Student turns from crime to prevent it
After spending time in juvenile detention, Starcia Ague turned her life around and won the Governors Spirit of Youth Award.
After growing up among prostitutes and drug addicts, Starcia Ague finished serving her juvenile life sentence and decided to change her life for the better.
Since being incarcerated for crimes including kidnapping and robbery, the senior criminal justice major is the latest recipient of the Governors Spirit of Youth Award. My mom was a prostitute, and my dad cooked meth, Ague said. My mom kicked me out when I was 11 and basically told me to make it on my own. I moved in with my dad, and that wasnt a good environment. He sold meth and marijuana. When you live in that lifestyle, everything seems so normal. Our house got busted, and he went on the run for a really long time. He told me he would come back for me, but he never did. Now, Ague is working toward a degree at WSU.
The Spirit of Youth Award is given to people who have found themselves on the wrong side of the law but have overcome extreme hardship to rise above the mistakes of their pasts. Ernie Hensley, a Spokane resident who Ague said she considers a father figure, said he believes Ague fits the criteria for the award perfectly because of how far shes come since her difficult childhood.
Major W. Harris, Jr., mentor program coordinator for the Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration, met Ague in 2007 when he arranged for her to get a mentor. He nominated her for the Spirit of Youth Award because she was so positive about moving forward in her quest to change her life, he said.
She made a conscious choice to better herself, Harris said. She knew she wanted something more. She wanted something better. She knew that in order to get that, she needed to make better choices and to go to school to try to get to where she would be in a position to help others. She is the second person who has gone through the Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration to win the Spirit of Youth Award.
Ague met the people she considers her parents, Kristi and Ernie Hensley, through church, she said. They took her in and helped her work toward her goal of getting a degree, Ague said. All three of the Hensleys sons went to WSU, so the couple helped Ague with the application process, Ernie said.
Both of the Hensleys expressed how proud they were of Ague for winning the award. Starcia is a very remarkable person, Kristi said. Shes come from a background that would be challenging for anybody. Shes taken on the challenge of making a new life for herself a different direction than what her family went in. At WSU, Ague has applied her experience in research. She works with political science instructor Nick Lovrich in helping him analyze case studies from children who are chronically truant, Lovrich said.
I dont really have the appreciation of the experience that she does in looking at those school-based files and court-based files, he said. So shes been really helpful in helping me figure out whats going on in each kids life. I have 30 case studies, and Im trying to understand what patterns underlie them. During the summer of 2009, Ague worked with juvenile offenders through an internship with the Spokane County Public Defenders Office.
Ague said she considers her internship the best thing about her WSU experience because the people who work there genuinely care about the children. Though she said she enjoyed her experience there, the internship also made her decide against going to law school because she wouldnt want to be responsible for letting someone out who she knew was guilty.
Ague said she doesnt have exact plans on what career path she wants to pursue, but she intends to find something involving children who fall through the cracks. It sounds really corny, but I want to be that person in somebodys life that I didnt have growing up," Ague said.
Rochelle Adams
1 December 2009
