Toughlove Had a $22,000 Price : Families: When Koendarfers took advice of self-help group and refused to take back their troubled teen-ager, the county hit them with a bill for her care.

LAGUNA HILLS — When Joyce Koendarfer received the telephone call last February from a sheriff’s deputy that her adolescent daughter had been arrested for shoplifting nine packs of cigarettes, she thought things couldn’t get worse.

But that day, Koendarfer and her husband began a process that has left the family holding a $22,000 bill owed to Orange County.

At issue for the Koendarfers--and for others like them who ultimately refuse to take their troubled teens back into their homes--is who should pay for those teen-agers’ care. So far, the state has paid $22,000 for 14-year-old Amber Koendarfer’s housing and counseling, after her parents gave up. And now the state has sued them in Orange County Superior Court to recover those costs.

For nearly five years, the Koendarfers grappled with the difficulties of raising a suburban “wild child”: cursing, defiance, threats, truancy, alcohol and drug use, attempts to run away and minor scrapes with the law, resulting in short stays at Juvenile Hall.

“I don’t like dealing with authority,” Amber Koendarfer admitted. “I don’t like to listen to what (adults) say. I’m very rebellious. I want to go by my own rules.”

In response, the family ran the gamut of treatments--inpatient and outpatient therapy, groups, contracts and alternative school programs--racking up $50,000 in insured medical costs in 1991 alone, according to the family.

When Robert Koendarfer, 44, was laid off from his aerospace job, he decided to remain home, so at least one parent would be available full time to care for the couple’s three children while Joyce Koendarfer worked as a legal secretary. To change their environment and cut costs, the family moved from Lancaster to Laguna Hills, crowding in with Joyce’s mother.

At the same time, the family sought the counsel of Toughlove, a self-help group that urges parents to make children take responsibility for their actions, and followed that advice for two years.

So, when the sheriff’s deputy last February asked Joyce Koendarfer to pick up Amber, she said no.

“I wouldn’t go and pick her up,” Koendarfer said. “In the past, by doing that, things were not changing. . . . We had done everything that we had known to do and that we could afford to do.”

Koendarfer said she hoped her refusal would trigger a state-supported process, with court-ordered probation or mandated visits to a social worker.

Instead, Amber was sent to the Orangewood Children’s Home for two weeks. Shoplifting charges were dropped against her, but when the Koendarfers still refused to pick her up, they were charged with criminal abandonment. Those charges were ultimately dropped, and Amber was sent to a private, supervised group home in Garden Grove which contracts with the county .

“There is a substantial danger to the physical health of the minor, if the minor is returned home, and no reasonable alternative means to protect that health exists,” county social worker Maryanne Duffy wrote in her recommendation to the court. The document also noted that the family would be liable for reasonable costs.

In August, the Koendarfers received a letter from the county, asking them to come to the district attorney’s division of family support. At that meeting, they were served with a civil suit for the costs of caring for Amber, and shown a printout detailing $22,000 in costs.

The Koendarfers have refused to pay, and are now defending themselves in the lawsuit. Since making that decision, the family has learned of at least five other South County families who also are being sued for the costs of their children’s care.

Shortly after the suit was filed, the Koendarfers decided they could not bear the financial costs and asked to bring their daughter home. Authorities agreed, although Amber’s status will be reviewed by the juvenile court on Monday.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jan C. Sturla, chief of the family support division, said he could not comment on the details of the Koendarfer case, adding that “we can all be empathetic that parents have problems in raising their children.”

However, he explained that county policy is set by state statute, and that his office is required to try to recover the full cost of foster care, regardless of the reason a child is placed in such care. However, actual payment is based on parents’ ability to pay, Sturla said, and that can be as little as $175 per month of care, paid off in monthly payments as small as $25.

Joyce Koendarfer said she and her husband declined to provide the county with data about their financial status during their meeting. They did provide such information to the public defender’s office, which represented them.

Sturla said that serving civil papers on clients during such meetings is also standard procedure.

“We are required by law to enforce parents’ obligation to care for their children,” Sturla said.

As for who should bear the cost of therapy for a troubled child, Sturla said the question is, “Is the therapy being provided in support of the child . . . or is it to protect the rest of us?” If it is the latter, Sturla said, “we foot the bill for it.”

In times of budget cutbacks, with the county’s juvenile court system choked with young people charged with murder, rape, robbery, burglary and child molestation, Sturla said, families with lesser problems may not find the state willing to pay for their children’s therapy and care.

“The scarce resources that we have are not going to be employed . . . simply because we don’t have the luxury of doing that any more,” Sturla said. “It’s left to the parents to control or not control” their children.

These days, said Robert Koendarfer, the family takes everything “on a day-to-day basis,” with the normal amount of ups and downs, but “no real heavy trouble. . . . Before it was a battle zone. It’s a lot more pleasant to be around her.”