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Sheltering youths is Margot Carlson’s life-long journey

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Margot Carlson recalled the moment in 1968 that began her journey from stay-at-home mother to executive director of a nonprofit committed to supporting struggling Orange County children and families.

She and her husband learned after the birth of their sixth child, Margot Rose, that the baby had Down syndrome.

“It was a shock,” Carlson said. “Back then, no one really knew anything about Down syndrome. It’s a significant loss. I’d mentally bargain with people, asking, ‘Do they know?’ and ‘If you accept my child, I’ll accept yours.’

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“I decided I had to change the world to make it more palatable for handicapped people.”

With Margot Rose entering kindergarten and Carlson’s passion to protect children holding strong, the mother of six returned to school at age 39, earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social ecology and juvenile justice and community mental health from UC Irvine. She also obtained a license in marriage and family counseling.

Carlson interned at Community Service Programs, a Santa Ana-based nonprofit started in 1972 at UCI. During her internship, she would sit beside officers in police departments to reconcile juvenile or family matters.

More than 40 years later, she leads the organization.

“Children today are forced to make decisions on their own and they’re not equipped,” she said at her office in Santa Ana. “With the Internet, mistakes can be magnified and publicized and that’s a bigger leap.”

The agency, which serves more than 100,000 people a year, provides assistance to people who are involved or at-risk of being involved with the justice system. It attempts to keep youths out of gangs and offers adolescent and family counseling, parenting classes and help for human trafficking victims.

Each year, the agency assists 18,000 victims in coping with the aftermath of domestic violence, sexual abuse, assault and other crimes. Homeless, runaway and abused children ages 11 to 17 are sheltered in therapeutic settings at two facilities founded by CSP under Carlson and 94% are successfully reunited with their families, she said.

The services have earned respect from law enforcement and the court system. Colleagues have called Carlson “extraordinary” and a “role model” for her advocacy for troubled children and abuse victims.

Steven Sentman, chief probation officer at Orange County Probation Department, said that in his 30 years with the agency, he hasn’t met anyone with her ability to build collaboration among county agencies.

“She is a solution-orientated executive director with a big heart for doing what is right,” Sentman said. “Her long-standing efforts in the community through CSP has set the bar for others to follow. She has personally been involved in countless initiatives for the probation department and is always willing to help in any way she can.”

Orange County Superior Court Judge Kim R. Hubbard has known Carlson for about 15 years.

“Margot ... has been “tirelessly dedicated to [CSP] programs and refuses to take ‘no’ for an answer,” she said in an email. “Most of us have learned that when Margot wants something, it will save a great deal of time and effort to simply give in because sooner or later you will do what she wants.”

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Dick and Margot Carlson met in Chicago in the mid-1950s while students at a branch of the University of Illinois.

They married and lived in the suburbs of Chicago to raise their family. Carlson had just delivered their fourth child, David, when her husband told her that he had a job transfer to California in two weeks.

The family had two house-hunting requirements: Live near water, since it would remind them of Lake Michigan, and be close to a Catholic school.

They’ve called Laguna Beach home for over 50 years.

The Down syndrome diagnosis served as Carlson’s catalyst to help make a better world for Margot Rose and other children in need of support.

Carlson was 18 units short of a bachelor’s degree when she registered at UC Irvine. Margot Rose was in kindergarten and the older children in grammar school and high school.

Carlson learned she could earn credits to complete her degree if she secured an internship doing field work. She landed an opportunity in 1972 under Arnold Binder, the founder of the university’s social ecology department.

The days of meeting weekly with a psychologist, reading about community and behavioral skills and raising six children wasn’t easy, but she had support.

“I was able to do it because everybody pitched in,” Carlson said. “I had a disabled woman help me with Margot and I had a supportive husband.”

Her vast education and experience would serve her and the clients at CSP well.

The now-executive director founded the first CSP Youth Shelter in 1979 in Laguna Beach. Children at risk of incarceration, homelessness or hospitalization receive immediate shelter, meals, 24-hour supervision, academic tutoring and life-skills development activities. The program now has a second location in Huntington Beach. Both sites aim not only to help youths but also to strengthen the family, Carlson said.

At the end of their stay, children write evaluations, describing the experience.

Carlson remembered a letter from a 12-year-old boy, who said his favorite part was when the youngsters ate together.

“A lot of these kids never sit down with their family and have dinner,” Carlson said. “It was so touching that he prized that.”

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Despite having spent four decades supporting victims, sheltering children and counseling and educating families, Carlson said she still has many more program goals to accomplish.

CSP, which has more than over 250 employees and a number of volunteers, receives funding from federal and state agencies and donations. Whether the charitable gift is monetary or in the form of a volunteer’s time, it’s always needed and welcomed, she said.

Today, Carlson’s six children and eight grandchildren remain active in the cause. Margot Rose, Carlson said, is happily working at Goodwill with some of her roommates, and Carlson’s daughter-in-law Carol, serves as director of CSP’s Children’s Crisis Residential Program. Dick, Carlson’s husband of 59 years, died in 2011 and was memorialized at the family’s parish, St. Catherine of Siena.

She’s proud of the agency’s successes and said more are to come.

“This career choice has certainly occupied my life,” Carlson said with a laugh. “I’m proud that we have remained true to our mission, to work as an alternative or enhancement to the justice system. There’s a lot of work still to be done but we are a part of something that was a vacuum before and we’ve filled that.”

For more information about Community Service Programs, call (949) 250-0488 or visit cspinc.org

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