Aesha Dorris, freshman at Urbana High School, sits eating Taco Bell at the Marketplace Mall food court. On her feet are black Air Force Ones that coordinate with her shiny gold belt, which coordinates with her black and gold T-shirt. Across from her is Tammie Mabry, who has jeans and a gray fleece on, along with white and green gym shoes. Aesha doesn’t find these particularly appealing.

“Everybody looks at your shoes,” Aesha tells Mabry, shaking her head at the white and green sneakers. “Everybody looks at what you wear. It’s for the boys.”

“You think they’re looking at your shoes?” Mabry said, laughing.

Aesha and Mabry’s friendship, like most relationships, took a lot of work to create. For the past two years, Mabry has been Aesha’s mentor as part of Mission 180, a non-profit organization that helps at-risk kids and teenagers in the Champaign-Urbana area. Working with kids who get in trouble at school or with the law, Mission 180 has 18 mentor and mentee pairs in the organization right now, and an additional 20 kids waiting to get a mentor.

Aesha and Mabry, who is a third grade teacher at St. Joseph School, can often be found at Marketplace Mall, where Aesha helps Mabry find clothes that she can wear out. Usually they run errands, or Aesha comes over to Mabry’s house for dinner with her husband and two kids. They joke with each other and talk freely, but it took a while to establish the relationship.

“She didn’t talk much for the first few months, which is now hard to believe,” said Mabry, 32. “Everything she said to me, I had to ask her.”

“Now we talk about a lot of things,” Aesha said.

Mabry became Aesha’s mentor after Aesha went to the juvenile detention center.

“When I used to live with my mom, we used to always argue, and then one day she had enough and called the police,” Aesha said, who now lives with her aunt in Urbana. “They took me to the detention center. It wasn’t good. It was miserable, I had to do exercise, I couldn’t see people, I couldn’t see my mom.”

When on probation, Aesha was asked if she wanted a mentor, and she said yes.

Aesha and Mabry were paired up by Jeff Hunt, director of Mission 180, who at the time worked with schools and the juvenile detention center to get mentors for kids. Hunt, 31, started Mission 180 with his wife a couple months after Mabry became Aesha’s mentor.

“My wife and I have worked with kids since we’ve been together for 12 years,” Hunt said. “We worked with a different organization in town for awhile and thought about starting Mission 180, something that focuses specifically on local (kids at risk), because there’s just not a whole lot going on for these kids other than trouble. Once they’re labeled, they’re labeled, by the police or school, and we want to help break that up.”

Hunt’s primary goal with Mission 180 is to get positive people involved with kids who get in trouble at school and with the law, and show them an alternative lifestyle.

“They may not see that there are other things out there than what they are doing that is getting them in trouble,” he said.

Mission 180 consists of a number of mentors who work with kids and their families to give them a positive environment.

“The first time that any of the mentors meet the mentees, Jeff goes with them to (the mentee’s) home to meet the family, and we sign a friendship pact,” Mabry said.

Hunt says parents with kids in the program are “very pro-Mission 180.”

“A lot of problems do stem from home, not to just blame it on the parents, but the neighborhood,” he said.

Hunt said Mabry has helped get Aesha to a good environment and her life back on track.

“When Aesha started eighth grade, her grades were failing, (she had) a bad attitude, and was always in trouble at school,” he said. “Now she’s getting excellent grades, her attitude on life is better, and since she’s been with Tammie she’s gotten off of probation.”

Lynette King, Aesha’s aunt who she now lives with, has had a close relationship with Aesha, and can attest to her bad behavior.

“She screamed, she’d fight and argue, she was disobedient, just really terrible,” said King, 30.

King thinks that Aesha’s anger was directed at her mom.

“(Aesha) and her mom weren’t getting along,” King said. “She was really upset and angry.”

King said Aesha has changed and now acts more like how she did when she was growing up.

“Now she’s a really sweet person,” King said. “When she was growing up her mom would always stay away, and she used to come down and spend the weekend with me and my mom. Now she’s back to that little girl again. She goes to school, she’s obedient.”

Mabry also sees a difference in Aesha’s behavior.

“I think the biggest change in her is that she stops and thinks before she acts,” Mabry said. “Back then she was so caught up in negative emotions, she would react to whatever emotion she was having at the time. Now she stops and thinks more about the effects of her actions.”

Jeff Hunt says his favorite part about Mission 180 is seeing mentors be successful with the kids they are paired up with.

“I’m happy for the mentors, because they struggle a lot,” he said. “They put in a lot of time and energy, patiences are tried and tested over time, and for them to get to the point where kids are finally understanding the point of turning things around, I enjoy watching the mentors react to that. It’s not only a testimony of the kids, but the mentors sticking with it.”

Aesha said from time to time she thinks about being a mentor when she gets older.

“I’d just do what my mentor did,” Aesha said. “I’ll copy off her.”

Aesha thinks that if she didn’t have a mentor, she would have been more likely to get involved in negative things other girls her age do.

“I’d probably be like one of them girls on the streets,” Aesha said.

Jeff Hunt said Mission 180 has changed Aesha’s life immensely.

“At her last court date the state’s attorney held up something with Mission 180 on it and said, ‘This is what saved you,'” he said. “Not to say there aren’t issues, she’s still a teenager, but she’s made a drastic turnaround and that’s the goal of (Mission) 180.”