By Christina Killion Valdez
8/22/2009 Post-Bulletin, Rochester MN
Amanda Wondrow knows what it’s like to be represented by a public defender. Now, she’s on the other side of the briefcase.
After her mother’s death and before becoming a teen mother, Wondrow, 21, said she had some problems with the law. Yet, through Summer Youth Connections, a Minnesota Workforce Center program that uses stimulus dollars to provide work readiness training and jobs for at-risk youth, Wondrow is working at the Public Defender’s office.
“It’s changed my life,” she said. “It’s not just a job — it’s a career.”
Getting to this point, however, has taken some work.
In a tight economy, a criminal background of any sort compounds the difficulty of finding jobs for young people, said Jeremy Hildman, youth counselor at the WorkForce Center in Rochester.
“Even if it’s an isolated incident, it really affects the rest of their life in trying to get employment,” he said.
Stimulus dollars
To help, about $16.1 million in stimulus dollars was committed through the Youth Recovery Act to pay the salaries of young adults ages 14 to 24. Most of the jobs are at nonprofit or government organizations where youths can work up to 40 hours a week for $7.25 per hour, Hildman said.
The funding has enabled 5,650 young people in Minnesota to find work this summer. It’s also helped cash-strapped employers bring in workers, with the stipulation that the youth don’t replace or displace regular workers.
All participants attend a two-week job training program, for which they are paid a stipend and bonus. At the end of the training, they are matched to a work site that fits their interests, Hildman said.
Wondrow is one of more than 100 young people who have already gone through the program this year in Rochester, with more expected by the end of the summer, he said.
Based on her career assessment, Hildman sought a job for Wondrow at the public defenders office.
There she’s come to understand the enormous case loads and tremendous pressures public defenders work under.
“They do as much as they can do,” she said of the attorneys.
On the job training
For her part, Wondrow said she evaluates clients in the juvenile and adult detention centers to see how they can get help rather than go to prison, she said.
And while she was originally hired to work 200 hours, her job was extended to up to 600 hours, she said. Now, she’ll be able to continue working even after she starts classes next month at Rochester Community and Technical College to become a human service specialist.
Able to look back at her life now, Wondrow said although her past has been difficult, it helped make her future possible.
Her mother died of cancer when Wondrow was 16. After that she bounced around living with her stepfather and boyfriend, who later got into drugs, she said. At age 19, she found out she was pregnant.
“She saved my life,” Wondrow said of her now 14-month-old daughter. “I don’t know what I would have done without her.”
Wondrow’s supervisor, Donavan Bailey, dispositional adviser for the 3rd District Public Defenders Office, agreed that Wondrow’s history helped prepare her for what can be a demanding job working with people convicted of homicide, drug dealing or who are chemically dependent.
“She’s come from some of that background. In that way she’s worked out really well,” he said. “She can relate to the clientele and their situations.”
She also has the skills needed to work with lawyers, judges and other professionals, he said.
“She had some skill and passion for social work and is doing well,” he said.
Workforce Development, Inc. 