Hutton Holiday

Firelight flares at the touch of a match, illuminating eight red-and-white stockings hanging all in a row.

Someone has filled them during the night, a fact not lost on the four blanket-wrapped girls creeping down the hallway in the 6 a.m. darkness.

With wide smiles, they take in the bulging socks, the blazing fire – and the new pile of presents under the sparkling tree. Although the calendar says there’s still a week to go, at the Hutton Settlement Children’s Home in the Spokane Valley this is Christmas morning.

“I woke up at 4 a.m.” says 14-year-old Miranda. “I tried to get back to sleep and I couldn’t.”

Her excitement is echoed by the rest of the pajama-clad crew of Cottage II, girls and young women who range in age from 8 to 19. Most will spend Dec. 25 with their real kin, but before they leave, Hutton house parents Jeromy and Kellie Mundt want to make sure they celebrate here, too.

“It’s so that they can have Christmas with their other family,” says Kellie Mundt, a 42-year-old former corrections worker. “Which is us.”

Providing an alternate family for children in need has been the mission of the Hutton Settlement for some 87 holiday seasons.

Founded in 1919 by Levi Hutton, a Spokane mining magnate and businessman who never forgot what it meant to be orphaned, the settlement began as a stable shelter for children who lost their parents.

Hutton directed his considerable fortune to the perpetual care of such kids. The settlement boasted assets of $14.2 million in 2003, the last year for which public records are available. Using property to generate rents of more than $1.7 million a year, the settlement spends about $1.2 million a year to care for up to 40 children ages 5 to 19.

The roster of kids who’ve passed through the four brick cottages off Upriver Drive fills dozens of pages of two fat notebooks, their names typed in cursive and grouped alphabetically by year, from Gene Allen in 1919 to Ryan Z. in 2006. (Full names of current residents of Hutton are not released to protect privacy, staff members said.)

The goal of the settlement hasn’t changed over nearly nine decades, although the children’s circumstances have, says Program Director David Milliken.

“Back when we were founded, more kids were technical orphans,” he says. Now, children come for a wide range of reasons.

Some kids have parents who are on drugs or in prison. Others have parents who are too sick to care for them. Still others were being cared for by elderly grandparents who couldn’t keep up with the demands.

Recently, more children – almost half of the 40 at Hutton, in fact – have experienced disrupted or failed adoptions, Milliken says.

But the settlement is defined as much by what it’s not, says Milliken, who has spent 10 years debunking myths about the kids who live on 319 rolling acres outside town.

“What I get is that some people see us as a group home, and they automatically assume that we’re for troubled kids,” he says. “There’s this misconception, this whole idea that these are poor orphans.”

In fact, the settlement does not accept children with severe disabilities or disorders. Pam Hydrick, the intake worker who fields five or six inquiries about Hutton Settlement each month, says she frequently must explain that the place is not a psychiatric center or a treatment foster home.

Instead, most of the children are well-balanced young people who simply need a safe place to live and grow. Those admitted to the settlement may stay for several months, or they may stay until they graduate from high school. One 18-year-old girl has lived at Hutton since she was 5, Milliken says.

“This is her home,” he adds.

The Hutton Settlement does not seek or accept government funding, although organizers are always grateful for much needed community donations. While the agency is subject to state laws and guidelines, it is free to run the place without interference.

That philosophy means Hutton kids are more fortunate than most children who need alternate care, says Wayne Rounseville, regional director of the Children’s Home Society of Washington.

“They just happen to be the lucky 30 or so compared to the other 3,000,” he says. “That doesn’t reduce the wonder of what they do out there. It just raises the issue of what about the others caught in the system?”

Most children come to Hutton because it provides comprehensive schooling and shelter, but also because it encourages youngsters to maintain contact with their families.

“We really see ourselves as partners in care,” Milliken says. “We don’t see it as taking over from the parents.”

That’s exactly the kind of place Kathy and Frank Stocker of Moses Lake were seeking for their adopted daughter, Kimberly, 8.

Born in China and abandoned by her birth mother, Kimberly was placed in foster care before being adopted by the Stockers at age 3. She suffered severe health problems, including heart and lung disorders that required surgery.

Because of that early trauma, Kimberly suffers from reactive attachment disorder, a psychiatric condition marked by out-of-control anger, violence and manipulation.

“She can’t control her rage, she wants to get revenge,” Kathy Stocker says. “She was stealing and hiding things, anything she could do.”

The Stockers love their daughter, and her 10-year-old sister, who’s also adopted, but they were having a very difficult time living with what the family calls Kimberly’s “mad.”

“Every step of the way she was sabotaging everything,” Kathy Stocker says.

When a counselor suggested the Hutton Settlement last summer, the Stockers agreed to try.

“We told Kimberly this is a place where you can be a kid for a while and not have so much mad,” Kathy Stocker says.

At Hutton, Kimberly is a cheerful second-grader with a Care Bear blanket on her bed and fuzzy slippers on her feet.

Caring for her and the other girls requires a combination of calmness and consistency, say the Mundts, who became house parents in July after working at a corrections facility.

“God called us to do this,” Kellie Mundt says.

So far, Kimberly appears to be doing well, but Kathy Stocker says it’s still too soon to tell.

“My gut feeling is, there’s a huge amount of turmoil beneath the surface,” she says.

Kimberly will be at home this weekend, a prospect that’s both exciting and unnerving to everyone.

Kimberly can’t wait to see her sister, Katelyn. She says they’ll sleep on the couch and wait for the sound of Santa’s reindeer on the roof.

Kathy Stocker can’t wait to see her daughter, although she’s certain the holiday won’t end without a certain amount of drama.

“When she comes for Christmas, she will have a meltdown,” Kathy Stocker says.

If that happens, Hutton will be there to help. While settlement staff members support children in staying at home as much as possible, it’s not always practical, says Kellie Mundt.

“That’s why it’s important for them to know that if things are not going well where they’re at, this is home,” she says.