Kids on her school bus get benefit of the doubt
Theresa Cain is completing her first year as a school bus driver for Goose Creek CISD.
“When I was in sixth grade, I helped a kid run away. He came to school, and you could see he was beaten from his hairline down to the top of his calves. It was horrible. I told him, ‘You’re not going home today.’
“He rode the bus home with me. I gave him my BB gun, and I told him to meet me in the barn. A little while later, I brought him some snack cakes.
“That night it was really cold outside. It froze. And he came knocking on my bedroom window, where me and my sister shared a room. I gave him some more clothes, some sweatshirts, and told him to go get in the barn and cover up with hay. I told him that when we left for school in the morning, nobody would be in the house so he should come in through my bedroom window, watch TV, take a bath, and eat what he wants.
“I was so scared. I couldn’t sleep that night. I knew I was in so much trouble, and I was afraid of what was going to happen to him.
“The next day at school, of course, the principal pulled me out of the classroom and asked if I knew where he was. I was going to keep saying no until he said, ‘Well, your sister already said something, and the whole bus saw him get off at your house. Where’s this kid?’
“I finally told him that he’s in the woods by my house. But I made them promise that they wouldn’t make him go home again. So I brought him in, and he lived in foster care after that.
“Years later I ran into the guy again. By then he had a couple of kids, and he was welding. He told me some of the hard stories of what happened in foster care. Then I got to thinking. If the parents had just treated that kid right, he wouldn’t have had to go through all of that. But how do you know?
“That’s why today when I look at some of these kids on the school bus, you just don’t know what they’re going through at home. If they’re acting up, you don’t always know why. I try to give them the benefit of the doubt. There are consequences for their actions. But I try to show them there’s also unconditional love out there.”
— Theresa Cain
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