Rising — The Phoenix Story: He Tried to Make Us Leave. We Didn’t.

He’d been practicing the exit for his whole life — so he got very good at making people want to go.

His name, for our purposes here, is John. But to understand why we do what we do, you need to understand where John came from.

John was born inside a California State Prison. Adopted at birth by a couple who, by all appearances, were giving him the fresh start every child deserves. That start didn’t hold. The marriage of his adoptive parents fractured from addiction, mental illness, abuses and when the dust settled, John and his stepfather moved to Las Vegas, Nevada. His stepfather fell in love and remarried. Unfortunately, his stepmother did not want to share her love with John. Tensions rose between John and his stepmother to the point that she gave her new husband an ultimatum; either John goes or she does. John was dropped off at Child Haven in Las Vegas the following Monday.

A civil citation for child abandonment. That was the first consequence. A piece of paper. For a child.

And in John’s mind, another betrayal, another abandonment. The first being his birth mother and the second, a father who adopted him to appease his first wife only to be abandoned for the love of his second.

The Bag of Tricks

John had a system. It made complete sense once you understood it. He’d been left by everyone, born into trauma, adopted into it, then rejected by the one person he’d let himself count on. So he developed a skill: he would push, and poke, and test, and torment, until the people around him did what everyone in his life had always done eventually.

Leave.

Better to race them to it. Better to control the ending.

He cycled through female caseworkers - each one trying, each one worn down. And then he was assigned to Zachary.

John ran his whole playbook. Every trick, every provocation, every carefully constructed reason for Zachary to walk away. Zachary didn’t walk away. He stayed with John for a year and a half, through every test, every wall, and every moment. John was essentially screaming just go, everyone goes, but Zachary didn’t go.

Zachary was eventually transferred to CPS investigations. John aged out of the system. And then, for a long time, he disappeared.

The Doorstep Call

The call came from John’s old foster placement. John had shown up on their doorstep. There was no warning. With nowhere to go, cycling through group homes and getting kicked out of each one he went looking shelter. Could Zachary help?

Zachary called Amber. They talked. And then they brought John home.

He stayed with the Grays for a few months. He was making progress. John learned to navigate the Medicaid system and stabilized his medication management. And he enrolled at UNLV for the fall. But John had a complicated history with women, with trust, with the specific kind of closeness that a family home requires. He struggled. He decided he wanted to go back to a group home.

His choice was respected, and Zachary and Amber could only watch what happened next: he stopped taking his medication. He never showed up for the fall semester. He disappeared again into the places that swallow young men who never had anyone to catch them.

Zachary and Amber don’t know where John is today. But they carry John with them everywhere.

Why We Started With Young Women — And Why We’ll Come Back For The Boys

Here is the honest answer to a question people sometimes ask us: if your founding story is about a young man, why does your program serve young women?

Because the need across genders is enormous, and you have to start somewhere. We started where our combined experience, our networks, our licensing pathway, and the specific gaps in Southern Nevada’s service landscape told us we could do the most good, fastest.

Amber has spent 16 years working with at-risk young women. She knows this population with a depth and specificity that matters in practice, not just in mission statements. The programming we’ve designed, the trauma-informed approach we’ve built, the kind of home environment we’re creating; it is grounded in her expertise.

But we want to be clear about something: a home for young men is not a someday dream. It is a next chapter we are actively working toward. Because we know what happens to boys like John when no one builds that chapter. We’ve felt that particular grief. We’re not done with it.

We started with young women because that’s where we could build something real and sustainable right now. We’ll come back for the boys because John taught us that nobody should be left waiting on a doorstep.

“He spent years making people want to leave. We decided to be the ones who stayed — and that decision became everything we’re building.”

If you believe no young person should age out of care and into nothing, we’d be honored to have you with us. Visit phxfoundationnv.org to donate, volunteer, or simply follow along.