The Schultzes haven’t seen Vanessa since. It’s still in there.”īy 9:30 a.m., she’d pushed out the screen in her bedroom window, took the $5 and fled. “She really does have that little girl that still wants to be part of this family. “She came up and squeezed me hard, I mean gave me a big hug and was crying,” Kevin said. Kevin called that morning a “big gut punch,” one he’s still trying to reconcile with his love and hope for Vanessa. On her bed was an unopened Easter card from her grandmother with a $5 bill tucked inside.

Prior to Daybreak, she’d attended Tamarack Center for mental health treatment she’d been committed to Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center’s child psychiatric unit seven times, the first when she was 12 years old she’d bitten her adopted mother and hit her she’d been arrested.Īfter listening to Rochelle and Kevin, she hugged them and retreated to her room to take a nap. Vanessa’s time at Daybreak Youth Services had been her second visit to a rehabilitation facility.

They told her she’d go to the hospital and most likely back into inpatient drug rehab where she had stayed earlier this year for 62 days. It was her latest drug of choice, meth that finally landed her at Daybreak. Vanessa says she’s been abusing drugs since she was 14. Seventeen-year-old Vanessa Schultz waits for a staff member to unlock the door to the walkway that will lead her to the academic area of Daybreak Youth Services, an inpatient addiction treatment center for teenage girls in Spokane on Wednesday, Feb. Then she asked Kevin and Rochelle what was going to happen. On the drive back to their home, they swung through McDonald’s and bought Vanessa an Egg McMuffin and coffee. She looked skinny and had sores all over her face. So Kevin and Rochelle met the deputy and Vanessa in the parking lot of Spokane’s Juvenile Court. Otherwise they wouldn’t be able to take Vanessa directly to the hospital. It was not the first time.Īs they drove, they called emergency mental health evaluators. She had run away three weeks earlier – just before Easter. Kevin and his wife, Rochelle, rushed to meet the deputy and see Vanessa. She had been riding with an older man known to be a “heavy meth user.” He’d picked up Schultz’s 17-year-old adopted daughter Vanessa during a traffic stop near Nine Mile Falls.

Release by Vanessa Garden