Potomac Ridge helped troubled teen gain new direction

He had ulcers from stress and pent-up anger by the time he was 19. He hadn't seen his mother in six years. He led an unguided life, which led to a crime that landed him in prison and which he no longer wants to discuss. On June 5, 2006, a judge ordered him to the Ridge School of Montgomery County, part of Potomac Ridge Behavioral Health in Rockville, where he would spend the next year-and-a-half.

Now the clean-cut 20-year-old lives in Silver Spring, works the third shift at UPS to pay for college and his new car, and dreams of one day being a homicide investigator for the FBI.

"If I hadn't gone through the program, I'd most likely be in jail or on the streets with no goals set for life or anything like that," Teabout said. "My decision-making was kind of off."

At the Ridge School, he and the other teens settled into a routine that included school, free time, meals, counseling and not much else. Some students resented the confinement and only wanted to get out, so they did what Teabout calls "fake it to make it."

"I first started off faking it because I was just trying to get out of here," he recalled, sitting in a conference room on the administrative side of the same building where he attended the Ridge School. "But eventually it was like, no, I don't want the same lifestyle. I was confused. Didn't know if I wanted to go to school, didn't even know if I wanted to live anymore. I was just confused at life in general."

At times, he said, the only person he felt safe talking to was a social worker who helped him locate his mother and grandmother, who he learned were both terminally ill.

"At that time I was on the verge of my transformation, I realized that these two very important people in my life were ill and close to death," he said. "So that was a very emotional time for me, and, to be honest, I don't think I've quite gotten over that. It was a struggle to overcome knowing these things and not being able to see them like I wanted."

Teabout's mother died just before Christmas. The funeral was on Christmas Eve. He remembers the time as a turning point — a transformative period of mourning where he began to understand that there were people in the world who were concerned about his well-being.

"I saw Mom a week before she died," Teabout said.

The social worker and teachers formed a cocoon around him. That is when he stopped faking it, Teabout said.

He saw his younger brother — one of four brothers and two sisters — begin to follow the path that had led him to prison and he began to realize that the changes he was making were for himself, as well.

Lisa Nelson, a teacher at the Ridge School, said Teabout's experience isn't unusual and what helps him is his ability to be honest with himself.

"Quite a lot of [students] have trouble verbalizing their emotions," she said. "For Devon, that change came when his mom passed. You have to remember, these kids missed huge chunks of their early childhood programming. So you will find 18-year-olds completing assignments with Play-Doh models, collages, ways to get their feelings out."

Overall there are about 130 students in the Ridge School, with six to eight students per class. The intimate class setting is vital for making a connection with students, Nelson said.

For Teabout, that connection worked. He graduated from the program in late 2007 and went straight into Montgomery College to complete a year of general studies at the Rockville campus.

He transferred to Tesst College of Technology in Beltsville and is studying criminal justice.

"I've always been a ‘CSI' [Crime Scene Investigation] and ‘First 48' fanatic," he said, referring to the television shows. "I want to be a homicide investigator."

His schedule now is almost as regimented as it was at the Ridge School, Teabout said. He works from 9 p.m. to 3:30 a.m., goes to school from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., rests at home until 6 p.m., and then starts getting ready again for work. He works Sunday through Thursday.

He sums up his time at the Ridge School as "time well spent."

"I was here for about a year, and in that time it's like I went from being a 5-year-old to a 20-year-old," he said.

For kids who could be heading in the same direction he took, Teabout has this advice: "I would not say it's not hard. It's most definitely very, very hard. Whatever got you here, you're still human. You gotta learn that there are certain things that you have to do, but don't want to. But in the end the outcome will be good if you allow it to. You've got to accept hope and want to help yourself. I was always a strong believer that in order for you to get help you've got to help yourself."