A great-grandmother becomes mentor to teens who attacked her
‘I’m in awe of them,’ she said
Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Kelyn Soong.
Former Baltimore City Councilwoman Rochelle “Rikki” Spector was recovering in the hospital shortly after being viciously attacked by two teenagers in a carjacking attempt that left her bruised and with a black eye — “I looked like a raccoon,” Spector said — when council president Bernard C. “Jack” Young paid her a visit.
Young, like many of their colleagues on the council, was livid. What kind of children would attack a tiny, octogenarian woman in her own parking garage, he asked himself. Young expected Spector to be seething with a desire for justice.
The great-grandmother, who represented District 5 on the city council from June 1977 until December 2016, had other thoughts on her mind.
“She wasn’t worried about prosecuting them,” Young said. “She was more about, ‘What can we do for them?’ I was taken aback.”
Since the assault and robbery took place in December 2016, Spector has taken an active role in the lives of the two teenagers who attacked her, becoming a mentor to them in partnership with non-profits in Baltimore. The 81-year-old Spector, who finished her last term just days after the incident, has decided to dedicate her post-council career to reforming the juvenile justice system so that effective programs are in place for at-risk youths as early as possible.
How she got involved
Within the week after the boys were arrested, Spector attended a court hearing where she met Michelle Suazo, vice president and co-founder of UEmpower of Maryland, a multi-program non-profit founded in 2013 that provides food and mentoring to low-income families in Baltimore. Among those that UEmpower served were the two teens who had attacked Spector.
Suazo proposed a plan. She wanted Spector to visit the Carrollton Ridge neighborhood of Southwest Baltimore where the boys grew up.
Southwest Baltimore
The median household income for Southwest Baltimore was $24,946 in 2014 and 35.4 percent lived below the poverty line, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The Baltimore school board voted in December 2016 to shut down Samuel F.B. Morse Elementary School, effective as of last summer. It was a space that had provided a brief respite from the dangers of the streets for kids growing up in Carrollton Ridge, Suazo said.
“I saw completely open drug dealing all over the place,” Spector said, adding that she also saw very young teen prostitutes hailing men in the street.
“If you go into this neighborhood, you can see the buildings are crumbling. There are no resources for children,” Suazo said. “They have no voice. They were left to be forgotten when the [attack on Spector] happened. …We were so horrified by the situation but we wanted to see if there was a way to work together to come up with a solution.”
UEmpower
Spector started to meet with the boys at UEmpower events and recently became a board member of the non-profit. She helped the team secure kitchen and cafeteria space at the former neighborhood elementary school for UEmpower’s flagship food project.
The older boy told The Baltimore Sun last week that his performance in school has improved as a result of the mentoring.
“After this incident happened, and they put me on house arrest, I just started busting my school work out,” he said. “My grades started going up and up and up. I don’t hang around the people I was doing that dumb stuff with. I hang around with whole new people who don’t even live on this side of town. So my life, it just turned around.”
At one cooking demo, the teens learned to cook from a professional chef and made an extra meal just for their new mentor. Spector ate the food and gave the boys a hug.
“I see how these boys are growing, how they’re treating each other,” she said. “It’s transformational. And the adults that are coming forth and mentoring, they’re walking angels. I’m in awe of them.”
