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Good Neighbor Podcast: Cooper City
Bringing Together Local Businesses & Neighbors of Cooper City
Good Neighbor Podcast: Cooper City
EP #143: Rick Weber's Journey with Sheridan House Family Ministries
Ever wonder where people turn when they need a helping hand? Meet Rick Weber from Sheridan House Family Ministries, an organization devoted to supporting struggling families in our community. With a history spanning over 55 years, this episode takes listeners on a journey through the incredible work they've done and continue to do. Rick, who transitioned from the golf industry to a nonprofit ministry, enlightens us on their programs that instil personal responsibility, time management, and respect for authority in young boys. He also shares the admirable support they extend to single mothers, equipping them with life skills while providing financial assistance, counseling, and housing.
From swinging golf clubs to serving communities, Rick's personal story is as inspiring as the work he does. Join us as he gives an inside scoop on how he moved from the fairways to the heart of the community, highlighting their commitment to financial transparency and accountability. He also shares his collaboration with local pastors on the Parenting On Purpose podcast, a resource providing practical parenting insights. If you've ever wondered about life as a golf pro, Rick drops a few snippets about his experience and his move to Florida. Want to make a difference? Listen in to find out how you can support Sheridan House's mission to serve families, irrespective of their beliefs.
For more information on how we can help go to SheridanHouse.org or call 954-583-1552!
This is the Good Neighbor podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Jeremy Wolff.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello everyone, and welcome to episode 143 of the Good Neighbor podcast. I'm your host, jeremy Wolff, and today I am joined by Rick Weber with Sheridan House Family Ministries. Rick, thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 3:Hey, Jeremy, hey, thanks for having me on your show this morning. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:How are you today? I'm doing really well in yourself. I'm doing awesome, yeah, all right. Well, let's get right into it. You were nominated by another guest that we had on previously and I, for one, I had not heard of Sheridan House. I know you guys are doing some phenomenal work here in our community, so please, sheridan House and those that don't know, tell us a little bit about Sheridan House Family Ministries, and then we'll go from there.
Speaker 3:Well, really, jeremy, it's really in our name. You know that word ministry actually means serve. You know we're here to serve families in our community. Sheridan House has been around since 1968, for over 55 years. It started as homes for boys that are, you know, teenage, middle school and high school age boys that are getting in trouble at school, getting Ds and Fs in school, on the verge of getting into real problems with their school and law enforcement, and their families. And we actually partner with the families when they put their child in one of our children's homes and the parents have to come to a weekly parenting class with us.
Speaker 3:And really the essence of the program is the boys learn how to take personal responsibility, how to respect authority, how to try their best, and we get tremendous results with our grade point average. It's not unusual, like I said, for kids to come into us with very bad grades and leave with as and Bs. But it's not that we bring in tutors into the program, we just teach them how to manage their time. You know study halls from 7 to 8 o'clock at night. You can draw if you want to, but you're going to be in there, but there's a father figure there and the other kids are encouraging them and they start to do a little bit of homework and because really, the only reason they're getting bad grades is that they're not applying themselves. But really what we want these boys to know is that God loves them and he has a plan for their life. And we get amazing results with this program.
Speaker 3:Along the way, we started helping single moms really, because about 65% of the boys in our program come from single-parent households. So we're working with over 250 single moms right now and they come to us for food and clothing and financial assistance and counseling and the only thing we ask is we'll meet that immediate need, whatever it is when they first come to see us. But to continue to get help from us, we just ask that they come to a monthly training class. Last week it was on social media and how to spot dangers of social media and the things that your kids can get into online. It may be a class on parenting. It's all practical application.
Speaker 3:And one of the coolest things that we do here is we have transitional housing for single moms. We currently have 14 moms living on property with about 22 kids and those moms live with us for a couple of years and learn how to. They meet with a financial counselor once a month and learn how to create a budget for the first time in their lives and how to get out of debt, stay out of debt and create a savings account. And while they're here, they pay their utilities. We have them pay a small rent while they're here. It starts out at $100 a month, it works its way up to $700 a month and then, after they're here for a couple of years and ready to launch on their own because the whole point is to get them independent we give them back their rent money. And they don't know that. I like that. That's nice.
Speaker 2:That gives them some. Now they have some skin in the game. Going through the process, they're invested in it and they get an added bonus to start off when they get out they do. That's really nice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, when you can sit down and talk to them about hey, your credit rating was $530 and now it's $680. Wow, and look what you've done. You had $10,000 in credit card debt. You've paid it off. Oh and, by the way, here's your rent money, what? Well, here's $12,000. We didn't want your rent money. We just wanted to make sure that you could learn how to pay rent on time. That's wonderful.
Speaker 3:The other thing we do here is we do a lot of marriage and parenting seminars, but we also have a full service counseling department. We have nine licensed mental health counselors that are here on staff and last year we counseled over 5,000 people. It could be people coming in for marriage counseling or premarital counseling or dealing with the death of a loved one or depression, but we have a very robust and busy counseling department.
Speaker 2:So speak, to the origins of Sheridan House. I know you mentioned it's been around for quite some time. How did it come to being in the first place? And then maybe you could speak to how you got involved with the organization.
Speaker 3:Well, it's a great story. It was actually a judge that went to the pastor of Sheridan Hills Baptist Church, where we got our name, and he just said to the pastor, bill Billingsley who was a great man, by the way that you've got to get involved in the lives of these kids so they're gonna wind up in jail. So what they did is they bought an old church on 441. We're currently in Davy. We've got 60 acres in Davy off Flamingo Road, but our original campus was on 441 back in the days where anything west of 441 was cow pasture, you know, and it was in a church that didn't make it and they converted it to a boys home and that's really how we started at Sheridan House. Now, today we're not affiliated with any church. We're here to. We serve a lot of the local churches. But the interesting thing is our number one source of referrals at Sheridan House is actually the public school system, because each of your C kids that were hey, this was the problem kid in my classroom and he was failing, and he came back from Sheridan House and now he's a leader and he's doing well in class. What's going on over there? So we have a lot of teachers come and take tours and we get a lot of referrals from school systems actually for the program.
Speaker 3:How I got involved was actually I started serving on the golf committee. I used to work in a golf course and started serving on the golf committee here because we hosted their tournament. And I was just so, so impressed at the time of Sheridan House. Commitment to financial transparency and accountability and a commitment to efficiency and how almost every dollar goes to help people and the commitment of the men on the committee just really, really affected me. And after about 10, 12 years of serving on the committee they asked me to come on staff and I said no, I just didn't see how I could make that transition from business and to working for a nonprofit.
Speaker 3:But then I realized and it's one of the misconceptions that people really have when they hear the word ministry. The misconception is well, that's only that's what pastors and clergy and priests are supposed to do. But the reality is, and why we do what we do is because we're Christians. Right, we don't care what people believe when they come here. We're here to help people. It doesn't matter to us what they believe or who they are, we're here to help them. It's why we do what we do.
Speaker 3:And it's when I realized, oh my goodness, god created us to do good works. That's in 1 John 4. And they asked Jesus. The Pharisees were trying to trap Jesus and they asked him what the greatest commandment is, and he said love God with all your heart, soul and mind. And then he said to love your neighbor as yourself, and your neighbor is anyone in your proximity. And that's what I guess. God did a work on me and after about two or three years of Dr Barnes asking me, I realized this is where I'm supposed to be. So I've been here now for 13 years and I just love going to work. It's just an amazing place.
Speaker 2:Obviously you mentioned you do a lot of work with local pastors and things of that nature. Do you know Mark Hattabow from the Pentecostals I don't Cooper City?
Speaker 3:No, he said well, I know. Well, we do work with Cooper City Church of God, but I think that's a different Pentecostal church. But I don't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm not. I'm not. I'm Jewish by faith. I'm not overly religious at the stage of my life, but I've had the good grace of linking up and meeting pastor Mark Hattabow from the Pentecostals of Cooper City. He was actually I publish local magazine here in the community, cooper City Living, and he was the first him and his wife and the first feature family on the cover of the magazine and I built a relationship with him and he does incredible amount of good work throughout the world through various philanthropies and charitable organizations and just a really, really wonderful human being. Oh, I'd like to meet him. Yeah, he definitely should link up. He just does such good work and with what you're doing there, you guys should definitely know each other, so I'll definitely have to connect you guys for sure. Well, thank you. Yeah, so, and I also noticed that you guys do one or several podcasts of your own through the organization. You have some really good content out there. Can you speak a little bit about the work you're doing there?
Speaker 3:Well, that's Parenting On Purpose ParentingOnPurposeorg and it's a 15 minute podcast. It's on a lot of radio stations throughout the country, but you can go on that website and download content or listen to content while you're exercising. On pretty much any topic you're looking for. You can find it in there. It's just really good practical information on how to parent and I highly recommend it. You know Sharon asked our story. You know a lot of things that we do. We started getting into the radio because we were on. Dr Barnes went to record a commercial for our golf tournament and they asked him to stick around. You got a great voice. Can you just stick around?
Speaker 2:and answer. He really does. I was listening to. He's got one of those radio voices.
Speaker 3:You had time and they actually did a one hour radio show for about 20 years on WMCU and now it's a podcast that he does with Tori Roberts, who worked in the children's homes as a behavior specialist and as a house parent, and between the two of them there's not much they haven't seen or had to deal with, so it's really great content.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know I listened to a couple of the episodes. I mean, I have young children nine and 11 and some of the stuff they were saying definitely resonated with me and where I'm at. So you had mentioned golf. Right, I'm an avid golfer, so tell me a little bit about what you used to do in the golf world and do you still like to play now?
Speaker 3:Well, I still like to play. I don't get to play that often anymore, but I started working at the golf course when I was a little kid. I just was hanging around so much. The pro said if you're gonna be here every day, all day, you gotta work. So he made me pick the range and then ended up working in the back room and then by the time I was about 14, I was locking the place up for him. He'd actually pick up the keys at the bus stop from me and I just kind of worked my way through that career from a very young age until I was about 45 years old.
Speaker 3:So there's nothing I haven't done in the golf business, from mowing grass to working in the pro shop to working in food and beverage I've done at all. But I ended up being with a golf management company for a very long time and had a good time doing that. And I'm a PGA member. I still am a PGA member. I did keep that membership. But a PGA member is different from a professional golfer or somebody plays golf for a living right, like Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson. Somebody like that, a PGA member, is a golf professional. It's in the business of managing the business of a golf course is what I did.
Speaker 2:Are you from South Florida initially, or where are you from?
Speaker 3:No, I'm not. I'm actually from Illinois. I grew up in Illinois, in the middle farm country in Illinois, and I Started coming back and forth to Florida in the wintertime because our season up there was only eight months long, you know, and I and I was going through this apprenticeship program and you had to work so many months actually four years to get to PJ membership and it was going really slow, only working eight months at a time. So I was coming back and forth to Florida and then there was a point where I just said you know what, I'm just gonna move there and work year-round. So I moved down to this area about 1986, started working at Bonaventure Country Club back then.
Speaker 2:Nice, nice, and so you don't, you don't get out that that often anymore. Huh.
Speaker 3:That's often anymore. It's just been a busy time in our lives. But you know I do really enjoy to play. So you know I play I don't know five or six times a year and Try to go hit balls at CB Smith Park every once in a while. That that's about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what was your handicap at your best?
Speaker 3:Oh, Not that good really. You know four or five handicap, three, four.
Speaker 2:Nothing good really. Four or five, three or four. Come on now, rick.
Speaker 3:Well, I saw like Pros are a little better than that, but but anyway, certainly not there today, that's for sure. Yeah, yeah, I you. What do you like to play you?
Speaker 2:be playing. You know I was playing quite a bit pre-COVID and even post-COVID I was playing a little bit and lately over the last year or so I just haven't really been playing that that often. And you know so it goes when you stop playing, when you do finally go to play. You know I stopped scoring in strokes and I score a number of balls I lose and it kind of doesn't, doesn't get me going anymore.
Speaker 3:It's interesting to me. You know you live in Cooper City and you haven't heard of us and we've been here for so long. If anyone wants more information about us, you can go to shfmorg. There are so many ways that people can get involved and help serve or help be involved in the ministry. But more than that, you know, if you know a family that needs help that's in crisis, it's having trouble with their teenage kid, if you, if you have a somebody you work with maybe it's a single mom that's struggling centered us. We don't charge her. We're here to help her, help her get back on her feet and help her, you know, get her some resources that she can use to change her situation for for the positive. So we're a resource for the community. We're here to help people in the community and that's what we do and what we want to do. So if anyone's interested, you know, check us out and we're happy to give tours as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm glad our path is crossed, I'm glad I had a chance to learn more about your organization, and we'll, of course, link in the description below to all of your contact information so folks can reach out and learn more about what you guys are doing for our great community. So, rick, thanks for coming on the show man, thanks, jeremy. All right, our pleasure. And everyone thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next episode of the Good Neighbor podcast. Everyone, have a great day.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the Good Neighbor podcast, cooper City. To nominate your favorite local business to be featured on the show, go to gnpcoopercitycom. That's gnpcoopercitycom, or call 954-231-3170.