The Purple Palace
Blanca left our children’s home, wiping her tears away as she had just left her eight-month-old baby with us. She knows that we will take good care of her daughter and she will now either choose to go to drug rehabilitation or continue in the drug/prostitution scene in the red-light district, Zona Norte of Tijuana.
Pathologist, Dr. Tyler and Connie Youngkin started a home for children of the red-light district in Tijuana eight years ago. It really began 10 years ago when Connie would go around the streets with her friend, Hortensia, and help with the needs of women and children that they would meet. We saw how there were children, living in the streets or in broken down, dirty, muddy shacks who were deserted most of the time by mothers on drugs and working in the legal district for prostitution. We wanted to grab up these kids and care for them!
Tyler and Connie first went to Costa Rica to learn Spanish, latin culture, and work and learn in an orphanage for two years. We sold our home in Poway, sold or gave away all our belongings except for a small closet of mementos. Our three children were all grown and out on their own, but it was still very painful to leave them.
We returned to Tijuana and rented a condo. Tyler began to work again part time at Scripps Mercy Hospital to cover our personal expenses and also help the children. We began to set up a place in the area of the red-light district to start a hoe for the kids from the worst situations.
We began with five boys, 10 years old who were sleeping in an alleyways. They would rob and beg for food and something to keep them warm. One had a gun and shot a man’s kneecap because he wouldn’t pay back some money he owed. Sometimes for “fun,” the boys would pour the 100 percent alcohol that drunks were drinking and light them on fire. Some of the boys would make money by singing on buses, cleaning cars, or bringing little girls to pedophiles for money. Little by little we found the kids that really needed help. We started out with cots in an old storage building; we fixed it up to make it pretty nice. The kids had a warm bed, clothes, good meals, and we enrolled them in school for the first time! We opened our girls section after two years to help the little girls severely abused sexually and physically. One little six-year-old girl was raped by her mom’s boyfriend and then her little sister was raped in front of her and then he stabbed her sister to death. Little girls come to us not wanting any contact. But with consistent caring, embracing, and love, they are now happy, well adjusted, beautiful girls. We have three psychologists that have helped immensely to heal the hurts of the children.
Eventually, we expanded over the years to 95 kids. Now we are renting a 15,000-square-foot, beautifully renovated home with hot showers, comfortable beds, furniture, nice clothes, thanks to hundreds who provided and still provide. God has blessed us and these children with a bright home made possible by volunteers, college students, an architect for resort hotels, professional construction guys, families, churches, and different groups, who started showing up to help by word of mouth.
Our children are doing well in kindergarten to high school. In a year half of our first group of students will be going to the university or career school. Many of the children are tops in their classes and one was number one in his whole junior high school for all three years.
We just opened up a home that has room for 18 boys who need help to get off drugs. This home is two blocks away from our other home. We now have six boys from 12 to 16 years who want to change the course of their lives.
We want to not only meet basic needs but encourage these kids to love god and others. Already, the older kids have built six basic houses for needy families. Our kids visit rest homes frequently to help in the care of the elderly and disabled. They have taken various leadership courses to be a leader which means to serve and help others.
There are 21 workers who care daily for the kids. To care for a child, it takes $10 U.S. daily. We spend $250 daily for food. We trust God to move hearts to provide for the needs. So far, the children are cared for. It has been and is a blessing to be part of this work that many have helped to make possible.
Our website is www.thepurplepalace.org. To communicate with us, email us at tycoon_mx@yahoo.com. Tax deductible donations: Make check payable to Children of Promise Int’l, designate for Youngkin mission, Mail to COPI, 6844 Loop Road, Centerville, OH 45459. Thank you!