THIS HOUSE GIVES MOMS IN TROUBLE A NEW START

There are few perfect children in the world, and fewer perfect
moms.

On this Mother's Day, in a rambling house on Fortune Street, eight
young women mired in bad choices celebrated getting another chance to
be good moms.

They live at Summit House in east Charlotte, one of North Carolina's
more unusual correctional facilities. All the women have nonviolent
criminal histories, usually related to drug use, and all have young
children. At Summit House, they can live and work off their sentences
- -- and keep their young children with them.

"We are trying to put women's and children's lives back together,"
said Brenda Campbell, community relations director for Summit House,
which began in Greensboro and spread to Charlotte and Raleigh two
years ago. "We are different because we want to do it while having a
place for their children."

"Many of these women can do well if they can get away from drugs,
learn about life skills, about being responsible parents as well as
good citizens," Campbell said. "Prison doesn't teach them that."

Sunday, the house resonated with the sizzling of barbecue grills, the
clattering of little feet in Sunday shoes and the squeaks of Summit
House's newest residents -- newborn babies Daylin and Shania. (House
policies dictate that residents use only first names.)

Daylin's mom, Julie, is celebrating her first Mother's Day as a parent
- -- and as an indicted felon.

As she cradled Daylin, Julie, 19, matter-of-factly recounted the
events last September that brought her to Summit House.

"I transported drugs," said Julie, who said she has never used drugs
or alcohol herself. She was picked up at Charlotte/Douglas
International Airport after a flight from Jamaica with one-half a
kilogram of cocaine. "I did it one time and got away with it. I did it
a second time and I got caught. I was young, dumb and stupid, stupid,
stupid."

Two weeks after being jailed, Julie discovered she was pregnant. As
her due date neared, prosecutors agreed to send her to Summit House to
await trial.

"I just thank God there is a program like this so I could have my baby
and keep him," said Julie, who is from Ohio. "I know that I would
otherwise be in prison right now, and they'd have already taken him
away."

Most food and supplies for the program come from the Metrolina Food
Bank and generous local churches; some state funds and private
foundation grants help pay the bills. The mothers run the house, with
chore lists, cooking duties, yard work and maintenance on Summit
House's 15-passenger van.

They are supervised around the clock by case managers and a house
director, earning points for proper parenting, going to school or
work, following rules and attending substance-abuse meetings.

The points earn them privileges, such as taking a nap, attending
school or going to work unsupervised, watching TV or receiving family
visits on Sunday afternoons. If they leave the house or break the
rules, they risk going back to prison for good.

"This is not an easy program, especially for our mothers who are
addicted to drugs," Campbell said. "These are women who have not
thought about consequences before."

Tina, 28, should know about consequences. Tiny Shania, born one month
premature, is her fourth child; Destiny, 15 months, has lived with her
since she arrived at Summit House in December.

Her sons, ages 5 and 7, live with her father because she couldn't live
without crack cocaine.

The blond highlights, chino shorts and pacifier tether clipped to her
shirt don't seem to mesh with the drug abuse she says has dogged her
since age 12.

"You name it, I've used it," she says quietly of her life in Eastern
North Carolina. "Instead of dealing with life and my problems, I just
used (drugs) and forgot about it."

At Summit, she is learning "how to deal with things that don't go
right, which is my big problem," Tina said. "I need coping skills to
use instead of getting high."

Manning the grill outside, Tina's husband, James, is circumspect. Tina
has tried to kick drugs before.

"So far it's working, but we won't know and she won't know really
until she gets out," he said. "She's got to stay away from her old
friends, start new. I guess some people learn the easy way, but for
some it's got to be the hard way."

Campbell and the others who run Summit House don't mince words with
the women clients. Real life can be achingly hard, and their job is to
prepare them for that. Women cannot leave Summit House until they have
at least a high-school diploma or GED, a job and $1,000 saved in the
bank for rent and deposits.

In two years of operation, six women have "graduated" to apartments
and new crime-free lives; one woman has gone back to drugs.

Campbell and her co-workers still ask around and call the bus station,
looking for the lost one.