Teen Overwhelmed With Adult Duties Needs to Get Away and Just Be a Kid

Brittany is only 15, but the Ventura High School ninth-grader acts as head of the household. She takes the bus to buy groceries, makes sure the bills are paid, budgets for each month, and gets prescriptions filled for her 79-year-old grandmother, Mary, and her father, Rudolph, who became unemployed last year when he developed severe heart problems.

“They don’t know what it is yet,” said Brittany. “And my grandma has diabetes, heart trouble, back pain, everything. She had double pneumonia a couple months ago and we had to call an ambulance because we don’t have a car.”

“It has been hard for her to watch her loved ones go through the pain without being able to stop it,” said Robert Gambala, the gang violence suppression coordinator at the Boys & Girls Club of Ventura, where Brittany, an only child, spends most of her time outside of home and school. She becomes frustrated that her father can no longer do the things he used to, said Gambala. “At times, she has expressed that things are overwhelming, and we talk it out.”

Brittany’s mother left when she was an infant. “Sometimes I hear from her, but my grandmother is my mother, as far as I’m concerned,” said Brittany. Her family has been struggling financially, but she hasn’t tried to get a job because she thinks it would hurt her father’s pride. Instead, she says, she mows lawns when she needs extra money.

“Things are tight. Brittany knows she can’t get everything she wants. She’s not going to get a new pair of shoes--the family makes sure she is clothed, but the luxuries of a teenager, well, Brittany understands they’re not a reality for her,” said Gambala.

Even though she has been selected to go to YMCA Camp Big Bear with the support of The Times summer camp campaign, Brittany is unsure whether she will be able to attend because her father will need her help during his upcoming angiogram and possible angioplasty. “I’ll have to stay home from summer school a couple of days--it kind of clashes with other things I want to do,” she admits. Then she adds quickly, “but they are my No. 1 priority. It is all right.”

Gambala is trying to find a camp session that will not interfere with her family’s needs, “because she deserves something like this, to get away and be a kid. These are critical years to her. She can’t take them back.”

Every year since 1954, readers and employees of The Times have sent thousands of needy children to summer camp. This year more than 11,000 children will experience a special summer, thanks to the $1.6 million raised last year.

The average cost of sending a child to camp for a week is $150. This year, the McCormick Tribune Foundation will match the first $1.2 million in contributions at 50 cents on the dollar.

Checks should be sent to: L.A. Times Summer Camp Campaign, File No. 56984, Los Angeles, CA 90074-6984. For more information, call (213) 237-5771. To make credit card donations, visit www.latimes.com/summercamp. Do not send cash.

All donations are tax-deductible. Unless donors request otherwise, gifts of $25 or more are acknowledged in The Times. The summer camp campaign is part of the Los Angeles Times Family Fund, a fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation.