For 40 years, group has been there in darkest times for crime victims

EVERETT — It was 1975 and Lola Linstad’s daughter was missing.

There had been a string of disappearances. Ted Bundy was responsible for some and others were the work of different serial killers. Parents of the missing girls and women were frustrated with the criminal justice system. Their voices, worry and grief seemed lost in the shuffle of police investigations and court proceedings.

“I wonder what the other mothers are doing?” Linstad remembered asking her neighbor, Linda Barker-Lowrance.

The two women hadn’t known each other long. Linstad, 42, lived two blocks away and ran a daycare out of her Seattle home. Barker-Lowrance, 25, needed someone to watch her children while she went to PTA meetings.

“Let’s find out,” Barker-Lowrance answered her distraught neighbor.

Linstad’s daughter, Vonnie Stuth, 19, had vanished the night before Thanksgiving 1974. Her husband, who worked nights, returned to the newlyweds’ Burien home to find the lights and TV on. Stuth and her sister had talked on the phone earlier that night but no one had heard from her since.

A Seattle newspaper reporter provided the neighbors with the phone numbers and addresses of several families whose daughters were missing or had been found dead.

Thirteen families met in the social hall of a Catholic church in White Center. That was Feb. 25, 1975.

“We never had any long-range plans. We were going to find out what was wrong with the system, change it and be done,” Linstad said.

The group, then known as Families and Friends of Violent Crime Victims, became one of the nation’s first victim advocacy organizations. Over the years the nonprofit, recently renamed Victim Support Services, persuaded lawmakers that crime victims deserve a voice. It changed how victims are treated in Washington.

Every year VSS, now based in Everett, serves hundreds of families affected by violence and crime. They provide advocates in five counties and operate a 24-hour crisis line. They lead support groups and help victims navigate the criminal justice system. They assist with applying for financial help for funeral costs and for mental health counseling.

Today, 40 years later, the group is lending its expertise to an entire community. Its staff is part of the recovery efforts in Marysville and on the Tulalip Indian Reservation after a 15-year-old boy opened fire on a Friday morning in October in a bustling cafeteria at Maryville Pilchuck High School. The freshman, a Tulalip boy, killed four of his friends and wounded a fifth before he turned the gun on himself. More than 100 students, teachers and staff were in the cafeteria.

“This isn’t something you just get over,” VSS’s Executive Director Marge Martin said. “We’ve been there and will continue to be there.”

Linstad, 82, recently took a train from her home in Oregon to Everett. Martin had asked her to take part in a video documenting the group’s history. Barker-Lowrance, 65, passed away in October in her home in Baton Rouge, La.

“We all felt like we were at the mercy of the justice system,” Linstad said.

Several months after her disappearance, Stuth’s former neighbor was arrested in Texas. He confessed to multiple murders, including killing Stuth. He hid her body in Enumclaw.

The killer had a history of violent crimes. He’d slipped through the cracks and never should have been free to move to Washington, Linstad said.

The group advocated for changes in how police handled missing persons cases. They spoke out at public hearings, calling for tougher screening for inmates allowed work release. They pushed to make sure victims are notified when offenders are let out of prison. They fought to continue the state’s Crime Victims Compensation Program.

It was healing to work together.

“When it happens to you it makes you feel very isolated,” Linstad said.

They wanted to be understood and heard. They needed a safe place to talk about nightmares and guilt and the fogginess that clouded their brains.

The group’s membership fluctuated as time went on. There were always new faces, though.

It moved from the church to an office in Northwest Hospital for awhile. For a few years Buzz and Bobbi Costa ran the group out of their electrical contracting business on Broadway in Everett.

The Costas became champions for victims’ rights after one of their daughters was abducted and sexually assaulted in the late 1970s. Her parents believed victims should be treated with respect and compassion, Jeri Costa said. She, like her mother, served as executive director of the group.

The office is now in a tidy, two-story house on Colby Avenue. It is staffed by eight full-time employees, including mental health professionals, and two part-time workers. Volunteers operate the crisis line after hours.

Last year VSS served 450 families and advocated for clients affected by 91 homicides. Staff and volunteers took calls from 1,200 people on the crisis hotline. Advocates spent more than 4,000 hours helping crime victims.

There never seems to be enough money to do all the work, Martin said. The agency, with a $600,000 yearly budget, relies on federal funding that comes from fines and bond forfeitures collected from white-collar criminals. The money is doled out by the state’s Office of Crime Victim Advocacy and has shrunk as other nonprofits seek financial support.

VSS also relies on donations and grants to make ends meet.

Michelle Pauley, a mental health professional, initially was hired last year through a grant from the United Way. The grant helps provide services to clients whose insurance doesn’t pay for mental health counseling or is no longer covered by the Crime Victims Compensation Fund.

Pauley came to VSS from the YWCA, where she served children affected by domestic violence. She had only been on the job a short time before the shootings at Marysville Pilchuck High School.

Pauley, who specializes in trauma, is now stationed fulltime at the high school. Nancy Hawley, a mental health professional and the agency’s Director of Victim Services, also spends time at the high school. VSS has been able to hire a part-time mental health professional, who is available at Marysville Getchell High School.

VSS has applied for a grant through the Department of Justice in hopes of hiring more mental health counselors and a caseworker to serve the schools and community for the next 18 months.

There is a need to reach out to kids in the middle schools, families and other students who transferred to different schools after the violence, Hawley said.

“These kids need a place to talk about this. We can’t pretend it didn’t happen,” she said.

In the days after the shootings, VSS helped dozens of families apply for crime victims assistance funds. It also provided support for the teams of school counselors who converged on MPHS. The agency fielded numerous calls, mainly from parents unsure how to support their children.

Should they force their kids into counseling? Should they be concerned if their teens weren’t talking to them? Where could they go for help?

The school district provided Pauley an office at the high school, where she offers one-on-one counseling to students during the school day. She also runs student support groups, attended by about three dozen teens. She has offered counseling to more than 100 kids since she began in November.

As they approach the six-month mark, Pauley and Hawley are starting to see signs of post-traumatic stress disorder among students and staff. There are nightmares and flashbacks. Some are fighting depression and anxiety. They are hypervigilant and are having trouble focusing.

“The impact is far-reaching,” Martin said.

Martin, who has headed VSS since 2011, has walked in their shoes. Her sister, Gail Jubie, was murdered in 2000 during a botched robbery at her Marysville home.

For that first year Martin and her brothers and sisters were in a daze. She could hardly talk about what happened without crumbling. Her involvement with VSS is helping her heal.

On the anniversary of her nephew’s death Tonja Jones receives a card in the mail. The staff at VSS reminds her that she isn’t alone and they, too, remember her nephew, Derrick Everson.

Jones helped raise him and his brother. The boys lit up her life.

Everson, 21, was stabbed to death during an unprovoked attack in 2009. He died in a wooded area not far from his grandmother’s Everett house.

Jones and her family were devastated. It was a nightmare compounded by the unknown. The suspect was arrested and there were dizzying court proceedings.

VSS’s then-victim advocate Kameon Quillen met with the family at the courthouse, patiently explaining what to expect. She was there at every court hearing. Jones called when she was having bad days. They met for coffee. Quillen assured Jones, an easy-going person, that the anger she was feeling was natural.

“You wear friends out, but you didn’t seem to wear them out,” Jones said.

Quillen counseled Jones to keep busy on the anniversary of her nephew’s death and on his birthday. Those days, she said, would be rough. Jones organized an annual coat drive around Everson’s birthday. She donates the coats to local homeless shelters.

Jones also made good friends through the organization. She attended a survivors support group and five of the women kept meeting after the sessions ended. They lean on each other, talk through the ups and downs and celebrate milestones, Jones said.

She misses her nephew but these days she can think of him with a smile, remembering his jokes and words of love. This peace wasn’t easy to come by. She had help.

“They don’t give up on you,” Jones said.

Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463; hefley@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @dianahefley

Victim Support Services

VSS is a nonprofit organization.

More information or to donate:

www.victimsupportservices.org or 425-252-6081