Jay Carroll, age eight, is a member of the Mabee Red Shield Boys & Girls Club on 1231 N. Harvard. When he first joined the club last fall, club director Jerome Smith said he acted “street” but has now turned around.“The kids think acting street is cool and that’s hard for us to combat. Jay didn’t want to be recognized as a good kid, because then he wouldn’t be cool. But he’s come a long way,” Smith said.
Walker said that before joining the club she took Jay to a day care center’s after-school program, where he was bored. “They’d sit around and watch Barney all the time,” she said. Walker works as the second shift manager of housekeeping at St. John Medical Center, where she supervises four managers and 35 employees. But managing her young son was more challenging. Walker said since Jay’s 20 year old brother and 23 year old sister were so much older, he never learned to share things at home. She’d get calls from Jay’s day care and school when Jay would be asked to share and consequently would act out. “He spent a lot of time in the time-out chair,” Walker said.
Walker heard about the Mabee Red Shield Boys & Girls Club from a good friend of hers at work who had taken her kids to Red Shield. Walker called the club and went there to interview Smith and take a tour.
“Everyone was sociable, everyone was cheerful. I felt like they were family,” she said. Another bonus was that the club picks up its members at school. Before, she had to pick Jay up at school and drop him off at day care before she went to work. “And the club is $120 a month cheaper,” she said.
