Life and Death in a Troubled Teen Boot Camp
In the darkness of early morning, 16-year-old Bruce Staeger lay splayed across his mattress, sleeping soundly for once. Most nights, he would smoke a blunt and crash, but not this one. Lately, his mother had been watching him closely. She and Bruce’s stepdad had even installed a motion detector on the porch of their doublewide trailer to keep him from sneaking out at night. Around 4:30 a.m., his bedroom light suddenly flipped on. Bruce rolled over, blocking his eyes from the glare to find his mom sitting on the edge of the bed. “Bruce, do you remember what I told you a few days ago?” She said softly. “I would never make a decision that would hurt you.”
Over her shoulder, two men in cowboy hats and Wranglers hovered near his bedroom doorway. Other kids, he would later learn, freaked out in this moment. They yelled, they swore, they swung wildly at the two strangers. But Bruce did none of this. He quietly got dressed as instructed. “You’re going away with these men,” his mom told him. “This is for your own good.”
The cowboys nudged him out into the cold morning air and loaded his things into the bed of a pick up. They headed west, towards the Black Range, a rugged and remote stretch of mountains in southern New Mexico. After a few hours of driving, one of the men put a black pillowcase over Bruce’s head so he wouldn’t know where they were going. The truck lurched and heaved as the paved road turned dirt. Eventually, Bruce would come this way again and see it all—the dry creek beds and narrow slot canyons, the craggy ridgelines and low-lying mesas that glowed red in the sun—but for now, his head hooded in darkness, he could see nothing.
Bruce had been getting into trouble ever since his dad left six years earlier. A skinny kid with sloping shoulders, braces and a mild case of acne, he rarely went to school, spending his days smoking pot and skateboarding instead. A few months earlier, he had run away and holed up with some meth junkies. When he finally returned home, his mom said she didn’t know what else to do for him. Apparently, this was her answer.
Finally, they arrived at their destination: a camp known as Lockwood, a satellite location of Tierra Blanca Ranch, which for almost 20 years had reformed troubled youth. The camp’s owner and director, a man named Scott Chandler, emerged from the truck, bowlegged with a slight hitch in his step. He lifted the hood from Bruce’s head. “Hey guys,” Chandler called out. “Come meet the new kid!”
It took Bruce a minute to gain his bearings. He was in the mountains, above 5,000 feet, standing in a clearing surrounded by towering strands of pine. A thin plume of smoke rose from a cooking fire and two industrial grade Army tents loomed in the distance. Down by the creek, he could hear voices, high and reedy.
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