Laura Swanger

YOU’RE 13 YEARS OLD. Why are you out on the streets, carrying a gun?”

Officer Laura Swanger was all too familiar with the scene. In her 12 years with the San Diego Police Department, she had arrested more than 400 kids, many of them homeless, for some gang or drug-related crime. Their answer to her question was alarmingly, intolerably consistent: “Listen, lady, my parents and my teachers know where I am. And they don’t care.”

Convinced the only way to effect positive change was to educate, instead of criminalize, these kids, Swanger decided to leave the force. After earning her teaching credential, she turned her conviction into action and became an educator at downtown’s Monarch School, serving the county’s homeless and at-risk youth.

“I wanted to be on the other side of the equation with the kids,” says 40- year-old Swanger. “By the time I left the police department, I had such a heart for the kids; they felt like everyone had given up on them.”

The San Diego Regional Task Force on the Homeless estimates there are approximately 110 homeless youth at any given time on the streets, and more than 2,200 homeless children in San Diego. Founded in 1988, Monarch School provides these kids with an accredited education while also caring for basic needs such as clothing, meals and healthcare. More than 100 students between the ages of 7 and 18 are currently enrolled.

Swanger came to the school in 1993, a “seamless” transition from the police force after two years spent visiting classrooms as part of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program.

“The school needed someone who really understood how these kids live, and I knew it would be a place where my police career would really add to my teaching career,” she says.

A native San Diegan, Swanger says her students, most of whom get to school without the encouragement or assistance of a parent, arrive each morning with a distinct purpose: to learn. “My students’ attitude is ‘Don’t babysit me, and don’t entertain me,’ ” she says. “They demand a quality education and aren’t looking for an easy A. I am a demanding teacher, and they absolutely respond to that.”

Presented with sloppy homework or a low test score, Swanger has her students repeat the question “Do you want fries with that?” “I tell my kids, ‘That is all that you will be qualified to say if you don’t produce work that you and I both know you are capable of,’ ” she says.

Armed with empathy and insight afforded by her police background, Swanger is able to get through to her students when others may struggle to relate. “These kids are the true heroes. I just feel fortunate to teach them.”

© 2006 San Diego Magazine

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