census Bureau counts 2.4 million seniors who are primary caregivers for grandchildren. But most nonprofit agencies don't offer financial or other assistance to seniors serving as parents, several local social-service administrators said.

Senior Services is one of the few locally that does provide such help, but it needs more donations now because more seniors are turning to the agency.

Senior Services pays for some back-to-school supplies and helps seniors qualify for state financial aid to care for young relatives. It also connects the seniors with other social services and offers parenting-support groups.

Senior Services helped Perkins get welfare money to raise her great-granddaughter.

For more than three decades, Perkins, a St. Louis native, worked as an elevator attendant in Detroit and later Seattle, greeting and escorting customers to their floors — a lost occupation, she said. With arthritis taking its toll on her knees, she retired at age 70. Perkins has spent her time catching up with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Airianna said she ran away after her father remarried because she didn't want to be part of another family. But with a mother who was homeless, the teen had few options until Perkins took her in.

The relationship has changed Airianna's life. Because she respects her great-grandmother, Airianna welcomes her nurturing and has accepted some tough love: an 8 p.m. curfew on school nights. Early to rise for church on Sundays. Homework before watching cartoons.

Perkins has also taught her how to cook, and she dishes out life lessons and aphorisms:

Iron clothes after you do laundry, when the fabric is soft.

Garlic powder, salt and pepper are all you need to make great fried chicken.

Watch the first segment of the news to get the important events.

And don't get Perkins started on friends of the opposite sex. Every boy who hangs out with Airianna ends up on the hot seat on Perkins' couch.

"What classes are you taking? What are your grades? What's your phone number?" And take off your cap and pull up those baggy pants, she often tells Airianna's friends.

Far from being embarrassed, the girl seems amused. "They all know she's my granny and she don't play," Airianna said. "I'm so used to being with her now. This is the most comfortable I've ever been."

Besides, she added, it's foolish not to listen to someone who has so many life experiences and such wisdom.

Perkins, a widow, said Airianna's spunkiness provides much entertainment for a home that had been too quiet. "She keeps me young."

The two discovered they share the same taste in music: James Brown, Luther Vandross and Marvin Gaye.

Still, the generation gap is apparent. Told that Perkins was born during the Woodrow Wilson administration, her great-granddaughter responded, "Who's he?"

Chuckling, Airianna affectionately teases the graying Perkins: "It's amazing, isn't it? Look, she still has her teeth."

Perkins shakes her head and tries to refrain from smiling. "She's a handful. That's no joke."

Tan Vinh: 206-515-5656 or tvinh@seattletimes.com