Bob Chwedyk Staff Photographer
Matt Denman, left, 18-year-old Anthony “Richie” Lemus, center, Michael Bradley, and veteran foster dad, Rich Denman, having dinner together.
After years of homelessness, 18-year-old Anthony “Richie” Lemus needed a place to stay so he could continue with his goal of graduating from Conant High School. Rich Denman, who has spent 25 years as a foster dad for needy kids, found a way to welcome Richie into their Schaumburg home.
Life up to now has been “kinda everything,” says Anthony “Richie” Lemus, a homeless 18-year-old who just shrugs when asked where he grew up. There was the trailer park in Des Plaines, then Buffalo Grove, then the summer with an aunt in Washington, D.C., then a rocky stretch that started in Belvidere and included stints with relatives, friends, park benches, streets, juvenile detention centers, Nebraska's famous Boys Town, more uncertainty, and finally a home with longtime foster dad Rich Denman, who recently volunteered to make room in his Schaumburg home for Richie.
Now on track to graduate from Conant High School this June and move on to Harper College, Richie explains how he ended up homeless for much of his life. “My dad and mom were fighters,” Richie says, recalling verbal battles that often spilled into physical confrontations and sometimes enveloped him. “My dad, he'd like to hit me a few times.” Richie realized the situation had become too much for a boy to take.
“When I turned 12, I stopped going home,” Richie says simply. As if he were on a series of endless sleepovers, the boy would bounce from friend to friend. Kindhearted moms would invite him to stay longer. Richie's parents were fine with that. “We had an agreement,” Richie says of the deal he cut with his parents. “After a while, they just didn't care.”
As he entered his teen years, his problems escalated while he was living in Belvidere. “I got into an altercation with another kid,” he says, adding that he acted in self-defense after the other boy kept pushing him. “I busted his head open on the sidewalk and I got locked up.” That led to the first of several visits to a juvenile detention center. “Back then, I used to get arrested pretty much to the point where the cops knew me,” Richie says.
When his parents divorced, his older sister and mother went to Rockford, and Richie decided to try living with his father in nearby Poplar Grove. “We'd box every other day,” Richie says, making their angry fistfights between a 225-pound man and a 13-year-old boy sound more civilized than they were. “We got to the point where we would leave the house all bloody every day.”
When his father got a girlfriend, “I ended up on the street,” Richie says. “I slept on the streets a whole bunch of times. I've been jumped twice. I barely went to school that semester.” Missed court dates and more brushes with the law resulted in an ultimatum: “The department of corrections or Boys Town,” Richie remembers. “Naturally, I picked Boys Town.”
The famous orphanage in Omaha, Neb., has changed a lot since Spencer Tracy won an Oscar portraying founder Father Flanagan in the 1938 movie that also starred Mickey Rooney, but Richie says the results are the same. “It was amazing. It completely changed me,” Richie says.
“While he was here, he did great,” says Sarah Miller, a clinical specialist at Boys Town. She says Richie ran on the cross-country team, improved academically and learned skills to help him solve problems and think critically.
Richie made a lot of friends from all over the nation, read the Bible, found his way in life and discovered that the Catholic institution left a mark on him, figuratively and literally. Richie's right biceps sports a black tattoo of a rosary with a cross on a string of prayer beads. “At the time, I was thinking I needed a little extra help, just something to remind me where I'm coming from,” he says as he shows off the tattoo. Richie left Boys Town early after two years and one month, taking a bus back to Illinois after a phone call from his father. “My dad kept telling me it's going to be OK to come back,” Richie says. “It wasn't.” His departure from Boys Town violated the terms of his probation, so Richie had to spend another month in a “juvy home.” Then he was on his own — an 18-year-old legal adult with no place to live.
His story isn't unique. As of June 2010, Illinois had 33,804 students considered homeless, with 13,850 of them attending Chicago Public Schools, according to Mary Fergus, a spokeswoman for the Illinois State Board of Education. Suburban Cook County counted 3,317 such students, while Kane had 1,153, DuPage had 755, Lake had 566 and McHenry had 402.
The state has 441 shelter beds dedicated for youths, and only 117 of those are in the suburbs, according to Beth Cunningham, an attorney working on homeless youth issues for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. When Richie no longer could stay with a friend, “that's when it got pretty rough,” Richie says. Pat Kelley, a social worker at Conant High School in Hoffman Estates, turned to Denman, whom she had worked with on earlier cases.
Denman had just celebrated his 25th anniversary as a foster dad. Denman, who was trained at Maryville Academy in Des Plaines, welcomed his first boy the Monday after the Chicago Bears won the 1986 Super Bowl. His 20th foster son left as Richie arrived. He also adopted an 11-year-old boy with special needs. “You're the only person I know who would think about doing this,” Kelley told Denman on the phone. Denman, who had expanded his two-bedroom townhouse to add two more bedrooms in the basement, still didn't have a room for Richie.
“But I heard Richie in the background: ‘I've got an air mattress. I can sleep anywhere,'” says Denman, who figured out a way to make it work. A soft-spoken young man, Richie doesn't look intimidating. “Oh, you'd be surprised,” he says with a slight smile. Richie's background of fights and incarceration didn't discourage Denman. “That's the history of these kids,” Denman says, smiling before adding, “I have a lot of patience.”
Denman's house rules include no drinking, no drugs, no smoking inside and no overnight visitors. Everyone has chores. Richie says that's all good for him. “We kind of keep each other accountable,” Richie says of his new family, which includes Matt, 23, the boy Denman adopted at age 11, and Matt's brother, Mike, 26, who has lived in the home off and on for more than a decade.
Richie isn't a ward of the state, and the state doesn't pay for his care. But Denman, who worked as a child to help support his divorced mother, has never let money or the system's guidelines curtail his efforts to help. “I had one kid who came at 16 and stayed 9½ years. He had two years as a foster kid and the rest was on my dime,” says Denman.
An accountant who will turn 64 in May, Denman has been punched and choked, and once had a 14-year-old hit him with a chair so hard that pieces of the splintered chair were embedded in the wall, even though Denman was miraculously unhurt. “That incident convinced me more than ever that this is what I should be doing,” says Denman, who adds that the chair-smashing boy was Matt, who, 12 years later, is a much more agreeable housemate.
The stability of a real home has helped Richie concentrate on his goal of graduating high school and attending Harper College in Palatine. “It's amazing. I can focus on things better,” Richie says. “This is my retirement plan,” says Denman, who repeatedly wishes only that he had a bigger home so he could help more kids.
They both talk about the promise of the future, instead of dwelling on hardships of the past. “It's just something I got used to,” Richie says of his homeless days, adding that he keeps in touch with both his parents and doesn't blame or resent them. “I got over it.”
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