The letter in June that told Lazanay Wandick the government was cutting off her pandemic unemployment benefits was not even the worst of the news.

Far from it.

That came two months later when she held a followup letter in her hands. Before she was cut off, she’d received three months worth of benefits — roughly $8,000 that had helped her stay afloat in her pandemic-scrambled summer.

The second letter came with a demand: Pay it all back.

“It was a shock,” Wandick said.

First off, she hadn’t understood why she’d been denied, having been laid off by a Plaza restaurant last March after Covid forced it to shut down.

Her mother had also lost her job at a carpet store, leading them to move in together with Wandick’s fiancé, whose general contractor business had slowed and who was straining to carry them all through.

“It was very stressful,” she said, “ . . . trying to figure out how to redistribute funds.”

Her breakthrough came after she was hired in October to be a receptionist in the Hickman Mills School District — because that’s when she saw the district’s flyer for “Justice in the Schools.”

Eligible Hickman Mills families, it said, could get help from Legal Aid of Western Missouri through its program dedicated to the district and supported by LINC.

Wandick’s case would become one of nearly 100 that Justice in the Schools has handled since it began in January 2020, said program attorney Garrett Christensen.

Many of the cases have dealt with intense situations of guardianships, custody and domestic strife. Others have navigated document-heavy court struggles with tenant issues, property disputes, government benefits and other entanglements that program clients could scarcely afford to tackle on their own.

The program also has attorneys who are working with families in the Kansas City Public Schools.

Wandick just hoped that Justice in the Schools could help her get at least some of that $8,000 debt relieved.

What had complicated Wandick’s case was that prior to her Plaza job, a broken-down car forced her to resign a previous job that required her to drive. She’d been denied benefits based on the prior job.

Christensen represented her at her appeal hearing in November and provided clarifying information that the Department should instead qualify her under a special pandemic-related unemployment program and back-date the benefits to when she first applied after her layoff from the restaurant.

The Department agreed and withdrew the $8,000 overpayment notice. She thought it was done.

Then came the January morning her fiancé woke her to ask why $4,500 was deposited in their account. The answer, Christensen was able to assure her, was that the government should have continued to pay benefits for the weeks between when she was denied and getting a job at Hickman Mills. So she got back pay.

“It worked out the way it was supposed to,” Christensen said.

Many have needed help.

Missouri offices of the U.S. Department of Labor are overwhelmed the same as in most states by the number of cases during the pandemic, and Justice in the Schools’ ability to ply through the system has aided many people.

Many situations are fraught with emotion, Christensen said. Family law cases, particularly when there is danger of domestic violence or abuse, have been tense.

The program has helped a Hickman Mills parent make use of a Kansas City ordinance that allowed her to get free of a lease to an apartment because she had a protection order from someone who was a danger to her if she remained in the apartment.

Guardianship and custody cases are also difficult, like one situation where the program is helping a grandparent secure guardianship of a child whose father, they are arguing in court, presents a risk and who is not cooperating in providing a safe home.

“These are tough cases,” Christensen said.

Other times, a family just needs help navigating a complicated civil and probate court system — like the Taylors.

Mylan Taylor, a Ruskin High School senior, was nearing his 18th birthday earlier this year. He’s a miracle, having survived a premature birth that brought him into the world at 15 ounces — not even a pound.

His parents, Mark and Valorie Taylor, have seen him through it all. And it was at some of the events shared with other parents of children with disabilities that they’d gotten a lot of advice.

Mylan had starred at the Special Olympics, and it was at track meets that Valorie Taylor remembers another Hickman Mills parent with a teenager with special needs telling Taylor all the legal details that needed to be established now that Mylan Taylor was going to be 18.

There were issues of guardianship, authority for medical decisions, life decisions . . .

“She was telling me, ‘you need to do this, this and this . . .’” Valorie Taylor said.

“She said, ‘Call Garrett.’”

The legal help the Taylors received has brought the support of the district schools and LINC full circle for her son, Valorie Taylor said.

“LINC (staffers) took him under their wings,” she said. And it was comforting for Justice in the Schools to help secure his care going forward, with Christensen taking them before the probate court, and another attorney appointed to Mylan Taylor to make sure his best interests were honored.

“I want him to be as independent as possible,” Valorie Taylor said of her son. “I want him to be able to help and volunteer . . . do the best he can, maybe get a job. He’s a great young man.”

It’s cases like these that encourage Christensen that the one-year-old Hickman Mills Justice in the Schools program is “off to a good start.”

“We continue to build relationships with our community partners and the schools,” he said. “I hope we’re helpful.”

By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer