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'A heart that beats for people'

Alumni Hall of Fame inductee Colleen McGauley

By California State University, Bakersfield

January 29^th, 2020

Editor's note: This is the fourth of four 2020 Alumni Hall of Fame profiles.

The first child Colleen McGauley advocated for in court was a 4-year-old girl who, she could tell right away, had been molested.

Her mother was in prison. Her father was juggling long hours in the oilfields, anger management classes and three kids, and made a bad choice of caregiver.

When the case got to a judge, attorneys for the mother and father argued for an end to court supervision of the children. McGauley recommended more therapy for the family first.

The judge sided with McGauley.

“’Ms. McGauley, I have to say I wasn’t so sure about this CASA thing,’” she recalled him saying. “’But after reading your report, this is exactly what I was hoping to get.’

“I got up, walked out and thought, “‘Oh my God, one volunteer changed the whole thing.’”

That was in the mid-1990s, and McGauley has changed a lot of things to make life better for abused and neglected children in Kern County ever since.

CASA, or Court Appointed Special Advocates, trains community volunteers to get to know children in the juvenile dependency court system and communicate their needs and desires to judges deciding their care and placement.

McGauley was among the 13 members of Kern County’s first CASA class in 1994 and went on to serve as the organization’s executive director for 18 years.

She expanded the number of advocates from about 57 to 215, grew the annual budget from about $300,000 to $1.2 million, and initiated a series of locally groundbreaking education, mental health and family reunification programs for thousands of CASA-represented children.

“She has a heart that really beats love for people,” said Greg Heyart , one of McGauley’s close friends and a former CASA board member, “especially for kids who have suffered abuse and neglect.”

Like duck to water

McGauley, 64, took to CASA like “duck to water” 26 years ago in part because she, too, understood growing up powerless in Whittier.

Her parents, a safety investigator for Pac Bell and a stay-at-home mom, showed love to their seven children but also took strict parenting too far, McGauley said. She chooses her words carefully while describing it.

“They were, um, physically abusive with the belt, with a hand. Lots and lots of beatings,” she said, going on to describe the ripple effects of siblings throwing each other under the bus to avoid punishment and even hurting one another.

McGauley, bottom right, and four of her six siblings around 1959.

The good news is that McGauley reconciled with her mother and father before they died, and all her siblings with children are warm, loving parents.

McGauley’s parents did give her a great education. After St. Paul High School in Santa Fe Springs, she studied field biology at Loyola Marymount University. Having absorbed the campus’ social justice culture, McGauley joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, and after graduation moved to the northwestern Alaskan town of Kotzebue to work as a community organizer.

A one-year assignment turned into four years of service there, first organizing a parish council and then running a teen center. Alcoholism, domestic violence and related deaths were big problems in the Iñupiat community of about 1,700.

McGauley loved the people and culture.

“They took us berry picking, put us in their boats and took us up the river, taught us how to make sourdough and pancakes and biscuits, and taught us how to tan hides,” she remembered. “I learned so much there.”

This photo of McGauley, right, and a co-volunteer was taken in Alaska in 1977, her first winter above the Arctic Circle. It was 30 degrees below zero.

Many of the things she learned later informed her work at CASA. They include grant writing, relating to young people and, perhaps most importantly, not making snap judgments about new situations.

“’Within two weeks you’re going to feel like you know all that is wrong with this culture and you know how to fix it,’” a mentor in Alaska told McGauley. “And I’m going to tell you right now, I want you to shut up and just observe the issues. The issues these communities are facing are very complex.’

“…That skill has been helpful my whole life.”

'Lots of kids like you'

McGauley yearned for home after four years in Alaska and returned to California, eventually following a friend to Bakersfield. While working in a chiropractor’s office, she learned a CASA program was forming locally and she successfully applied to join it.

CASAs, as advocates are also called, paint a comprehensive picture of court-supervised children’s histories and needs by meeting with them, interviewing family members, teachers, foster parents and others, and combing through records. Some CASA relationships are short-term, some last years and years.

The ultimate goal is to find every child permanent placement. McGauley is most proud of having permanently placed every child she personally represented, which she estimated totaled 37.

McGauley poses with Vincent and David DelPappa, who donated dollars from a lemonade stand to help abused children.

“I’d build a relationship slowly,” McGauley said. “With a 16-year-old I might come with a deck of cards and Dominoes, when they’re younger I might bring a pad of paper and some crayons, something to do. Because kids will tell you things as they’re doing something else.”

Pivoting to a soft, sweet voice, McGauley described how she’d explain her role to youngsters.

“’There are lots of kids like you who live in foster care. Did you know that? No? Thousands here in Kern County.’

‘“I’m called your advocate. Feel my muscle,’” she continued, squeezing her bicep. “’I’m going to stand up for you.’”

Some of McGauley’s stories about children she’s represented will break your heart. Her first one, the 4-year-old girl, acted out sexually in front of her the first time they met. One little boy pointed to a needle pinned to a curtain and said that was the needle his dad regularly poked him with.

There was also the fifth-grader who read at a kindergarten level because she’d changed schools more than 20 times.

From volunteer to director

McGauley was a CASA volunteer for 18 months before joining its staff, first as a part-time employee, then as a full-time case manager, and in 2001 as executive director. She transformed the organization.

McGauley was a case manager at CASA before rising to executive director in 2001. Here she is in those days.

One of many initiatives she championed put an end to foster children changing schools every time they changed placements, which averaged once every academic year.

“You can move across the street to a different home, which is in a different school district, which has a whole other different way of teaching,” McGauley said. “The districts want autonomy, which is great, but terrible for 2,000 kids (currently) in foster care.”

McGauley led CASA in training advocates to mine court files and medical records for signs a child suffered emotional trauma so mental health professionals could properly treat them. Other California counties have followed Kern’s lead in implementing the Mental Health Advocacy project, she said.

McGauley promotes CASA during ta Give Big Kern fundraising push.

Since Family Connections started in 2013, it has served 111 children and trained 153 volunteers, according to CASA. The agency has connected about 80 percent of the 111 kids with a family member in some way; currently 31 volunteers are doing the work on behalf of 48 children.

Seven children have actually been placed with a family member through Family Connections, an ideal outcome. That benefits not only them but taxpayers, said Catherine E. Bennet, another good friend of McGauley’s and a former CASA board member.

“It’s a great result for the kid emotionally because they can maintain a sense of self,” said Bennett, a 2015 CSUB Alumni Hall of Fame inductee. “But the other thing is it’s a lot more cost-effective for the county. Taking care of kids in group homes is extremely expensive.”

'Everything she's got'

Since 1994, CASA has served 3,030 children, trained 1,168 volunteers and logged 297,057 volunteer hours. McGauley steered much of that growth with a combination of heart, smarts and hard work, Bennett and Heyart say.

Colleen McGauley and colleagues dress up for a murder mystery fundraiser. — McGauley, who now consults for other nonprofits, was a master fundraiser for CASA, her friends and colleagues say. Here she is (at right) with Joan Knowlden and Sheila Fry at one of the organization’s many murder mystery fundraisers.

First there are her innate gifts, like for making friends, cultivating relationships and just connecting with people, Bennett said.

“She is successful because of her compassionate nature,” Bennett said. “It comes across to everybody, whether she’s asking you for money or she’s asking you for help or she’s sitting across the table from a scared teenage girl.”

And then there are her technical gifts, many of which she honed while earning her master’s degree in public administration at CSUB, Bennett said.

The CASA board funded that education, she said, and it paid off exponentially. McGauley learned even more about statistics, human resources, and making a persuasive argument to funders like the Kern County Board of Supervisors that they should invest in the organization.

“If it’s not in her wheelhouse she’ll always ask (for help),” Bennett said. “But more and more stuff became in her wheelhouse by virtue of the breadth of the education she got at CSUB.”

It reached a point, Bennett said, that when other CASA directors called the national or state offices looking for help with a problem, they’d often hear: “Have you talked to Colleen McGauley in Bakersfield?”

Heyart said she worked so hard she risked her own well-being.

“Whatever Colleen does she does with everything she’s got ,” Heyart said. “She did that with CASA, she gave everything she had to that organization. Night and day and not just five days a week. Seven days a week.