2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
First Place: Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
For the past five years, Mary Harris raised her two grandchildren, Kyle, 14, and Nevaeh, 5. Their mother Nichole, 38, has been incarcerated for auto theft and drug-related offenses. As a mother to her grandchildren, Mary has encountered new financial and emotional challenges that she did not face the first time she was a mother. With Nicholes forthcoming release, Mary hopes her life will return back to normal as she relinquishes her duties as a stand-in mother. Mary wipes her eyes in frustration and exhaustion after Nevaeh climbed into the front seat of Marys moving car. Nevaeh refused to put her seatbelt on after Mary picked her up from school in Tampa, FL on Oct. 8, 2013.
Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
Nevaeh jumps on her bed as Kyle texts his girlfriend in their home. Kyle and Nevaeh share a bedroom split in half by a large corkboard. Kyle complains about not having privacy or quiet. Mary cannot afford to provide the children with separate rooms because her sole income is monthly social security and disability checks.
Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
Nevaeh tries to tickle Mary by climbing underneath her shirt. "My life without Nevaeh and Kyle would be a sentence to me, she said. It would be like somebody would put me in prison and take the only thing I loved away."
Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
Nevaeh frequently experiences night terrors so every night Mary rubs Nevaeh's head and stomach to help her fall asleep. Mary believes that the night terrors are a result of the drugs her daughter Nichole took throughout her pregnancy. When Nevaeh was born, she received small doses of the drugs that her mother took to help with Nevaehs withdrawal symptoms.
Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
Mary holds Nevaeh's hand while they wait in a secure holding room at Lowell Annex prison in Ocala, FL. Nichole and Nevaeh hardly know each other, since almost all of their interactions have been during prison visitation hours and through video conference calls. Though she cant see her mother, Nevaeh looks in Nicholes direction.
Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
During Nevaeh and Marys visit to see Nichole in prison, Nevaeh calls Mary "mommy. "Nichole heard it and thought it was Nevaeh calling her. It wasn't. It was Nevaeh calling me, she said. I was thinking in my head 'God I hope she doesn't think I'm trying to steal her children away and making them call me mommy.' I hope I can make her understand that these children needed a mommy while she was gone."
Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
Nevaeh asks her mom to color with her during visitation hours. Frustrated with Nevaeh's incessant pleading for affection and unsure of how to react, Nichole scolds Nevaeh. "I'm just letting mom surface," Mary said. "When we go to visit, Nichole does the discipline, so if the children want to know something or ask to do something, I tell them that mom is right there. Go ask her."
Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
Nevaeh has deeply emotional attachment issues that stem from her mother and father both abandoning her shortly after she was born, according to Mary. Whenever Mary is late picking Nevaeh up from school, as Mary was on this day, Nevaeh gets extremely upset, thinking that Mary, too, has abandoned her.
Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
Mary trails after Nevaeh as she runs from house to house trick-or-treating on Halloween. They only visited one section of their neighborhood closest to their home--about ten buildings--because Mary was too exhausted to walk any farther. On raising children for a second time, Mary said, "I don't know how I did it the first time around. The second time around, oh boy is it tough!"
Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
Just before 1 a.m. on December 17, 2013, Nichole was released from Lowell Annex prison in Ocala, FL. Mary took out a loan to pay for the gas needed to drive to the prison. "My mind is going in so many directions about Nichole getting out and taking over the role of mom, because Nichole is bipolar so it is like a double worry, she said. She has never gone down this road before of handling two children, bringing them up and handling the stress of everyday living."
Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
Mary sits quietly on her bed after a long Christmas day with the children. Because they were out of school for the holidays, Mary's work had suddenly become a twenty-four hour struggle. "I'm just exhausted, I'm totally drained," she said. I'm getting old before my time and I have to get some of that youth back before it's too late."
Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
Nichole sits on the couch watching the movie "Grown Ups" with Kyle. Having given up on playing after countless rejections from her mother, Nevaeh sits, dejected, on the floor. Later that night, Mary said, "Sometimes I think the only way out of this situation is for me to die, but then what would happen to those kids?"
Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
About four hours into his shift on the night of Friday, January 10, 2014, Wade Pierce pulls over a car in Ireland, IN. During the traffic stop, he stayed out of the rain while waiting to hear back from dispatch about the driver and passenger of a vehicle he pulled over. Pierce is the most senior night deputy in the Dubois County Sheriffs Department.
Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
Tanner Blackgrove, 8, wears his father's firefighter jacket during the waterball competition at Heimatfest in Ferdinand, IN on Friday, June 20, 2014.
Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
Deborah Barr, 56, sits for a portrait after church service at the Israel Bethel P.B. Church in Tampa, FL on Sunday, November 17, 2013. Barr, who is unable to read, carries a bible in her purse and hopes to read it one day.
Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
Reid Howard, 8, walks a bat back to the Forest Park dugout during the Class 2A sectional game in Tell City, IN on May 30, 2014. South Spencer defeated Forest Park 9-2. Howard said he hoped to be on Forest Park's baseball team one day.
Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
From bottom, Southridge High School students Ethan Schwoeppe, Luke Stetter, Drew Dearing and Braden Harding sit on top of each other and cheer with the rest of the student section during halftime against Washington High School in the IHSAA Class 3A sectional basketball tournament in Huntingburg, IN on Wednesday, March 5, 2014. The Raiders lost 41-35.
Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
Casey Thayer, 22, grew up on a farm with her parents and two siblings surrounded by animals and fields. When she was young, Casey was diagnosed with autism. Casey nuzzled up to Janice next to a horse pasture on their farm in Birdseye, IN on April 27, 2014. "I am losing a huge part of my life," Janice said. A few days later, Casey moved out.
Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
Casey attended her final high school prom with Janice at Forest Park High School on April 26, 2014. Janice said, "I honestly think she felt like Cinderella or Belle that day and if it takes me going with her to make that happen, it is worth it to me." Although loud noise and flashing lights overwhelm many people with autism, Casey loved to dance with her mother and watch her classmates.
Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
Casey blew out 22 candles on an ice cream cake for her birthday on April 27, 2014 at their home. Casey's 22nd birthday was a turning point for the Thayer family and their decision to move Casey into a permanent care facility in Jasper.
Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
Doug embraced Janice as Casey's school bus pulled away from their driveway for the last time on May 1, 2014. "I wonder if she realizes it is the last time," Doug said. Casey did not come home from school that day, but was picked up by her new caretakers and taken to her new home in Jasper, IN.
Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
Janice and Doug move Caseys items into her new house in Jasper, IN on May 1, 2014.
Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
After arriving at her new home for the first time without her parents, Casey immediately went to her room and lay in the same position for hours on her unmade bed.
Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
Casey looked at her new home from the passenger seat of Janice's car on June 14, 2014. Casey now resides with two other residents under 24-hour care. Janice often picks her up on the weekends to go to church or visit the rest of the family. On this occasion, they spent Father's Day weekend together with Doug.
Carolyn Van Houten
First Place - 2014 Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio
Visiting her family for Father's Day weekend, Casey holds a rescued kitten on her family's farm. The next day, her mom took her back to her home in Jasper.
Carolyn Van Houten