Schoolyard fistfight symbolizes need for help

By JC Domingo

Cold air flowed through the empty hallways of Everett Middle School as a knot of students watched a fistfight break out between two boys near the front office.
“Hey! You two stop fighting!” called out the school’s receptionist as she pulled out a walkie-talkie to alert other staff members.
One boy landed a left hook to the other boy’s right cheek. “Hit him! Hit him!” shouted some of the other students. Then, almost as quickly as it started, teachers converged and broke it up.
Later, the receptionist said that the two boys are known to be friends. “This is the first time this has happened.”
Yet the altercation seemed to symbolize why the Mission Beacon, a nonprofit community center, has set up operations within the school at 450 Church St.
At the Mission Beacon office students, their families and even residents not connected to the Everett school campus can come for help, such as tutoring, counseling, advice and recreation programs like skateboarding.
“Even though our hours of operation might say 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., we’re always on call,” director Valerie Tulier said. “(We) try to make it a full service community center, not just an after school program.”
Last year, for example, Beacon volunteers worked hard to reunite a family.
“There was a little boy that was getting into a lot of trouble, dabbling with gangs,” said Tulier. “So, they sent him out of state to Minnesota…he’s been doing well, but the parents now are starting to miss him very much, and the parents came to us. We helped them figure out a way they could get reunited with their son. There’s a lot of fear because they aren’t documented.”
Night and day, volunteers work to provide the community with safe and welcoming spaces. “As a community, thinking the way that I think, we have to open it up to the community. So we have people who hear about it through word of mouth or through referral. Sometimes we find out in conversations that they [families] need help with something else, so we always try to do resources.”
The Mission Beacon was established in 1999 and is part of the Mission Neighborhood Center, Inc. Almost over 150 people from the community come to the Beacon for its services.
Tulier said that the center’s volunteers are “very special” and often are motivated to help others for strong, personal reasons. In her own case, she left a “stable” job in order to work in the community fulltime.
“I think if you look at most people who work in non-profits, they’ve had some sort of struggle in their life,” she said, “I had an alcoholic mom. But I have a very healthy, stable, loving father, so maybe perhaps it’s having that caretaker come out of me from having a mother who’s an alcoholic that made me create this person that I am to be in the community helping others…. There has to be some type of connection to the community.”
One volunteer, Ines Baltadano, graduated from from Everett Middle School and received help from Mission Beacon while growing up.
“It helped me because I wasn’t out on the street usually looking for trouble,” said Baltadano, now 21 and in charge of Mission Beacon Safety and Support. “If I wasn’t here, I’d be out…hanging out in the middle of the street doing something that I’m not supposed to. The Beacon was here to help us stay here and not go in the street, not getting in trouble.”
Although Baltadano successfully went through school and Beacon, not all students go through the same quick and easy process.
“We don’t always have success stories,” Tulier said. “We don’t always get that immediate gratification.”
She added that community workers sometimes have to be patient before they see the fruits of their labors.
“It might be five years down the road when they (former clients) come back and say you really helped me out a lot,” said Tulier. “Sometimes there’s the little things, the little gratification you get that keep you going.”