Walden⁄Sierra has offered a lifeline in difficult times for more than 30 years

Friday, Dec. 22, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff Photo by Reid Silverman Kathleen O’Brien, executive director of Walden⁄Sierra, talks with Angela Tucker, 4, about what she wants for Christmas while holding 1-year-old Payton Phillips at the Christmas party at the Compass House in California. Compass, one of many Walden⁄Sierra services, allows mothers with young children to stay in a safe environment that helps them recover from substance abuse, domestic violence or other problems. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

Henry David Thoreau in his book ‘‘Walden”

Kathleen O’Brien, since the early 1970s, has helped lead the premier behavioral health service agency in St. Mary’s that has aided thousands of residents with problems ranging from substance abuse and mental illness to domestic violence and homelessness.

From humble roots as a 24-hour crisis hotline, Walden⁄Sierra behavioral health services agency has grown to include a shelter, an in-patient rehab center, domestic violence and sexual assault counseling and family services.

‘‘It was started by a group of parents concerned with drug use in St. Mary’s County,” O’Brien said recently, including PTA members from what it is now St. Mary’s Ryken High School.

The first director, Pat Hawkins, formed a group with O’Brien and others and were given a trailer on property next to the county landfill site on St. Andrew’s Church Road.

The group connected with similar programs in Charles and Calvert counties and set up the first 24-hour crisis hotline in St. Mary’s in 1973. The community-based group initially employed five people; now it has grown to 85 employees.

‘‘The county [government] put that trailer in there with the thought that we could solve the drug problem in a few years and then they could move it,” O’Brien said. Thirty-three years later the trailer has long since deteriorated, but new Walden buildings have cropped up on that property and three other locations in St. Mary’s.

‘‘We continue to have the idealism we had in those early years and improve the quality of live in the community,” she said.

O’Brien and the rest of the staff monitor what problems come up on the hotline and adjust their programs accordingly. Today, along with the continued drug and domestic violence problems, O’Brien notes particular concern in the increase in young binge drinkers and in dating violence.

The organization added the second half of its name — Sierra — a few years after starting the hotline. The Sierra House was a halfway home for girls who had problems with drugs and runaways. The house lasted 23 years until O’Brien and the staff made the tough decision to close it, she said. ‘‘Although it was a loss in some ways, it really was a rebirth,” she said.

The group home was taking in girls with higher needs than it could handle, she said. The agency changed course and opened Compass House several years later to serve mothers and their children as well as pregnant women. The new halfway house can help stem problems in children before they happen, and help fill a significant need as a shelter.

As a self-described ‘‘student of life,” O’Brien refrains from calling the people served by Walden patients or clients and instead refers to them as teachers of humanity. Her office is adorned with gifts from her teachers, including a small, framed starfish from a girl who lived at Sierra House who died from AIDS. The young girl contracted the disease from her father, who raped her. She never knew her mother but asked to call O’Brien ‘‘mom.”

‘‘These children face unfathomable challenges,” she said.

Her ideals were shaped during the turmoil of the Vietnam War as protests perforated the country at the same time American soldiers, including three of her brothers, returned home battle ravaged.

As one of eight children born to her Irish immigrant parents, O’Brien says she knew all too well the problems that alcoholism can cause to families. She was fueled by this and knew early on that she wanted to help others, she said.

Along with her day-to-day duties at Walden, she helps with crisis situations around the country, including counseling after both the Columbine school shootings and in New York City after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Locally she has also been called in several times to help talk down suicide jumpers from the Thomas Johnson Bridge.

With six children of her own, she has seen firsthand the importance of good parenting and education. All of her children are either in college or have gone on to work in public service, from an emergency room technician to a teacher to a director of a nonprofit organization. ‘‘It really gives me the motivation to see if there’s something I can do to add something positive to the community,” O’Brien said. ‘‘They are the light of my life.”

O’Brien, who earned her doctorate in clinical psychology from LaSalle University, recently was named chair of a new family violence council, which will study the dynamics of family violence and find ways to stem the growing problem.

She served as the Walden’s clinical director from 1978 to 1990, when she became the executive director. The hub of the services remains the 24-hour crisis hotline, but today the agency provides a continuum of services for families and children facing issues such as substance abuse, family violence and sexual assault. Walden’s addictions services include intervention, treatment and residential substance abuse treatment services for St. Mary’s and Southern Maryland.

Ella May Russell, director of St. Mary’s County Department of Social Services, said her department works intimately with O’Brien and Walden, especially on issues like domestic violence and substance abuse. ‘‘They have built over the years other needed services to carry out their goals ... they’ve created a whole continuum of services,” most of which were nonexistent in St. Mary’s prior to Walden. ‘‘She’s always looking at how to improve the services provided or to expand the services in new ways,” Russell said. And, she said, O’Brien has the rare gift of seeing a new idea through to the end through her commitment and ability to ‘‘see the big picture.”

Commissioner Daniel Raley (D) agreed, saying that O’Brien is adept at gathering money from the county, state and federal grants. ‘‘Walden really does a very good job. We get an excellent return on the tax money we put toward Walden.”

Raley said O’Brien has also ‘‘been able to assemble a great team of individuals ... She does an excellent job.” O’Brien also works directly with the public school system to provide counseling and other services to students and helped the county’s homeless shelter, Three Oaks Center, get started.

Lanny Lancaster, director of Three Oaks Center, said O’Brien and the myriad of services from Walden⁄Sierra are an integral part of the center’s mission of caring for the county’s homeless people. ‘‘We’re very close partners,” Lancaster said. ‘‘She’s certainly passionate about her work. She has just the right mix of talents to make her stand out as a director,” including her compassion for the people she helps and the ability to fight for their rights and needs. ‘‘It’s really been a journey that has enriched my life,” O’Brien said. ‘‘It comes down to if you can help the children today, you can help write tomorrow’s history.”

Although she has no plans to retire, she knows that ‘‘one day you wake up and say you want to spend more time in the woods than less,” she said.

E-mail Jesse Yeatman at jyeatman@somdnews.com.