When Dr. Karen Gedney started mentoring the children of incarcerated parents ten years ago, she was surprised at how chaotic their lives were. “They were bouncing from one place to another,” Gedney said. “Their breakfast was soda and a Cheeto-like substance. They were sleeping in other people’s apartments under the kitchen table and they were surrounded by members of their family who were violent and involved in criminal activity.”
Gedney was introduced to the task of mentoring these children while treating inmates at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center, a men’s prison, from 1987 to 2016. She also treated inmates at the nearby Stewart Conservation Camp, a minimum-security facility. Together with her husband, Clifton Maclin, who is now deceased, they mentored five children through the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization. “The three oldest have completed college and I continue to mentor the two youngest who are siblings, Jalyssa and Dante,” Gedney said in an interview. “We realized that to make a significant difference we had to mentor children at risk, especially the ones who had no father, or a father in prison.”
