Youth project gives unemployed kids work

Don’t get Dean Scheller started talking about training young people for jobs instead of locking them up at a cost of $50,000 per year.

“I get so fired up I can’t get to work,” he admits with a laugh.

Scheller speaks with the passion of a preacher about putting teenagers to work and giving them something to do. But unlike many, he does a lot more than just talk.

Over several years, Scheller has hired up to 50 teenagers and young adults — a few at a time — to paint numbers on curbs. Operating as the “Kalispell/Columbia Falls Youth Project,” Scheller worked with four or five youths this summer, training them to paint red, white and blue numbers on curbs.

He particularly likes this project because the youths perform a public service while earning money and learning a skill that raises their self-esteem. Scheller also teaches them to make address signs that they erect on steel stakes on rural roads and driveways.

“There’s a big need for addresses to be visible,” he said. “Fire departments are really behind this. There are some places where five or six people live up a road.”

He has heard more than a few stories of dire consequences resulting from ambulances or fire trucks having trouble finding houses with hidden numbers.

Scheller doesn’t have a grant or any public money for his youth project. He operates as a small business rather than a nonprofit organization.

 He asks customers for a donation, then pays his workers minimum wage or a little above. Scheller suggests $20 as a donation for the painted curb numbers.

“Some give less,” he said. “I leave it up to them.”

By working with Scheller, the young workers learn to use their imagination and creativity to make money by providing something of value. This training shows them how to make their own job if they can’t find one.

“I’ve been an entrepreneur all my life,” Scheller said.

He points to his daughter, Sky Scheller, 12, a student at Cayuse Prairie School, as his inspiration for helping youths keep on the straight and narrow with hard work. Scheller admits he was a troublemaker who got on the wrong side of the law for things like not paying parking tickets.

“It was small, stupid stuff,” he said. “I never hurt anybody or sold drugs.”

Those experiences, along with working with young people, have convinced him of the futility of locking up youth. Scheller said it costs too much and it deepens the problem.

Scheller suggests that the community send them somewhere to learn a trade such as car mechanics or a skill like working on computers. In jail, they just learn new crimes from cell mates, he maintained.

It breaks his heart to read newspaper articles where a youth has advanced to committing a terrible crime like a recent incident involving a young man arrested for allegedly shooting multiple times at a police officer.

“It just goes on and on,” he said. “I carry these articles around with me.”

Although he opposes jail as a solution, Scheller doesn’t endorse coddling youth. He uses tough love and strict rules to keep his young workers in line.

“You must pull up your pants,” he said. “No one is  going to give you a job with the crack of Gibraltar showing.”

Scheller says he’s just a “small guy” trying to make a difference. But he hopes to expand his efforts.

For the first time, he plans to stay over the winter and keep unemployed youths working with him, cutting and selling wood and helping the elderly with tasks such as shoveling snow and spreading salt on driveways and sidewalks.

“A lot of people have neighbors who help them,”  Scheller said. “But there’s a  whole bunch of elderly who don’t have relatives and don’t know anyone. They can’t get out of their houses.”

He said they will work for whatever a senior citizen can afford.

For his firewood operation, he obtained a wood-cutting permit and  slab wood from several sources. He also has permission from some landowners to cut down dead trees on their property.

“We’ll sell it [delivered] for $100 a cord and we’ll do bundles,” Scheller said. 

He has other ideas such as teaching youth to manufacture products to sell  — bird houses, waterfalls, wind chimes and rustic furniture from tree limbs, to name a few. To pull it off, he said needs donations of woodworking tools of all kinds.

He also needs chain saws and vehicles to haul wood.

“Right now, I’m just getting started,” Scheller said. “I’m not yet where I’d like to be.”

Flathead Valley residents for the last five years, he and his family live on a couple of acres off Foothill Road. Scheller said he wants to put the word out that he needs a larger piece of property where he envisions starting a kind of dude ranch where he could expand his work with young people.

While he limits his crews to ages 15 to 24, he invites inquiries from adults interested in getting involved.

 When Scheller works for a customer, he asks them for referrals of young people who need work. He doesn’t shy away from those who have had run-ins with the law.

“That’s who I’m looking for — no one will give them a job,” he said. “Anyone can make a mistake. Sometimes you make more than one. You learn from your mistakes.”

Those who apply need to come prepared for a hard task-master. He expects discipline and hard work and admits to yelling at them when they go afoul.

“I’m very hard on the kids, but the sheriff is harder,” Scheller said. “If they end up in the jail system, they’ll find out.”

According to Scheller, he has made it his life to function as a role model and teacher. He tells his workers to get a good night’s sleep and not to poison their bodies with alcohol.

He keeps his motto for success simple yet profound.

“Be hardworking and everything will come to you,” Scheller said.

People interested in contacting Scheller may call him at 471-8813.

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.