Dreaming big

By KRISTI ALBERTSON

Diploma marks new beginning in teen's life

The Daily Inter Lake

Friday morning, Nick Winzenburg received his high-school diploma for the second time in four months.

He was one of 28 students presented diplomas in Laser alternative high school's graduation ceremony and one of more than 1,000 seniors across the Flathead Valley who celebrated graduation this weekend.

But Winzenburg, 19, actually finished high school in February - while he was in jail.

Many students fought for every credit they earned and overcame several obstacles to graduate from high school, but few overcame more than Winzenburg.

He never attended anything resembling a normal high school. His childhood was destroyed by abuse; his adolescence ruined by mental and emotional scars and a succession of foster homes, group homes and psychiatric hospitals.

As a young boy, Winzenburg never knew his father. When he was 5 years old, his mother, a drug addict, began dating a man who physically abused him.

One night, the man kicked in three of Winzenburg's ribs. The state stepped in and took Winzenburg, then 10, out of his mother's house and put him in a foster home.

"I didn't do well there," he said. "I just wanted to be with my mom."

But the state wouldn't allow Winzenburg to return home. After getting into a fight in his foster home, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital.

When he was 11, he met his father, Londell Walker, for the first time. He moved in with his family but didn't get along with them. After three months, Winzenburg was sent to a group home.

His stint there didn't last long, either; after a riot, he went back to the psychiatric hospital. From there he went to Children's Comprehensive Services in Butte but was sent to Texas after attempting to stab another kid there.

From Texas, he went to Shodair Children's Hospital in Helena and was treated for anger management issues, obsessive-compulsive disorder and bipolar disorder. He went to a group home in Galen, broke his arm in a fight with a staff member, and was sent back to Helena. At Shodair, he attempted to kill a staff member with a bar of soap and a sock, so he was sent back to Texas.

His experience in Texas was anything but good. He was "only a white boy from Montana" in a group of troubled kids from big cities. The staff wasn't great either, he said.

"There was a lot of abuse in some places," he said. "They weren't the best people."

At one home, after being "busted up by the staff," Winzenburg sent pictures of his injuries to his case worker in Montana. He was soon sent to North Idaho Behavioral Health in Coeur d'Alene.

Things began to improve a little in Coeur d'Alene. His grandparents, Tom and Betty Beeson, lived only a short distance away in a Spokane suburb.

"They were pretty much the only family I was ever involved with," Winzenburg said.

In Idaho, he slowly started getting his life together. He decided he wanted to live on his own but had to prove himself to the State of Montana first. He spent 90 days in a group home in Great Falls and earned a place in an independent living home in the Flathead Valley.

Now 17, Winzenburg moved to the Flathead intending to live right. Somehow, even while bouncing from group home to hospital and back again, he'd managed to take high-school classes and was just 2.5 credits from graduating.

He wanted to attend Flathead High School but would have had to take seven classes there. School officials told him he'd do better in an alternative setting and suggested he try Laser School.

Winzenburg was hesitant but agreed to meet the director, Kevin Calnan.

"Kevin said, 'You still get a Flathead High diploma. It is legitimate,'" Winzenburg said. "And that's all I wanted."

He started attending classes at Laser and seemed to be on a good path, but his personal life soon got in the way. He was living alone for the first time in his life, and he'd never learned to make good choices.

"I got robbed of my adolescence," he said. "And I got here with this big house, and I was going to party and do the things I didn't do when I was younger."

He started drinking and using and selling drugs. He was then kicked out of the house, so he moved in with his girlfriend. From then on, Winzenburg said, he moved from girlfriend to girlfriend.

This lasted until he stole a car from a girlfriend in Columbia Heights. He crashed into a pole at Meadow Lake Golf Course and took off running, but police soon caught him. He spent three months in jail and was released on a deferred sentence.

His probation officer wouldn't let him live with friends, so Winzenburg ended up at Samaritan House, a homeless shelter in Kalispell. He still partied with his buddies, though, and started selling pot.

"I didn't surround myself with real people," he said.

Despite all that, Winzenburg continued to go to school. He often went when he was high but always managed to focus in class.

"Even when I was on the run from probation, I showed up," he said.

When he didn't show up, Calnan sent other students to look for him. Calnan re-enrolled Winzenburg three times, always willing to give the teen another chance even after rumors that he was selling drugs to other students or had been arrested yet again.

He was in jail when Joi Gratny first heard Winzenburg's name.

Gratny and her husband, Geof, often spent time at the county jail doing Christian ministry. She was standing in line, waiting to see a friend, when she met Winzenburg's girlfriend. Gratny was immediately interested in the young man's story.

Not long after that, a friend of a friend asked if she could bring Winzenburg to church.

"As soon as I met him, I thought, you know, there's hope for him," Gratny said.

Geof and Joi Gratny immediately befriended Winzenburg and tried to help him start a new life. They invited him to live with them. They threw him a party on his 19th birthday and invited people his own age who could encourage and potentially befriend him.

Most of all, Geof Gratny said, "We wanted to show him there was a different purpose for living rather than just getting high."

That purpose was God, and it wasn't long before Winzenburg, an atheist, decided to become a Christian. That was the turning point in his life, he said.

"I've been on a straight path for six months," he said.

The path was straight but not without its potholes. Winzenburg was arrested in late October and stayed in jail until March. He was just 15 hours shy of graduating from high school.

He was so close that Calnan decided to let him finish his school work in jail. When Winzenburg handed in his final project, Calnan handed him his diploma through the bars.

"Then he went back to his cell and cried," Calnan said quietly.

Winzenburg still gets emotional when he remembers that moment.

"I'll love this guy forever," he said. "Where I come from, people like that are rare."

Since his release from jail in March, Winzenburg slowly has been learning how to live. He moved back in with Geof and Joi Gratny and got a job with a construction company. He told his old friends about how caring people and God have changed his life.

Several of those friends have begun making changes of their own.

"It feels so good to see my friends using the potential in their lives," he said.

He also has reconnected with his family.

In May, Winzenburg asked Joi Gratny if he could use her credit card. He wanted to pay $7.95 to use an Internet people search to look for his father.

It was a long shot, but Winzenburg found his dad. After being separated for almost eight years, father and son were reunited in Kalispell this weekend. Winzenburg also saw his stepmother and younger brother and sisters.

They were all present to watch Winzenburg accept his diploma. He'd asked Calnan the week before graduation if he could participate in the ceremony, and the director readily agreed.

"It's been a long passage for this boy. It's been a long trip to even get where he's at," Calnan said. "Hopefully it works out for him. Right now he's absolutely doing the best he's ever done."

Winzenburg met with his probation officer before the ceremony Friday. If he can get an interstate compact, he plans to move to Dickinson, N.D., to live with and work for his father.

"It feels so good my dad's in my life now," he said. "I lost seven and a half years of my life caught up in the system. It's so good to have what I have now."

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com