What happened was Helton and her nonprofit Classroom on Wheels (C.O.W.). With a mix of public funds and corporate sponsors, the former branch manager at a temporary-help service company bought her first bus in 1992. It was so successful that Helton was able to raise enough money to increase her fleet to six, each renovated with classrooms that hold up to 18 children and each painted, in honor of the organization's name, like Holstein cows. With help from her eager staff, what began as a modest program for about 36 kids now reaches 414 children in 23 Las Vegas-area neighborhoods.
Cora Lou Baker, a kindergarten teacher, says she can spot C.O.W. kids on the first day of school because they hang up their backpacks, listen, raise their hands, don't talk out of turn and know how to sit in a group. "I just cannot even stress their fine motor skills," says Baker. Adds Adrienne Cox, assistant director of the Clark County Department of Family and Youth Services: "We think Louise walks on water."
Helton's passion for good deeds is in her genes. (Or, as she jokingly puts it, "I come from a long line of pushy broads.") Her mother, Jane Seelinger, 67, was appalled when the family moved in 1960 to the outskirts of Lubbock, Texas, and found that there was no elementary school for Louise and her sister Amanda Dagucon, now 43 and an artist. Jane petitioned neighbors, addressed the city council and finally persuaded the school board to build a school. "I think I'm a lot like my mother," says Louise, whose father, Tim Tinsley, a mortgage banker, died of a heart attack 25 years ago and whose mother remarried in 1967. "She doesn't realize there's anything she can't do."
Louise's attitude caught the eye of Jerry Helton, 49, a land developer who met her on a blind date set up in 1976 by mutual friends. They married in 1977 and moved in 1983 to Las Vegas, where they live in a two-story Mediterranean-style house with their 13-year-old son T.J. and daughter Adriann, 17.
But Helton had more than motherhood as her mission. She felt for all children, and tears still well in her eyes when she recalls the three students in Adriann's first-grade class 11 years ago who didn't know how to use scissors or distinguish a red crayon. But not until Helton read an article in 1989 about a Tennessee teacher who drove buses into the countryside to teach rural kids did Helton realize she could do something similar in Las Vegas. "It was like, 'Eureka!' " says Helton. C.O.W. now has the support of the governor, the state board of education and the business community, and Helton has since helped create Clinic on Wheels and Computer on Wheels programs. The former provides health screenings for kids, while the latter teaches parents computer skills. Though her mom is stretched thin, daughter Adriann is proud: "Everybody is her child, but I have no problem sharing her."
Helton is not about to let success slow her down. She likens her cause to a woman wearing a set of matched pearls who is walking down the street when the necklace suddenly breaks, and the pearls scatter. "You just try to save as many as you can," says Helton. "These children are precious pearls. They are our future."
Nick Charles
Kelly Carter in Las Vegas
- Contributors:
- Kelly Carter.
VANISHED WITHOUT A TRACE
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