Rules of engagement

Sundays are the earliest day of the week for Glendale Community College student Sherry Wang.

Every week, the 28-year-old psychology student drives from Eagle Rock to an apartment complex in Valencia to run all over town with Jani Schofield, a 7-year-old schizophrenic who requires constant mental and physical stimulation to distract her from sometimes violent delusions and hallucinations.

“I can only say she’s one of a kind,” Wang said. “The first time I saw Jani, I felt like she needed friends and needed to feel like she belongs somewhere in this world.”

Jani sees things that aren’t there and believes things that aren’t true. Sometimes, “Wednesday,” “7,” or “400 the Cat” will tell her to hit another child, sometimes her infant brother Bodhi.

“At 10:30 she loves you, at 10:35 she hates you,” said her father, Michael Schofield. “Not all interns were able to deal with that.”

Wang and her classmates have been working with the Schofield family since the fall, when Daphne Dionisio, a psychology professor at Glendale Community College, read about the family in a Los Angeles Times article.

“When I heard about this, I felt I could help out the family by providing them with psychology students who’d volunteer and take shifts,” she said.

To do that, interns join Michael or Susan Schofield and take Jani all over the city, visiting pet stores, animal shelters — anything to distract and stimulate her. The focus at all times is keeping Jani engaged, by playing games, home-schooling, or singing along with her in car rides.

She was very hungry Sunday morning, and to keep her engaged, Michael Schofield and Wang traded lines about how their breakfast was being made.

“First the chickens have to lay the eggs,” Michael Schofield said. “The hash browns have to be rounded up from the great plains of Wyoming. Have you ever tried to catch a hash brown? It’s not easy. And for the cheese sticks, you have to go to Wisconsin.”

Wang said Jani can be frustrated trying to reconcile where she is with what she sees and hears.

“Think about it — she has a mind of hallucination world and another mind knowing that she has to keep up with our reality,” Wang said. “It’s a constant struggle, and there’s no help.”

Jani’s hallucinations are not all violent. Introducing herself outside her apartment, she shook hands and held out her left palm to show a pet she named Sunday.

“I brought Sunday along because it’s Sunday,” she said before hop-skipping to catch up with her father.

Michael Schofield said the intern program has helped Jani stay with the family. She needs one-on-one supervision at all times, and almost had to go to school in Texas or Florida because California lacked a comparable facility.

“What the Department of Mental Health offered was nothing that would help us stay together as a family,” he said. “What the interns have done is they are providing the one-to-one support . . . that allows us to keep Jani with us.”

He said he hoped that the intern program expands to more schools, and that Wang can train interns even when she continues her education at Cal State Los Angeles.

Humor, improvisation and being uninhibited are among the keys to success, Wang said. She relies on laughter and humor to create a safe zone where Jani can be comfortable. It’s only momentary, and Jani can never stay in one place for very long.

“Jani has this tremendous stress on herself with this illness, and she moves forward,” Wang said. “That’s what she taught me. Jani was never afraid. She just moves forward, moves forward, moves forward. There may be an obstacle, [but] you still move forward.”

Undergraduate students do not usually get an opportunity to work with patients with a psychiatric condition, Dionisio said.

“It’s a very rare opportunity for these students to work with a child who probably has one of the most severe cases of schizophrenia, the child-onset variety,” she said. “Some have a natural ability to grab her attention, and we have four or five students like that this semester.”

Wang is one of those students.

“I can count the number of people I trust Jani to on one hand, and Sherry’s one of them,” Michael Schofield said.

Wang said she isn’t shy and is the loudest person in her class, and suspects that’s why Dionisio asked her to be the lead intern.

“Knowing Jani’s condition touched my heart and gave me the aspirations, drive and desire to help,” Wang said. “There’s no cure for schizophrenia, but if she can laugh, that’s good medicine.”