Woman turns her pain into teens’ gain

Painful childhood fuels nonprofit founder’s efforts to help others

By Anna Johns

The Portland Tribune, Dec 29, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

L.E. BASKOW / PORTLAND TRIBUNE FILE PHOTO

Volunteer Kristin Allen, 18, holds donations for Lea Lakeside-Scott’s Hope Dolls program, which collects dolls and gives them to incarcerated teenagers.

At a holiday party last month, empathetic tears welled up in the eyes of several teenage girls as they listened to Lea Lakeside-Scott tell them about her terrible childhood.

“I came from an abusive home,” she said. “My parents are the reason that none of my siblings are alive today.”

Lakeside-Scott told the teens about her brother, a homeless drug addict who was hit by a car and killed; her sister who suffered sexual abuse at the hands of their father and drank herself to death at age 50; and another brother who died of AIDS in the early 1980s after leading a promiscuous lifestyle.

All of them, she says, suffered severe mental trauma because of their childhood.

“I’m taking my garbage, and I’m recycling it,” she told the girls.

Lakeside-Scott is an energetic 60-year-old woman who talks loud and fast. She is a retired computer technician with eight grandchildren who now works at her nonprofit organization for troubled teens 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Late last year, Lakeside-Scott opened a youth center for Portland’s troubled teens, called Little Monkeys Youth Center, 4908 S.E. Division St. It’s another layer in her already complex organization called Hope Dolls, named for a project she started 10 years ago to clean up donated dolls and give them to incarcerated teenagers. But since its 501(c)(3) designation in 2001, Hope Dolls has expanded significantly.

Now Hope Dolls is primarily a retail operation located in a storefront at Southeast Division Street at 50th Avenue. Lakeside-Scott manages Bearly Worn Resale Shop, a used-clothing store, where she sells clothing at a deep discount that she has received — for free — from local resale stores such as Buffalo Exchange and Red Light Clothing Exchange.

Since she opened the store three years ago, teenagers from various social service organizations have volunteered there, organizing and pricing clothing. In exchange for their help, they get free clothes. The girls and boys who volunteer at Bearly Worn walk out with such brand names as Ann Taylor, Diesel, Gap and Abercrombie & Fitch.

“Just because you’re poor, you don’t have to look poor,” Lakeside-Scott said.

As a child, Lakeside-Scott was teased mercilessly by other children because of the shabby, dirty clothes that her parents made her wear. She says giving troubled teens stylish clothing helps them feel more normal.

“They love it,” said Lucas Simonette, a case worker for DePaul Treatment Centers. “Even on the days when they’re working their buns off.”

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