Sharon Fuqua sent her daughter to the Utah desert last week, hoping the girl would turn her life around in a wilderness experience for troubled youth.
Kristen Chase, 16, however, collapsed and died before she really got involved in the 63-day Challenger Foundation program.Though state licensing and law enforcement officials are conducting an investigation of Challenger and the death, Fuqua had nothing but praise for the program she believes would have saved her daughter's soul.
Meanwhile, Challenger director Stephen Cartisano told a national cable TV audience on Monday that Chase's death was not the result of the Challenger program. She hadn't yet begun the 63-day "expedition" and was on a 4 1/2-mile day hike to explore some nearby caves and arches when she died.
"She could have walked over to Central Park and collapsed," Cartisano said on the Jane Wallace show on the Lifetime TV channel.
Her death, though "heart-rending," has not caused him to re-evaluate his program.
"We've had too much success," Cartisano said, pointing out that 750 youths have completed the program.
In a telephone interview with the Deseret News Monday, Fuqua said she believes Challenger had nothing to do with her daughter's death, and she wouldn't hesitate to send another child into the program.
"We're not condemning Challenger. I've never met any more dedicated, loving people striving to help children," said Fuqua, who declined to discuss why she and her husband decided to pay the $16,000 to enroll their daughter in the program.
"What we did for our daughter was the best thing we could have ever done. We felt this was the answer. I truly feel it would have been if she'd been able to complete it."
Chase, who would have turned 17 in August, was hiking on Fiftymile Mountain in Kane County about 4 p.m. last Wednesday when she became dizzy, fell to the ground and died. The medical examiner is still awaiting the results of numerous tests, but preliminary examinations indicated her death may have been heat-related.
Following her death, the state Department of Human Services ordered Challenger and other similar wilderness therapy programs to keep their enrollees at base camp pending the outcome of an emergency meeting scheduled for Tuesday. Invited to the meeting are licensing officials, representatives of the state's nine wilderness therapy programs and police officers.
Among the issues at the meeting is how to license Challenger, which, by way of a loophole, had been the only wilderness program operating without a license. A state law passed at the past Legislature went into effect Sunday, mandating that all such programs be licensed.
In the wake of Chase's death, however, it is unclear whether the state will grant Challenger a full license. Human Services spokeswoman Terry Twitchell said her department is conferring with the attorney general's office to consider giving Challenger a provisional or probational license pending the outcome of the investigation into the death.
"We're just not real sure about it right now," Twitchell said.