MOUNT VERNON — Seated on stools around a metal table bolted to the floor Friday, three teenage boys unwrapped corn husks from their tamales for Christmas dinner.

“You bought all of this?” asked a 17-year-old.

Corrections Sgt. Leiann Scee nodded: “Yeah, me and (officers) Alex and Deena.”

“Thanks,” said a 16-year-old who had requested tamales for Christmas, pausing in between bites. “It means a lot to us.”

A second 16-year-old teen told Scee he was also happy with the meal.

“This is what I wanted,” he said. “This is good.”

The corrections officers and the teens’ teacher chose to prepare lunch for the teens Thursday and Friday rather that serve the meals provided by the jail’s food service contractor. It’s been a tradition for a number of years for corrections officers at the detention facility to prepare a Christmas dinner, said John Lum, director of Skagit County Youth and Family Services.

To select a menu, the officers asked the teens what they wanted to eat. Tamales and fruit were among the requests. The officers also provided pumpkin pie and cupcakes.

“Many of those young people have not experienced these kinds of things,” Lum said. “A lot of these kids have never celebrated their birthdays and holidays.”

To help celebrate, the staff set up a Christmas tree in the control room where the kids could see it, though out of reach for security reasons. Scee wore a long-sleeve red shirt under her tan uniform and accessorized with reindeer antlers with flashing red lights.

The three eating tamales were among five teens spending Christmas in the Skagit County Juvenile Detention facility. The other two ate in another room because they don’t get along with the other three, corrections officers said.

To be admitted into the detention facility, the Skagit Valley Herald agreed not to publish the teens’ names, photograph them or ask about their criminal charges.

Scee and corrections Officer Alex Esparza cooked Spanish rice and refried beans and reheated pork tamales that were purchased from a mercado in Burlington. As Esparza and Scee worked in a tiny kitchen, corrections Officer Deena Wilhonen kept watch in the control room, monitoring the facility with closed-circuit cameras and other equipment.

The three teens packed away three or four tamales each and a second helping of beans. Then they dug into the pie.

The 17-year-old, who had asked for fruit, paused to savor his grapes, dipping one in the whip cream that topped his slice of pie.

As he ate, he told the two younger teens that he dreamed Thursday night of getting out of detention on Christmas Day and of his sister taking him to the mall.

For some kids, the dinner isn’t just a treat, it’s an education.

“We’re using the opportunity to teach and to have the kids experience different foods they weren’t exposed to before,” Lum said.

Part of the reason corrections officers make the meal is because they want to. They also hope the teens will learn something about giving and gratitude.

“This bunch of kids is a pretty grateful bunch of kids,” Scee said. “They say ‘thank you’ pretty often.”

Juvenile courts commit about 1,000 teens a year to the state Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration, according to the state Department of Social and Health Services. Their average age is 16.5, and 88.4 percent are male.

In 2007, the most recent figures available, teens who committed robbery, 16.1 percent; assault, 15.4 percent; and burglary, 14.7 percent; made up the bulk of the state’s juvenile detention population, according to the rehabilitation administration.

While in detention, the officers want the teens to learn life skills that will keep them from coming back and to find positive ways to connect to their community, Lum said.

“We don’t want the kids to believe that the community has given up on them,” Lum said.

* Marta Murvosh can be reached at 360-416-2149 or .

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