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Mike
Thompson, 18, stands outside the DeNier Youth
Center earlier this week.
On Sept. 1, Thompson, who has been in the center
since March, embarked on a
2,400-miles bike tour of the Western United States
that took him from Canada
to Mexico. Thompson was one of only eight students
out of 20 who rode every
mile of the trek./Photo by Todd Newcomer
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Mike Thompson is a young man with a mission. Challenging
mind, body and spirit, he has decided to steer his
life – pardon the metaphor – in a new direction.
Mike returned on Oct. 15 from what must surely have
been the most exhilarating experience of his life:
setting out with 17 other young men to bike more than
2,400 miles in 43 days from the Canadian border through
Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada and Arizona,
finally reaching Mexico. More intriguing still is the
fact that a mere eight months ago, few would have expected
this of him, because Mike was headed in a very different
direction.
From the age of 12, the Durango native recalls making “some
negative decisions” and hanging out with “negative
peer groups.”
“I was not really looking forward to life and
school, and I didn’t really think I’d become
anything,” he says.
After running away from home several times and being
arrested and detained numerous times on drug and
alcohol charges, Mike, now 18, was committed to the
DeNier Center for Youth Services on March 3 of this
year. The DeNier Center is run by a rehabilitation
program called Rite of Passage, which works with youth
offenders throughout the western United States. At
this point, Mike decided to give the program a shot.
“It’s here to help me, not to hurt,” he
concedes. “I’m a good person, I don’t
feel I deserve to be locked up or anything, but I’ve
made bad choices, and I realize that I need to pay
for them.”
Since he’s been at DeNier, Mike said he has been
committed to giving 100 percent each day. “I’m
in here for a reason,” he says. “If I don’t
turn my head around, I’m 18 right now, the next
step is probably the penitentiary, and I don’t
need to go to the pen.”
Since his induction into the program, Mike has been
focused on improving mind and body – as well
as showing the demonstrated change of behavior that
Rite of Passage terms RAMS: Respect, Attitude, Motivation
and Spirit.
A few months into his stay at DeNier, Mike and a
friend started up a mountain biking group. New to the
sport, he took part in a few races locally, including
the 12-mile Burrito Bash in Bayfield, in which he took
first place for the beginner group. His growing interest
in biking, together with his excellent RAMS status
performance in the program, brought him to the attention
of the Rite of Passage coordinators. In commemoration
of Rite of Passage’s 20th anniversary, a bike
trip was organized to sponsor several students from
centers across the western states. When Troy Erickson,
the Youth Services Director at DeNier, first offered
Mike the opportunity to bike from Canada to Mexico,
he was hesitant. “I knew I wasn’t going
to be able to see my mom, or make phone calls very
often, or write mail very much,” he says. Ultimately,
however, he decided this was an opportunity he could
not pass up, and he agreed to the trip.
Following an intensive week of road bike training
at the Ridgeview Academy in Denver, 18 students began
the trip in Blaine, Wash., on Sept. 1, accompanied
by vans holding gear, clothing and food. “Up
in Washington and Oregon it rains a lot,” Mike
recalls. “We were riding in the rain, sleeping
in the rain. We’d go to bed and our pillows and
tents would still be wet from the night before.”
Following Highway 101 down the Oregon coast, they
crossed the Sierra Nevada range, totaling 8,000 feet
of climbing. “At
that point you have a really close relationship with
God,” Mike says. “You think, ‘Do
I want to quit? Do I want to get in the van and give
up on myself, or do I just push until I fall off the
bike?’”
As it turns out, Mike never did fall off the bike.
The group rode into Nevada and then back into California,
visiting Lake Tahoe and Yosemite National Park, as
well as California’s Mount Whitney, the tallest
peak in the continental United States at 14,494 feet.
They completed the 14-mile hike to Mount Whitney’s
peak in a single day, and for Mike, it was one of the
high points of the journey. Continuing the trek into
Arizona, the group made a stop at the Grand Canyon.
The trip coordinators led the students – eyes
closed – to the edge of the canyon and “we
opened our eyes and it was like – dang, that’s
a big hole in the ground!” A big hole that the
students proceeded to climb down and back up in the
same day. Throughout the trip, Mike shot six rolls
of film, and when asked about its most striking part,
he responds, “Every day was something different.
Whether it was a sunset or a sunrise, I was just happy
to be awake. I only wish the camera were bigger!”
The cyclists finally reached their destination,4
Nogales, Ariz., and crossed briefly into Mexico, completing
an estimated 2,484 miles after 43 days in the saddle.
Mike’s perseverance certainly paid off in the
end. Of the original 18 students, 13 completed the
trip, and only eight traveled every single mile on
their bicycles rather than in the supply vans. Of the
eight, Mike was one of two students rewarded for spirit
and attitude throughout the expedition, and for this,
he received his own road bike and cycling gear. In
an endeavor of extraordinary physical, mental and emotional
difficulty, Mike exceeded all expectations. Asked what
part of his body became strongest from the trip, he
replied, “my spirit.”
If Mike was already a role model for his younger
peers at the DeNier center before the trip, his success
has certainly opened their eyes to what they might
accomplish themselves. In terms of his attitude and
behavior, DeNier Director Erickson calls Mike, “the
epitome of what a RAMS means.”
The coordinators are also glad to have him back. “The
whole (RAMS-status) culture picked up as soon as he
got back,” says DeNier Shift Supervisor Audie
Morris.
Seeing Mike go from where he was in March to what he
has accomplished today has inspired other DeNier students,
says Erickson, and for them, Mike’s example is “a
true indication of what a youth can do.” Rite
of Passage’s philosophy is not to try to change
students but allow them to change themselves, and Mike
is working proof of the program’s success, Erickson
says.
Mike is expected to be eligible for parole in December
and hopes to move back home and get a job. His accomplishment
is the culmination of a long-term effort on his part.
He says he considers himself to be a much stronger
person, both physically and mentally, after the trip.
He set himself an enormous goal and achieved it, and
now he seems ready for anything, asking simply, “What’s
next?”
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