Rainier Beach High alums give mentoring extra boost

Ed Hill doesn't like to think of the kids he's mentored at Rainier Beach High School as "at risk."

He sees their potential, instead. But after four intense years of mentoring, it's hard to watch graduates head to college and struggle to afford books and computers.

That's why Hill and other volunteer mentors involved with Community for Youth at Rainier Beach High School held a fundraiser this weekend to raise money to help kids who already have succeeded.

"All of these kids, if you read their family profiles, you'd be amazed that they're in college," said Richard Hodgin, a mentor who helped organize the fundraiser.

The school's alumni association held a screening of a documentary Sunday to raise money to give 15 Community for Youth graduates $200 each quarter for books. In addition, alumni are raising money to buy refurbished computers for about eight students.

When students in the mentoring program finish high school, they don't stop calling their mentors, volunteers who have walked with them through tests, breakups, lost scholarships and family problems. They still lack the financial and family support they lacked in the ninth grade, when the program began.

"If I needed anything, he was there," said Samuel Martin, a senior at the University of Washington. Not only does he still talk regularly to Hodgin, his mentor, Hodgin is going to help him move this fall.

Alaba Wokoma went to Alabama State University after she graduated from Rainier Beach in 2008. She said she wouldn't have made it there without her mentor, who guided Wokoma through high school with straight talk and love.

Wokoma had a guarded relationship with her mother, and she fell back on shyness even though she felt a desire to stand out. Her mentor wouldn't settle for what Wokoma thought she wanted to hear.

"One of the reasons why I needed Barbara was because she was one of the only people who could tell it to me straight," she said. "Right then. Right when I needed to be told."

Wokoma ran out of money in Alabama and came home in debt. It could have derailed her college career. But thanks to the support system she still has through Community for Youth, she is enrolled at Shoreline Community College and plans to go next year to a four-year school to complete her journalism degree.

She works at a mall, but she will need help. "My mom," she said, "she does what she can, but I know not to expect much, because she doesn't have much."

Emily Heffter: 206-464-8246 or eheffter@seattletimes.com