Turmoil takes a toll on a good family trying to make it
11:51 AM 4/19/04
Andy Hall and Dean Mosiman Wisconsin State Journal

<

Bad things happen to good people like the Barlow family in the Allied Drive neighborhood. <

Troy and Dorene Barlow, with four children from 3 to 15, are known for hosting neighborhood barbecues. Their Carling Drive apartment is among the nicest in the area, with four bedrooms and three bathrooms. Monthly rent is a mere $725. <

"That's why we don't leave," said Dorene, 34, who operates an in-home day-care center but has trouble attracting customers. <

Troy, 42, is a maintenance mechanic who's so good at fixing things - washers, dryers, vehicles, computers and roofs - that Dorene calls him "my own personal handyman." Neighbors pepper him with calls for help. <

"I want to be just like him," said son Troy II, 10. <

Since moving into the apartment in 1993, the family has been irritated and sometimes scared by the neighborhood's turmoil - most of it caused by outsiders. <

Drug dealers firing guns from cars. Burglars taking DVD and VCR players, two televisions and more than 20 videos. Prostitutes soliciting Troy while he works on the family car. Fifty to 100 young people quarreling in the parking lot. A paintball hitting their car. Tiffany getting shot with a BB. <

When Tiffany, 15, waits for a bus, drug dealers ask, "You wanna buy weed? You wanna buy crack?" <

Dorene has taken note. <

"I see that a lot of the problems that my kids have are from growing up in this neighborhood," Dorene said. <

In eighth grade, Tiffany said, she yielded to friends' influences and began skipping school. She disappeared with the family car. Her parents pressed charges and she was sent away to a group home in Monroe for 6 months. <

"That's the only reason she got help," Dorene said. "It can be good families having problems." <

They want to escape, but they don't know how. <

The chaos hobbles anyone who might want to rebuild the area "because they're too busy trying to fight off everything else that's around here, trying to keep their kids safe and their things safe," Troy said. <