B4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, AUGUST 6 , 2019
pair or both.
Others were settled on their
aspirations.
“I’m here for a reason — I want
to work for Prince George’s
County,” said Raymond Evans, 17,
who helped service an
air-conditioning unit at the
early-childhood center.
Under the new program, the
students are considered “regis-
tered apprentices” who will put
in 6,000 to 8,000 hours of work
over a period of years as they
complete high school and do
course work at Prince George’s
Community College.
About 8,000 students are in-
volved in career and technical
education in Prince George’s.
The program has expanded its
offerings to new career fields in
recent years.
John Plater and Clifton Ken-
nerly, lead carpenters who were
supervising the Bladensburg
High students, said the teenagers
have impressed them.
“They’re good kids,” Kennerly
said. “A lot of the youth today
aren’t interested in learning a
trade, so to get some kids who
really want to learn is really
refreshing.”
Plater said he wished the pro-
gram had started 20 years ago.
“Their attitude is so positive,” he
said. “This is overdue.”
[email protected]perched atop a ladder, replacing
a lighted exit sign not far from
his supervisor, electrician Ruy
Monzon.
Herrera said he was still decid-
ing whether his future was in
electrical work, automobile re-agreed, went far beyond the
classroom.
“Using my hands to do it, it
means a lot more,” he said. “It
sticks.”
Inside the portable they were
refacing, Jesus Herrera, 17, was“From where we started, we
know a lot more,” said Barrien-
tos, who wants to be an architec-
tural engineer and sees carpen-
try as foundational in his learn-
ing.
The experience, Williamshome address from online data-
bases gave her peace of mind.
She runs a business focused on
networking, but for years, she
didn’t feel safe enough to adver-
tise her company on social me-
dia. It wasn’t until about a year
ago that she felt comfortable
creating her own Facebook ac-
count.
Even now that she has re-
moved her current home ad-
dress from seemingly every pub-
lic database, Tunon still sets an
alert on her calendar, every
three months, to search her
name on Google.
“That trail can just continue
on,” she said.
[email protected]to vote in years, because they
feared disclosing their addresses
publicly.
“Abusers are very savvy and
will utilize whatever tools and
connections available to them,
so it’s critical, particularly in this
day and age, that we have this
program,” Dalton said.
Even when there isn’t an im-
minent threat to a person’s safe-
ty, the fear that his or her
address could be shared can be
crippling, said Andrea Gleaves,
also of the D.C. Coalition Against
Domestic Violence.
“It’s not just physical safety,
it’s emotional safety,” Gleaves
said.
For Tunon, removing herVictim Hotline.
Ohlsen plans to train assis-
tants at these locations to walk
people through the process of
applying to the Address Confi-
dentiality Program.
Under the new statute, the
Office of Victim Services and
Justice Grants can send a partic-
ipant’s information to the D.C.
Board of Elections, unless the
participant opts out. If eligible
to vote, the participant can then
vote by absentee ballot without
his or her home address being
made public and without a court
order.
Garcia said the program will
probably be most useful for
people relocating to a new home.
If a victim has lived in the same
house for years, it might be too
late to scrub his or her home
address from all publicly avail-
able records, especially those
collected by online data-mining
companies. The program, Garcia
said, “is not a guarantee of
safety.”
“It does increase safety for
victims, but we also know that
abusers, stalkers, perpetrators
can be incredibly manipulative,
can be incredibly committed to
finding their victims,” Garcia
said. “We have seen too many
cases where, despite all of the
victims’ best efforts, they have
been located.”
For some victims of domestic
violence, a lack of address confi-
dentiality creates a major bar-
rier to voting. Advocates like
Dawn Dalton, policy director at
the D.C. Coalition Against Do-
mestic Violence, recalled people
who said they hadn’t registeredher about $250 a year.
Certain agencies, such as the
Board of Elections, required a
court order for an address to be
removed from a voter’s records.
“Every time, you have to relive
what happened in the past,”
Tunon said.
The Address Confidentiality
Program is intended to make
this process easier. The details of
how the program will work are
still in the planning stages, but
the newly hired program coordi-
nator, Sarah Ohlsen, said she
hopes to offer the resource
through government agencies,
domestic violence shelters and
other places that provide ser-
vices to crime victims in the
District. One major point of
referral will probably be the D.C.learn it,” said Booker, who gives
the teenager informal weekly
quizzes.
Their talks go beyond plumb-
ing, Booker said. He has been a
mentor to other young people
over the years and says he makes
a point of sharing life lessons —
how to manage money and the
importance of writing down
goals, for example.
“These are the kinds of things
we talk about daily,” Booker said.
The recent heat wave didn’t
slow them down. Summer is a
busy season, important in the
yearly cycle of maintenance be-
fore the new school year begins
in September.
One recent day, as Wilson and
Booker worked in Suitland, other
students were making repairs in
Capitol Heights, near a cluster of
portable classroom trailers at the
H. Winship Wheatley Early
Childhood Center.
Alex Barrientos, 16, and
Dorian Williams, 17, measured
plywood sheets to replace
weather-battered exterior siding
on a portable. Using a power saw,
they cut panels to just the right
size and screwed them into
place.
The teenagers, apprentices in
carpentry, are students at Blad-
ensburg High School. They
found on-the-job experience to
be a big step forward in the trade.carpentry or plumbing, while
others are involved in masonry,
electrical work or
air-conditioning systems across
Maryland’s second-largest
school system.
In all, 20 students from three
high schools are part of the
launch. All are rising
12th-graders, and four are girls.
School officials intend to expand
in the future and include more
career fields.
Many students, including Wil-
son, 17, have already drawn
praise from the experienced
tradesmen who are teaching and
mentoring them.
Walter Booker, a master
plumber with more than four
decades of experience, said Wil-
son has not missed a day and
shows up early.
“This young man, I’m very,
very impressed,” he said. “He’s
been on point. He’s never been
late. He’s very astute. He asks a
lot of questions.”
Booker, 61, said he has been
teaching Wilson the basics of
plumbing — how to inspect a
pipe, find clogs, use tools — as
the two ride around in a white-
panel utility truck and respond
to work orders.
“There’s so much to learn, and
every day he proves he wants to
APPRENTICE FROM B1
2015, she was surprised to learn
that the nation’s capital had no
citywide program for shielding
the home addresses of stalking
victims in government databas-
es.
“The reality is there really was
no process before,” she said.
Because Tunon was a D.C.
homeowner, a registered voter,
and the owner of a home-based
business registered and licensed
in the District, her address was
made public through numerous
agencies, including the Depart-
ment of Small and Local Busi-
ness Development and the Office
of Tax and Revenue. She had to
contact each government agency
and fill out tedious paperwork to
request to change her home
address to a P.O. box, which costsality programs.
Eligible D.C. residents will be
able to apply for a substitute
address that they can use when a
D.C. agency asks for a home
address. Once approved, the per-
son’s home address would re-
main confidential for three
years, renewable for two-year
terms.
One of the driving forces be-
hind the program is Michelle
Garcia, director of the D.C. Of-
fice of Victim Services and Jus-
tice Grants, who previously
spent nearly a decade as the
head of the Stalking Resource
Center of the National Center for
Victims of Crime. When Garcia
began working for the District in
ADDRESSES FROM B1
New D.C. program will streamline process of making an address confidential
Students, Prince George’s prepare for the future with apprenticeship program
SAMANTHA SCHMIDT/THE WASHINGTON POST
When a former boyfriend was stalking her, Jessica Tunon, 42,
faced a struggle to remove her home address from public records.DONNA ST. GEORGE/THE WASHINGTON POST
Dorian Williams, 17, a rising senior, works on a project at the H. Winship Wheatley Early Childhood
Center in Capitol Heights. “Using my hands to do it, it means a lot more,” Williams said. “It sticks.”BY JUSTIN WM. MOYERA man was gravely injured
Monday in a shooting that fol-
lowed a fight at a funeral, authori-
ties in Maryland said Monday.
About 1:10 p.m., officers re-
sponded to the 5800 block of
Suitland Road in Suitland for the
report of a shooting, a Prince
George’s County police spokes-
man said.
They found a man who was
shot in his upper body and who
was taken to a hospital with
critical injuries, the spokesman
said.
The shooting occurred after a
fight at a funeral for a person
killed in the District, Prince
George’s police said in a tweet,
and the victim was found in a car
nearby.
Police did not release the name
of the D.C. homicide victim but
said an altercation at a church at
the corner of Suitland Road and
Walls Lane preceded the shoot-
ing. After police responded to
that fight, the shooting occurred
blocks away, and a dark-colored
sedan was seen leaving the area.
[email protected]MARYLANDShooting
follows
dispute
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