Juvenile Drug Court Coordinator: Kathy Gorrell

It takes countless individuals to make juvenile drug court successful and Kathy Gorrell is one of those people. Although new to her position as Juvenile Drug Court Coordinator, Kathy Gorrell has had years of experience as an intensive and drug court probation officer. Kathy was also in the Army after pursuing her degree in Criminal Justice with a minor in Military Science. Kathy said, “The Army prepared me for the job, you manage people, many of them troubled, so it's preparation. It’s many of the same people here.”

Working with children, many moments on the job have become incredibly memorable for Kathy. Kathy specifically remembers one incident. She was a young man’s first probation officer.  She locked him up right away after he failed a drug test. After lock up, he sent her a text message saying, “You saved my life.” She was “floored” with how sincere he was because the he tended to be “non-expressive”. Recently, this same young man graduated the program. At his drug court graduation he remembered the text message he sent her. He wrote the same thing in a card to Kathy at graduation. She gave him a “BFF” heart necklace as a graduation present after bonding with this boy and he asked her to take the other half. “For him to do that is huge,” said Kathy.

Besides working with kids, Kathy works with Reconnecting Families. Kathy said, “Reconnecting Families helps a lot. We don’t have funding to do anything, everything we have to find.” Reconnecting Families pays for graduation and connected the juvenile drug court with the Y as far as camps and scholarship. “If a family can’t get the lights on, Reconnecting Families steps in. They helped a kid get on the swim team recently who would never have been able to do that before,” said Kathy.

On an average day, Kathy is busy assigning cases, routing files, answering questions, supervising a caseload, sometimes making visits, and staffing cases. “In drug court we work as a team, we talk about everything,” said Kathy.

Working everyday to get these kids clean and sober, Kathy is very happy with the good success of drug court. And Reconnecting Families would like to thank Kathy for all of the amazing work she does!