Robert Castillo

Review of Scotts Valley Children's Cente...

I sat on this for over a year because when I think...

I sat on this for over a year because when I think back I'm still appalled at how my family was treated and I had trouble expressing my opinion without expletives. At the time I was working across the state and my wife was taking my son here on a scholarship. It wasn't long before the people in charge started treating us rudely and implying that we should be nothing but grateful that we were allowed to bring our child here.

Then the requests began. They wanted donations of items and our time with increasing pressure. Each time making it known that we could opt out with additional cash donations. We were on scholarship because we couldn't afford it. My wife was often unavailable to "donate" time because she worked.

My wife had a few meetings and always came away feeling bullied, shamed, or dismissed. During one of my trips home I had the opportunity to sit down with program coordinator and try to work things out. She was condescending and insistent on her every point and repeated each of her concerns until I either agreed with her or asked her to move on. Without room for discussion I finally told her that she didn't need to harp on every item because I am an educated man.

The only word she heard was "man" and from that moment forward I was treated like some kind of sexist and she refused to listen to my concerns any further. We were eventually asked to leave with the parting words, "Some people just aren't worth the trouble".

I'm not a spiteful person by nature, but if this directors car was stalled out in the rain I wouldn't stop to help her.