In need of healthy ways to cope with heartbreak
Five tumultuous years have passed since Angela Coniglio’s parents divorced. The 11-year-old Tustin girl was shuttled back and forth between her parents’ homes. Her ailing grandmother, impaired by dementia, joined her mother’s household. Angela’s two older sisters -- one with three kids -- came and went.
Then her father got remarried and seemed to prefer his new wife and two stepsons to Angela and her 12- and 7-year-old sisters. The weeks she spent at her father’s home became painful.
“I got yelled at a lot, and he [also] just ignored me,” Angela says. “I’m just telling myself, ‘I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be here.’ ”
Her relationship with her father became volatile.
One day when he came to pick her up from an after-school program, Angela refused to go home with him. Soon after that, she stopped seeing her father -- but remained furious at him.
“It’s been a nasty battle,” says Angela’s mom, Dawn Schulz, explaining that her daughter has been in counseling to handle expressing her anger. “She puts her feelings out there.”
Angela recently declined to join an invitation-only club soccer team because she was worried about the expense being a burden on her mom, who supports her family by driving a school bus and working at the Boys and Girls Club in Tustin.
Yet Angela’s family and financial worries haven’t prevented her from having a positive attitude. Although she obviously has a tough exterior, Angela is articulate and forthcoming. She helps her mom out at the Boys and Girls Club and sometimes works with young kids in the “Little Rascals” room, which makes her think she wants to be a teacher.
Angela says she’s always excited to try something she’s never done before. That’s why she loved archery and canoeing last summer when she was at camp at Pathfinder Ranch in the San Jacinto Mountains.
“At camp, they keep you occupied. They have everything to do,” says Angela. “You barely have time to, like, write a letter.”
Angela is looking forward to more canoeing and archery at camp this summer and -- maybe not surprisingly -- drama.
“That’s her vacation. She needs that rejuvenation, for her to be a kid,” says Schulz. “That’s the great thing about camp.”
About 10,000 underprivileged children like Angela will go to camp this summer, thanks to $1.6 million raised last year.
The annual fundraising campaign is part of the Los Angeles Times Family Fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, which this year will match the first $1.1 million in contributions at 50 cents on the dollar.
Donations are tax-deductible. For more information, call (213) 237-5771.
To make donations by credit card, go to latimes.com/summercamp.
To send checks, use the attached coupon. Do not send cash.
Unless requested otherwise, gifts of $50 or more will be acknowledged in The Times.
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