SEATTLE — She’s 11, in fifth grade at Honey Dew Elementary in suburban Renton, and proudly shows off the school work she keeps tidy in her backpack.
Among the papers is a sheet titled, “Plot Chart,” as she is doing a writing project.
Brisia Jahana Ibarra Gomez is telling a story about her life.
“Have you ever had to move somewhere and you didn’t have any place to go?” Brisia says. “That’s my hook.”
In class, it’s been explained that every story needs a plot, and a hook, if you want people to read it.
Brisia’s hook is that for a time, when she was 8, she and her mom, broke and desperate, ended up living in a car.
It sure isn’t a “what I did on my vacation” story.
Brisia’s story begins when she is living with her parents in Gladstone, Ore., about 12 miles south of Portland. There the mom worked at various fast-food restaurants, the dad at a motor-home manufacturer.
Her mom, Alicia Noemi Navarro, 34, remembers violent encounters with her then-husband.
Says Brisia, “I got sad, I worried about my mom. I was there when he hurt her in the face with a knife. I was crying. We went to the hospital.”
The girl recounts all of this sometimes haltingly, but mostly matter-of-factly. These kinds of memories are seared forever.
With only a few dollars, she remembers, the two of them drove north, all the way to Burien. There was a relative there the mom hoped would take them in.
That lasted a week.
“She got mad at us,” Brisia says about the relative. “I don’t know why. We had to go live in a car.”
At one point, the car battery went dead and needed to be replaced. There was no money for one. Someone told them about the Iglesia Bautista Imanuel church in Renton. It helped out, including finding work for Alicia.
Brisia is talking about all this at the Salvation Army Church in Renton, which has after-school programs and meals for kids.
“We don’t check the status of anybody. We just say, “Yes,” says Kris Potter, the major in charge of the Renton Salvation Army.
What he means includes checking on the legal status of people who come for help.
Alicia says she has applied for a visa based on having been a victim of domestic violence. Her former husband has been deported to Mexico, she says.
The Salvation Army provides Brisia with a backpack of food to take home on weekends to supplement her meals, and provided the family with a Thanksgiving package that included a gift card for a turkey.
Brisia and her parents came here from Guadalajara when she was a baby.
These days, the girl considers herself an American. This is the only country she has known.
She talks about going to college, mentioning the careers that kids often talk about at that age — a veterinarian because they like animals, an FBI agent because it sounds neat.
Her mom works 20 to 24 hours a week, at $9.32 an hour, as a Burger King cashier.
Jaimen Navarro Hernandez, Alicia’s new husband, also earns $9.32 an hour working at a car dealership, washing vehicles and picking up customers.
Jaimen and Alicia met when both worked at a Jack in the Box.
Their total income is about $2,200 a month. Rent for their apartment is $1,275 a month.
That leaves around $925 a month for everything else — food, clothes, gas for the cars so they can get to work. The couple have cheap cellphone service, but no cable or Internet, Alicia says.
At the Salvation Army food banks, there is a saying from those who were helped: “Too much month, not enough paycheck.”
Now, the family’s finances will be further squeezed: Alicia is six weeks pregnant, “a big surprise,” she says.
But there is the reality.
“We can’t control the family. What we can try is help their situation get to a better situation, making sure that child has the best chance of being educated,” says Sue Paro, head of the nonprofit Communities in School program for Renton.
Her group connects families with the Salvation Army.
Kids who go to school well-fed just do better, says Paro, and all kinds of studies show that if children aren’t helped at a very young age, there is a good chance they won’t graduate from high school.
The families helped can’t skimp on the rent check; it stays the same. Food is one thing they can skimp on.
At Honey Dew Elementary, 72 percent of the kids are eligible for free or reduced meals. Its student makeup is half Hispanic or Latino.
At Lakeridge, another Renton elementary school, it’s 88 percent of kids on the meal program. Its student makeup is 59 percent black, with a sizable Somali immigrant population.
So on Fridays, 444 children at eight Renton elementary schools pick up at school the Salvation Army backpacks of weekend food from its food-bank warehouse. The students return the backpacks on Mondays. The agency expects more kids to keep signing up, and will have to scramble to find the funding.
This year, the backpacks will include a total of 4,000 pounds of oatmeal, 6,100 pounds of applesauce, 3,200 pounds of Beanie Weenies, 5,100 pounds of canned tuna, 1,300 pounds of canned ravioli, 6,000 pounds of fresh fruits and 2,300 pounds of Top Ramen.
The agency says the food is supposed to be a supplement, and it’s supposed to be able to be easily cooked by a child who might be at home alone because the parent is working.
All that food is stacked in shelves at the Salvation Army’s 11,000-square-foot warehouse in Renton.
Two retired local schoolteachers, Linda DeCample and Phyllis Anderson, are the volunteers who on Wednesdays fill up each backpack.
They’ve never met kids they help, but their enthusiasm about helping out, well, it’s something to behold.
“We had one little boy, when we saw what they wrote up about him, he was allergic to everything,” says Anderson. “We called him, ‘Our Little Guy.’ We couldn’t give him tuna, no pudding, no oatmeal.
“We hunted everywhere. Finally we found him grits. His grandma said he could have that. We were so excited! It was like Christmas.”
Brisia continues showing what’s in her school backpack.
There are math notes, handprinted in careful lettering:
“Learning goal: to express a composite as a product of its prime factor.”
There is a note with a smiley face from her teacher: “Nice job! Hardworking student.”
The mom smiles.
Lot of hopes for Brisia Jahana Ibarra Gomez, with a little help from her friends.
