Treehouse offers a structure where foster kids can thrive

He looks like any other happy, healthy young man, in his sweatshirt from Seattle University, where he's expected to graduate with good grades and plans for the future.

For Treehouse, that's the definition of success: a young adult well-launched in life.

For too many kids growing up in foster care — and in King County, that's as many as 1,400 kids on any given day — childhood doesn't always end that way. But Treehouse gives kids a better chance to meet their potential.

Leon Lewis, 23, was a foster kid for 12 years, and he was luckier than most, remaining with the same family throughout his childhood. But nonetheless, Treehouse provided critical assists he says helped get him where he is today.

His certificate from South Seattle Community College hangs on the wall at the learning center at Treehouse, where, since middle school, Lewis worked with tutors to bring up his grades and hit the books.

After earning an associate degree at South Seattle, he transferred to Seattle University to complete a four-year degree — on a full-ride scholarship.

"Math was something I had a lot of difficulty with," Lewis said. "I wasn't very motivated at school. They helped me a lot," he said of staff and volunteers at Treehouse. "All my mentors and tutors just insisted I do well in school; it wasn't even a question. It wasn't: if I would, but when."

Today he has a 3.3 grade-point average and is on track to graduate with a bachelor's degree in political science in the spring.

He routinely works his way through 100 pages of reading a night for his assignments, and he successfully tackled an economics class. While still at South Seattle Community College, he even challenged himself to take statistics as an extra math elective.

With the steady infusion of encouragement and assistance through the charity's tutoring and Coaching to College program, he said he's succeeded beyond his own expectations. "I never thought I'd go to Seattle University," said Lewis.

He was one of 21 students competitively selected for scholarships under the school's Fostering Scholars program, which provides financial aid, year-round housing, and student health insurance to students who are alumni of foster care.

Colleen Montoya Barbano, director of Fostering Scholars, said the help Treehouse provides is critical. "The work they do is life-changing. I see it firsthand in the students I work with I know would not be pursuing college or at Seattle University without the people at Treehouse, who pushed them and challenged them along the way."

Treehouse also helps provide some of the little things every kid wants but that foster parents might not be able to afford, from music lessons to sports fees.

As school districts and local governments cut back on funding for librarians, counselors, electives and other crucial enhancements and enrichments for children, Treehouse is an even more essential resource for families.

The charity even provides some of the basics.

"Pants!" Lewis said, when asked what he used to like to shop for at the Treehouse store, where kids can shop for free up to six times a year for everything from bicycles to bluejeans and school supplies.

The charity's Little Wishes program also paid for a high-school yearbook and driver's ed lessons for Lewis.

Lewis benefited from coaching for more than four years from a mentor who connected with Lewis through Treehouse. Joan Miller, a former social worker, is a volunteer at Treehouse in its Coaching to College program. She helped Lewis stick with his goal of getting his grades up to get into Seattle University and successfully compete for a scholarship.

She admired his work ethic, holding down a job while going to school, and doing all that while commuting long distances by bus.

"I was only one of many persons who provided Leon with this support and availability," Miller wrote in an e-mail. "It truly takes a village. But it also takes a person willing to utilize that village."

Today, Lewis is living on campus at Seattle University and considering whether to go on to an advanced degree. He already has at least one job possibility when he graduates.

"They have done so many things for me; it was just having them be there for me," Lewis said of Treehouse. "Even when I wasn't doing so great. I knew and they knew I could be doing better."

Today he is the one passing on encouragement in a part-time job at a drop-in center for youth at the YMCA in Rainier Valley. "I enjoy it. It's nice to have a participant that looks just for you, to hear, 'Leon, I tried that and it worked.' Or, 'Leon, I need help.'

"It's nice to be needed."

Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com