SEQUIM — Jason DeGoede, 16, is done being stupid.
That’s what he told Sequim dermatologist Agnieszka Niemeyer when he met her just before last Thanksgiving.
On that day when boy and doctor were introduced, DeGoede was wearing the black rubber plugs known as gauges.
They had been stretching holes in his ear lobes — wide holes — ever since he first put them in sixth grade.
By last fall, though, DeGoede had had a realization.
Adults — “important adults” as he puts it — looked at him with suspicion, even revulsion, when they saw the gauges.
The plugs, too, were a symbol of DeGoede’s recent past: years riddled with convictions of alcohol possession and assault.
Then, to make matters worse, a nasty fight at Sequim High School led to his expulsion.
“I was a little punk,” he said.
Today, DeGoede wants to start anew.
He’s been going to the Sequim Boys & Girls Club, where he now volunteers alongside Stephen Rosales.
Rosales invited him to join the teenage volunteer corps at the Sequim Food Bank, so in addition to working at the pantry each week, he helps Rosales with the food bank’s Walmart run.
It was at Walmart that Rosales, who knew of DeGoede’s wish to restart his life, introduced him to Niemeyer.
She just happened to walk in, and upon hearing a little of the youth’s story, she asked him: “Are you done being stupid?”
Yes, DeGoede answered without hesitation.
Niemeyer, however, was wary. Though she adores teenagers — and is a confidante to many who see her for acne treatments — she knows some can be flaky.
So she told him she would operate on his ears, to repair the damage.
And “I don’t want money,” Niemeyer added. “But I want him to work it off.”
Volunteer work
So work DeGoede does, in the mornings and evenings, with Rosales and with unit director Mary Budke at the Boys & Girls Club.
He staffs the phones, sets up furniture, cleans — and continually asks Budke and the club staff what they need.
Budke didn’t give a number for how much work DeGoede will have to do.
“He doesn’t care if I count the hours,” she added. “He just cares if I say that I need some help.”
The hard thing for DeGoede was complying with Niemeyer’s other demand.
She told him he had to take the gauges out, and let his ear lobes rest.
“They looked horrible,” he said.
When he removed the plugs in November, his ears were shriveled and thin, and when other teenagers saw them, they urged him to put the gauges back in.
But DeGoede is past that now.
He used to wear an eyebrow ring, too, and one day when he took it off, he noticed that adults looked at him differently. Without that piece of metal above his eye, he realized, he didn’t look like such a scary character.
DeGoede imagined how people would see him differently, then, without the big black things on both sides of his face.
“I realized that I’m going to have to get a job . . . and if I want to do anything great with my life, the gauges are going to have to come out,” he said.
DeGoede expresses no bitterness about the fact that outward appearances can determine so much in a young person’s life.
But “I’m trying to change my inside as well,” he said.
Back when DeGoede first started gauging, “It was pretty painful,” he said. “I went bigger and bigger,” month after month. “There’s something about it that’s addictive.”
Many changes
Today it’s clear DeGoede has gone through many changes, outside and in.
He has made friends outside his old circle, and through them and the Sequim Boys & Girls Club, he has found fierce advocates — adults whose actions show they are new members of his family.
Two of his friends are Spencer Budke, a Sequim High School senior and son of the club’s Mary Budke, and Sandy Landis’ son Jake Labbe.
Labbe and DeGoede met on a particularly bad day at school. DeGoede had spilled milk on his pants at lunch time, and three other boys had begun ridiculing him. It looked like a three-on-one fight was in the offing.
Labbe walked up and said, “No, you all three are not about to fight him,” DeGoede recalled.
The group dispersed, and then Labbe went and got his extra pair of jeans out of his truck and gave them to DeGoede.
Now Landis is helping DeGoede appeal his expulsion from Sequim High.
“He’s been in and out of the juvenile system because of situations at home,” Landis said. “When kids come out [of the system], they need a safety net.”
Landis, Rosales, Budke and Niemeyer are that for DeGoede.
Niemeyer, for her part, said the surgery “is no big deal.”
Budke disagreed: “It is huge,” she said, adding that if DeGoede paid for the operation, it would cost between $1,500 and $2,500.
Niemeyer added the surgery may have to be done in stages. To which DeGoede said: “That’s perfectly fine with me.”
“It’s great when you can use your skills to make a difference for somebody,” his doctor said.
Making a difference
She and her husband, Sequim ophthalmologist Matthew Niemeyer, have made several major donations, including a Lasik surgery package for the annual auction, to the Boys & Girls Club since the couple arrived nearly three years ago.
The club, Niemeyer said, is worthy of her support because “it’s a place where you can come to make a change in your life.”
And DeGoede reached a fork in the road, she believes. “I’m glad I could help him take the right fork.”
Niemeyer said she will schedule the surgery later this year, after she has done more research on the best way to repair the boy’s ears.
Meantime, DeGoede thinks about his new life.
“I want to graduate a Wolf,” as in from Sequim High, “and go to college, and graduate from college, and go into diesel mechanics,” he said.
As for the surgery, “I’m excited about it. For sure.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
