Return to Academy at Dundee Ranch Page
By Tim Rogers
Tico Times Staff
June 6, 2003
It's not every day you see a scared 16-year-old Gringo trying to flag down passing cars at 2 a.m. And it's not everyone who would stop his car on a darkened street to ask if everything is okay.
But that's just what Costa Rican father Isaac Wabe did May 20, when he passed Cody Crawford wandering down the streets of San Pedro, east of the capital. And Robin Crawford says she owes her son's life to the Tico samaritan.
Cody, a former student at Dundee Ranch Academy, escaped from a Child Welfare (PANI) shelter in San Pedro shortly after being taken there May 20, following the government intervention of the U.S.-run behavior-modification program in the central Pacific town of Orotina. Cody and three other Dundee students asked to be taken to the shelter when government agents arrived at the remote ranch to investigate allegations of physical and emotional abuse. The visit sparked violent rioting among many of the kids, and 35 students ran away.
The facility has since been closed and its 200 U.S. students sent home or relocated to sister programs in Jamaica and the U.S. (TT, May 22, 30.)
Afraid that he would become a forgotten orphan in Costa Rica, Cody sneaked out of the PANI shelter shortly before midnight in hopes of seeking help from the U.S. Embassy. With no change of clothes, no money, no working knowledge of Spanish and no idea where he was, he set out with only a small photo album of his family and the scribbled address of the embassy.
After wandering in circles through San Pedro for three hours, the teenager - whose home town, ironically, is Dundee, Oregon - was robbed of his empty wallet by two young men at gunpoint. Desperate, scared and lost, he began to flag passing cars, until Wabe happened by.
"He stopped me on the road and asked me if I spoke English," remembered Wabe, a 43-year-old fatherof two boys. "I said yes, and he said he needed help; he needed a safe place to spend the night."
After taking Cody to his mother's house in San Pedro, Wabe - who lives with his wife and younger son in the mountain town of Aserrí, southeast of San José - said he fed the disoriented teenager and offered him a spare bed for the night. The next morning, Wabe - who says Cody reminds him of his teenage son who lives in Florida - helped Cody call his mother in Oregon. Mrs. Crawford, a part-time court clerk, wired money to Wabe to buy her son clothes and food, and made plans to arrive in Costa Rica the following week.
But the teenager, sent to Dundee Ranch last April for substance-abuse problems, soon found his Costa Rican odyssey was just beginning.
Cody said he got bored sitting around with Wabe's family, with whom he couldn't communicate, and asked Isaac permission to go to the movies at the Mall San Pedro, promising to take a taxi back to the mother's house afterwards.
When the movie ended, Cody said he decided to save his taxi money and walk back to his adoptive family's home. He promptly got lost when he tried to "take a short cut through the jungle," obliging Wabe to make a late-night phone call to Mrs. Crawford to inform her that her son was missing again.
"It started raining and I ended up sleeping in the jungle; I had to dig under the leaves to get out of the rain," Cody recalled. Based on his account, it is not clear where he spent the night. "I eventually found a small town and got a store owner to let me use his phone to call my mom collect."
After Mrs. Crawford relayed the phone message back to Wabe, the helpful Tico - whose taxi was recently stolen - had to borrow money from his mother and take a taxi to search for the errant youth. Wabe eventually found Cody shirtless, filthy and famished in the district of Cipreses, east of San José.
By the time the Judicial Investigative Police (OIJ) issued a missing-persons report for Cody last Friday, he was already back with his mother and 14-year-old sister Ashley, who arrived in Costa Rica May 29.
Cody said he had asked Wabe not to inform anyone here about his whereabouts, out of fear that he would be returned to Dundee Ranch. Wabe, who had been following Dundee's problems in the local press, agreed, despite his family's concerns that they would get in trouble with authorities.
"My mother thought I was going to get in trouble with the police, but I wasn't scared because I knew from news reports that they were going to close Dundee, and Cody's mother had granted me the power to take care of her child; she had sent me a copy of his passport and birth certificate," Wabe told The Tico Times this week.
In a letter to Wabe and his family, Mrs. Crawford wrote: "Thank you for finding my lost son and taking him into your home and safety. You became like a father to him, watching and protective. Costa Ricans like you show how great this wonderful country is."
"I would have gotten him a cooler card," joked Cody, who is razzed by his sister for acting like Huckleberry Finn.
Although the wandering youth was in good spirits this week, he was admittedly shaken by the events of the last 10 days.
"When I went to Dundee, I was promised that nothing else would happen to me," he said, referring to the safe environment the academy advertised. "Now the biggest thing in my life just happened, with the rioting and staff beating kids. It is so crazy what has happened to me, it doesn't seem real. This was a big thing for me."
As Cody and the other 200 students removed from Dundee struggled to understand the events of the last couple of weeks, Mrs. Crawford met with Prosecutor Marielos Alfaro Wednesday and filed two criminal complaints against Dundee owner Narvin Lichfield and four former staff members, alleging abuse, computer theft and misrepresentation of the services Dundee offered troubled teens.
At the request of the prosecutor, Cody met Wednesday with a forensic psychiatrist and is scheduled to testify next week before a judge.
Mrs. Crawford said a former Dundee staff member - Cody's favorite at the academy - was also at the prosecutor's office offering declarations Wednesday.
Alfaro told The Tico Times this week that she now has depositions from two former students, and is waiting for others to return to Costa Rica to offer testimony.
Meanwhile, an underground parents' network opposed to Dundee Ranch's "tough-love" tactics - including the reported use of physical restraints and solitary confinement and the alleged drugging of students - has raised funds to bring six former students back to Costa Rica to testify against Lichfield.
The group reportedly is meeting with a large California law firm to study the possibility of filing a class-action lawsuit against the WorldWide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP) - the behavior modification umbrella under which Dundee Ranch operated.
Lichfield, who was jailed May 25 for 24 hours on allegations of coercion, rights abuse, and detaining children against their will, said this week that the "skeleton staff" remaining at Dundee is working to repair damage caused by vandalism during the riot and recreate the students' transcripts. He hopes the academy will be able to reopen in two months, after making the changes it needs to get legal.
"It has just been a nightmare," he told The Tico Times this week.
Lichfield and his Costa Rican wife Flory Alvarado are prohibited from leaving the country for the next six months while the prosecutor investigates and decides whether or not to file charges.