The Harriet Tubman of Utah doesn’t necessarily look like the sort of person who spends her life rescuing refugees. There are no discernible hard edges to her. She’s not a tough talker. Get her going and she’ll brag about her three daughters and her husband Larry. She smiles a lot; cries at the drop of a hat.
But underneath Tonia Tewell’s benign soccer mom exterior beats the heart of a person who would crawl through red tape and around barbed wire, whatever it takes, to help provide safe passage for people fleeing polygamy.
How many has she helped — standing arm in arm with the donors, volunteers and like-minded people who work with her — since starting her nonprofit, Holding out HELP, in 2009?
Thousands is the answer. Literally thousands. They migrate in from the three largest polygamous sects in the area — colloquially known as the FLDS, the Kingston group and the Allreds — as well as a few splinter factions. Through word-of-mouth or Facebook or Instagram or some other form of social media, they find out about HELP and Tonia and they bid their old way of life goodbye.
Not unlike the runaway slaves who found Harriet Tubman on the Underground Railroad in the 1800s before the Emancipation Proclamation was passed.
Two events in Tonia’s life prepared her for her self-appointed calling.
The first was when she was a 12-year-old girl in Omaha, Nebraska, and the principal of her junior high school called her into his office. Frightened she’d done something wrong, the principal quickly assuaged her fears. He’d seen her hiding behind the bushes after school, guessing she was afraid to go home to an abusive, drug-and-alcohol infested environment. She told him he guessed right.
The principal and his wife arranged to have Tonia come live with them, thereby course correcting a life that could have gone in so many other directions. “I’ll never forget how it felt when he said, ‘We want to keep you,’” Tonia reflects.
The second event came in 2005, when she was a young mother of three living in Draper and was diagnosed with Stage 4 lymphoma cancer. She and Larry, after meeting, marrying and graduating from the University of Nebraska (Tonia was the first in her family to get a college education), had moved to Utah in 1999 for job opportunities.
The prognosis was dire. At the height of her misery, alone in the hospital, Tonia asked God “for another day, week, month, months, years, whatever that looks like, and I will serve you boldly in whatever capacity you see fit for my life.”
After success with a new experimental medication, a drastic diet change and many more prayers, two years later she was declared cancer free.
As fate would have it, right after that, a woman came to the church Sonia attends — she’s a nondenominational Christian — and asked if anyone would be willing to harbor a family that was escaping polygamy.
That very week, two women and four children rang the doorbell at the Tewells’ home.
When more permanent digs were found for that family, another group moved in. For the next two years straight, the Tewells had polygamy refugees of various numbers living in their house.
“We essentially became the Underground Railroad here in Draper,” says Tonia. “The neighbors thought Larry was a polygamist.”
Tonia did so much, so often, so well, that in 2009 the former polygamist family she’d first helped — who were by now safely assimilated back into mainstream society and aware of many of their former neighbors who longed to join them — asked if she’d be willing to start a nonprofit so others might be assisted.
Well, Tonia was the right person to ask.
In February 2009, Holding Out HELP (Helping Encouraging and Loving Polygamists) was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) charity.
Generous donors provided the initial funding that got the organization up and running, highlighted by Holly Alden purchasing a large residence in Draper that served as the group’s first safe house.
“Holly’s Home” remains the nonprofit’s headquarters to this day, although much more safe housing has been added through the years.
A mix of donors, grants from foundations, and a yearly stipend from the state Legislature keeps the enterprise going.
That and Tonia.
She oversees a staff of 10 full-time employees, along with dozens of contracted counselors, lawyers, private investigators and other service providers.
At that, they’re woefully understaffed and underhoused. The numbers seeking help don’t go down. Every month, someone new turns up on the doorstep. Some have the distinctive prairie dresses and braided hair that identify them as FLDS, while others could be your next-door neighbor. “They might be standing next to you in the checkout line at the store and you’d never know,” says Tonia.
None are turned away. None are preached to. None are shamed.
“It’s so important that there are no ulterior motives, no agendas other than just service,” says Tonya.
“Clients ask me all the time, ‘Why are you doing this?’” she says. “‘You’re doing this for me, so what do I have to do for you?’ And I’m like, ‘I want you to make the very best life for yourself you can. That’s it. And I want you to turn around someday and give back to just one other person.’
“If we all did that in this world, can you imagine what a better place this would be?”
To learn more, see holdingouthelp.org.