Venture High School: After falling into wrong crowd, Keely Haynes turns education, faith around

For a while there, it looked as if Keely Haynes was going to have a bumpy ride through high school and perhaps through life itself. Not any more.

She moved with her family from San Diego to the Kellogg area in Idaho when she was 12. In her freshman year of high school, as she described it, she fell in with the wrong crowd, made some bad decisions, was rude and eventually got suspended for drinking alcohol in school.

This is not the child she had been, and her parents tried various schools and counseling – and then things clicked for her at Venture High School in Coeur d’Alene, an alternative school with a curriculum and environment designed for students who were not necessarily thriving in a traditional classroom setting. She drives in every day from Kellogg to attend classes.

“I can’t say enough about Venture,” Haynes said. “They’re great because of the teachers there.”

She also credits her family and Real Life Ministries of Silver Valley, “who showed me loving guidance and support and called me out when I needed that.”

Her teachers describe her as the kind of student who goes out of her way for others and demonstrates random acts of kindness, such as buying coffee drinks for staff members without letting them know they came from her.

Haynes enjoys bike rides, being outdoors and spending time with friends. Going for hikes or walks with her mother are a big part of her life now.

She volunteers for Sunday child care at Real Life Ministries and has done youth group work there. She watches documentaries on television with her father – mostly ones involving psychological or true crime themes.

She said she values her family and her second chances and notes that it’s her faith that teaches her to love people and to do her best.

Haynes is dual enrolled at North Idaho College and takes all her classes at the NIC campus this year. She has been accepted this fall at Grand Canyon University, a private Christian college in Phoenix, where she hopes to study forensic psychology.

“I’ve always been interested in the human mind and also in how that interacts with crime,” she said. “I’m fascinated in knowing why people do what they do.”