BROOKINGS – Margo Dempsey wants to make things nice for her clients, but she needs some help.
Dempsey is the executive director of the Brookings Domestic Abuse Shelter, which has five bedrooms for clients to stay in. The problem is the rooms are nothing to look at, just serviceable for the clients’ needs. Dempsey knows it’s important that they be sanctuaries for the abused people the shelter serves because of what they’ve been through.
“I’m just astounded. We’ve had people say that they’ve been pulled out of their beds – dead asleep – by their ankles, right onto the floor. I can’t even imagine that,” Dempsey said.
That’s why having a safe place is imperative.
“It’s their room, amongst the few things that they were able to take with them. They can lock the door and nobody’s in there with them,” Dempsey said.
Even though the shelter has common areas open to all the clients, many of them isolate themselves in their rooms, especially in the beginning, Dempsey said.
“They feel safe,” she said.
She’s glad she and her staff can provide that feeling but wants their clients to know people care about them.
Solid, but shabby
The building at 807 Onaka Trail was originally an assisted living center before becoming the abuse shelter in 2005. Dempsey and her crew renovated to accommodate their duties, but the décor hasn’t been updated because there’s no money to do it.
The shelter runs on funds and grants, some from the government, but it’s almost always designated for specific expenses and can’t be used for anything else.
“The federal funding is so minimal, and what is there is completely allocated,” Dempsey said. “We need a combination of everything that we get, including the donations, to be able to continue to run.”
Staff are required to account for every penny to prove the funds are being used for the intended purpose. The downside is there’s no money for incidentals like beds, dressers, paint and décor.
Dempsey wanted the bedrooms to be beautiful havens for the clients, but she wasn’t sure how to make it happen until she got the idea to ask the community to help.
Adopt-A-Bedroom
Dempsey was talking to someone she knows and developed the idea for “Adopt-A-Bedroom,” where community members would decorate the rooms. Then she mentioned her idea to Jael Thorpe.
Thorpe, owner of j.ella boutiques, had helped the shelter with fundraising and gathering supplies, so she was familiar with what they did.
“I had seen the shelter a couple of years ago, when I was on the (city) council, so I knew … the rooms are maybe just a little dark and kind of mish-mash,” Thorpe said.
“I just immediately wanted to create something bright and welcoming,” Thorpe said. “Our team loves to create pretty things and loves to support women, and it just seemed like such a natural project for us.”
Over the past year, workers and customers at j.ella were encouraged to do random acts of kindness.
Dempsey’s request for help “sounded so perfect for what we had been trying to accomplish over the year,” Thorpe said, adding it was “a chance to give back … what we’d been preaching about kindness.”
Putting thought into practice
“We started by committing 10 percent of sales from j.ella throughout the month of October to give ourselves a budget,” Thorpe said.
Shalene Hendrickson of Brookings Built Green took the design reins. They had big ideas that included furniture, paint, lighting, bedding, hangers and wall art, “just things to make it feel more welcoming,” Thorpe said.
Then they realized they’d be putting all these nice things on an old floor.
“Originally we weren’t planning on doing (the floors), but then we’re like ‘we’re gonna do all this work and still gonna have gross green carpet?’” Thorpe said.
New flooring wasn’t in the budget, but she contacted Andrew Sterud of Handy Andy and Josh Ohmann of Creative Tile and Flooring in Volga, and “they very generously provided all the labor for that, and Carpet Direct gave us a really great deal on the materials,” Thorpe said. “That was just awesome.”
“The flooring part of it was just such a cool God-thing in my mind,” Thorpe said.
A lot of work
They tackled two rooms and got a lot of help, including j.ella manager Tiara Ugofsky and three of her friends; folks from Teen Challenge; and Thorpe’s husband, Brian, and their two small children.
“To me, the coolest part of this entire project was, all in all, there were probably 20 people involved with this and just seeing the way that all of those people from such different walks of life within the community: the flooring installers, Tiara’s SDSU student friends, Shay the designer, all of these people that … just came together around this cause was just really neat to see,” Thorpe said.
They worked for two solid days but had fun at it.
“It was also pretty funny to see three girls crammed into one of these bathrooms painting under the toilet, behind the sink, all the non-glamorous tasks that everybody just jumped right in and did,” Thorpe said.
“Shay, bless her heart, spent a solid eight hours scraping wallpaper border. Every single room had wallpaper border from the early ’90s that did not want to come off. Everybody in the whole project had a chance to scrape ’90s wallpaper off. That was amazing,” Thorpe said.
Something that was not so amazing was when they set off the shelter’s security alarms.
Alarms are everywhere and attached to everything, Dempsey said, but apparently the crew forgot that.
“Somebody saw a little chip sitting in the window and picked it up and was like ‘what’s this?’ and all of a sudden, the full facility was like sirens; someone from the police department showed up,” Thorpe said.
“That was funny – not at the time – it was a little alarming at the time,” she added.
Teaching moment
Thorpe liked being able to make it a family affair.
Her boys are 4 and 2, and “they loved being there. I felt like it was a teaching moment. Things take three times as long when they’re helping, but they’re learning,” she said.
They weren’t the only ones.
“I remember one quote on the wall that really stood out to me … was like ‘wow,’” Ugofsky said, citing “You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have.”
Thorpe noticed the T-shirts hung on the walls.
“They’re kind of hard to read, really tough things that people have been through,” she said. “The statistics on domestic abuse are just unbelievable. There are probably people that we know going through that.
“A lot of people don’t think that stuff like that happens in Brookings, South Dakota,” Thorpe said. “For us, it just really opened our eyes to just be more aware to those needs.”
Makes a difference
Something as simple as a nice bedroom can convey an important message.
“When (clients) walked in and said ‘they’re so beautiful,’ and we told them it was a group of volunteers that came in and wanted to adopt the room. They’ve just – you can see their eyes will tear up again and they just think that’s so good,” Dempsey said.
It tells them someone cares and they have worth.
“They will always remember how they were treated here and how they felt,” Dempsey said.
Still a need
There is always work to do, Dempsey said.
Two groups have committed to making over a bedroom each, but there’s still one bedroom to do, as well as common areas, like the dining room and the living room. She’d also like curtains for the windows.
For those who can’t help with the redecorating, Dempsey has other ways to donate.
Thorpe challenges others to follow in her team’s footsteps.
“For me, it’s just about seeing a need and instead of, you know, hemming and hawing about how much is this gonna cost or how are we gonna do this, just diving in,” Thorpe said. “It’s just more about sending that positive message to someone who’s in a tough transition.”
Contact Jodelle Greiner at jgreiner@brookingsregister.com.
Above: Some of the bedrooms at the Brookings Domestic Abuse Shelter have gotten a make-over from a group of locals. (Register photo) Below: Jael Thorpe shows her son how to roll paint on the walls; a group of about 20 adults from different backgrounds scraped border off the walls, installed flooring, painted and gave two of the bedrooms a fresh, new look. (Courtesy photo)
