Monday students at Ricker Middle School had a working lunch of sorts.
About a dozen volunteers with the community action group Parishioners on Patrol put on their bright green vests and spent the lunch period talking one on one with students.
Led by Pastor Larry Camel, the group's purpose was to talk to students about how they can be part of the solution instead of the problem.
Camel says this is the second outreach of this kind this year. The first was at Buena Vista High School.
Camel says every student he spoke with at the high school knew someone who had been shot.
The student outreach is the result of several months of conversations following the death of 9-year-old Devin Elliott, who was shot last September.
And Camel says this is just one part of the Parishioners on Patrol 2010 vision. He says more details about other outreach activities will be revealed next week.
Camel adds that this lunch event has been planned for a while and it's just a coincidence that it comes just weeks after a Ricker Middle School student and his friend was arrested for allegedly making threats on MySpace.
Camel hopes to prevent situations like that.
"We find that young people are locked on revenge. And they lock out the consequences of their actions," he said.
"And they don't really understand the ramifications of what they've done until they're down at a police station, and they're looking at 30 to 40 years in prison."
Some of the Ricker Middle School students got to talk to a man who knows the consequences of bad choices all too well.
