New teen club director expands offerings

Heather Young never met Charles "Chop" DeMeo, one of the thriftiest, yet most generous friends Santa Rosa ever had.

But Young holds some remarkable possessions left behind by the attorney, bank founder and long-ago Santa Rosa mayor who died a childless widower at age 90 in 1995.

Young owns stacks and stacks of 3-by-5 cards that DeMeo used for decades to keep meticulous track of his law practice's accounts receivable. Here's one from March, 1938: A $5 charge for preparing a client's income tax returns. Another, a hand-written entry from July, 1937, shows that DeMeo received payment-in-full -- $2.50 -- for a legal consultation.

Young keeps DeMeo's cards in the office she moved into recently at Chop's, the Santa Rosa teen club that DeMeo made possible through a surprise he quietly cooked up as he approached the end of his life. He left to the city's teens and to struggling young mothers in Sonoma County his modest Ridgway Avenue home and his $16 million in investments.

Young flipped through a deck of DeMeo's bookkeeping cards and shook her head. "He made that $16 million," she said in wonderment, "$5 at a time."

Young is new to Chop's, the successor to founding executive director Tom Tolliver, who launched the $5 million teen center at the site of the former Lena's Restaurant on West Sixth Street at Adams in the West End neighborhood near Railroad Square. Tolliver resigned in March.

The teen club's second director is a former Oregon farm girl and eight-year Santa Rosa resident whose career as a manager at Hewlett-Packard/Agilent plants in Palo Alto and then Sonoma County ended when her job was eliminated. Young recalls the first time she walked into Chop's a few years back.

"I remember feeling like Dorothy at the Emerald City and thinking, 'This is fantastic.' " Her job as the nonprofit club's new boss is to make it even more so.

Santa Rosa middle school and high school students do use Chop's. About 900 teens hold the $1-a-year membership to the center, and on a recent afternoon every computer in the tech lab was used. Kids were having fun on the basketball court, in the "Fishbowl" sitting room, on the climbing wall, at the billiard tables, in the arts studio and in the Club 509 cafe/dance hall.

Young said 150 middle-schoolers showed up at the center's last third-Friday-of-the-month dance.

But she believes, and the Chop's board of directors agrees, that as the club enters its eighth year, there's great potential for it to become a true hub for youth activities and services in the city.

Young has begun reaching out to schools and agencies that serve teens, inviting them to explore partnerships and collaboration with Chop's. High on the new director's to-do list is to clear up with potential donors one major misconception about the teen club -- that it's rolling in dough.

Chop's was indeed built with money that DeMeo left to Community Foundation Sonoma County for the creation of a place for Santa Rosa teens to meet, play and learn. And the club's basic operating costs are covered by annual earnings from the half of DeMeo's gift that was invested to fiance a perpetual endowment.

But, in accordance with DeMeo's wishes, the foundation uses some of his money to benefit people in Sonoma County -- especially young single mothers -- who are homeless or at risk of becoming so. The amount of DeMeo money available each year for operating Chop's does not cover all the club's needs.

Young took her new job understanding that she needs to bring in about $100,000 a year for programs -- things for teens to do. "That's going to be my challenge, to see where we can raise those resources," she said.

As it is, there's always something happening at the club, which opens at 3 p.m. on school days, noon on Saturdays. Regular attractions include art classes, flag football nights, movie nights, billiard and ping-pong tournaments and Friday night dodgeball.

Young has begun building upon and adding to those activities -- a box-games area is coming together in an unused corner of the tech lounge.

"I want a quiet room and a library," she said, explaining that in the Chop's library she imagines, teens are free to take the books, read them and pass them on.

She aspires also to introduce more teens to the cool possibilities presented by the center's Club 509, the night spot that gets its name from Chop's address on Adams Street. It's a cozy and inviting space whose classic, salvaged bar, booths and front door would be familiar to anyone old enough to remember Lena's, the Italian restaurant that occupied that same corner from 1890 until its demolition in April of 2000.

"We'd like this to be an alternative to unsupervised house parties," Young said of the Chop's nightclub. "I'd like to see it packed."

She spends a lot of time talking with the teens who come to Chop's, asking them about their lives and about what programs and activities they'd like to see at the club. She loves to give tours to parents and prospective new members.

Young said she's aware that getting downtown to Chop's is difficult for some kids, and she hopes to find a way to offer transportation.

"It's a little bit of a quirky location, frankly," she said. But one of the nation's nicest benefactor-built, privately operated teen clubs had to go somewhere, and she's glad it was West Sixth and Adams in Santa Rosa.