Jane Hegstrom celebrates a quarter century with CASA

Jane Hegstrom is celebrating 25 years as a CASA volunteer.

“I come back for the satisfaction of seeing the tangible difference you can make and the fact that I really do believe everyone is given some kind of a gift intended to benefit other people,” she says when asked why she returns year after year.

Her gift is the ability to see a need others may not have seen and then take the steps necessary to meet that need.

Jane took the oath of a Court Appointed Special Advocate on Feb. 2, 2001. The stay-at-home mom had just seen her youngest start high school and had time to put her servant’s heart to work.

“I had a friend who was a foster parent and she had a little boy,” recalls Jane. “That little boy had a CASA and I met that lady and saw what she was doing for the boy.”

She advocated for children on 14 different cases over the next 17 years, sat on the CASA Board of Directors for six years, and even took the Supervised Exchange & Parenting Time (SEPT) and Life Long Links (LLL) program trainings to ensure she was well-versed in all aspects of CASA.

In 2018, she stepped away from advocacy to pour more of herself into her personal CASA project – The Hanger, a clothing store which first opened in an empty space on Boulder Street in 2013.

The Hanger is not just any store though. It’s a refuge for teens living in out-of-home placement. It’s a place where they can not only shop for free clothing, accessories, and personal items but where they can also work, build their resumes, take life skills classes, and prepare for adulthood.

The store has changed the lives of more than 3,000 foster teens since Jane first founded it more than a decade ago.

“Sometimes it’s the little things that can change a vulnerable child’s life,” she explains. “Clothing means a lot to teens. For foster teens especially, nurturing their self-esteem is so important if we want to help them overcome their trauma and succeed as adults.”

Jane’s inspiration for The Hanger was a teen girl who had moved from a rural high school into a large Colorado Springs high school. After so many truancies, the girl finally confided in Jane (who was her advocate at the time) that she was ashamed to go to this large school in the same clothes day after day. Jane collected gift cards to ensure the girl could buy new clothes. Dressed in her new clothes and feeling good about herself, she returned to school, made good grades, and graduated.

“After watching this teen return to school with the self-confidence that cool clothing can provide to a girl, I wondered how many other teens would stay in school if they could just like the way they looked,” Jane said.

Nowadays, The Hanger is located inside CASA’s office downtown. Jane has many stories of kids whose very first experience shopping for and choosing clothing came at The Hanger. She says those kids leave the store with their head held a little higher.

And a quarter of a century after discovering her gift, you will still most likely find Jane sitting on the floor at The Hanger, sorting through donations, looking for confidence-boosting teen styles.