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The Olympics File

DISENCHANTED KIDS HEAD HOME
By DAN McCALEB and SAEED AHMED

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Thomson Newspapers Olympics Bureau

ATLANTA -- The corporations that left the students stranded, Summer Games Employment Service of Houston and their parent company, Creative Travel Services of Atlanta, are under criminal investigation by the Olympic Law Enforcement Command, which includes the Georgia Attorney General's Office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, officials said.

"Gov. Foster and the state of Louisiana have asked our Attorney General's Office to look into this matter and make sure whatever individuals put these Louisiana students and their parents though this ordeal are held accountable," said Caroline Mills, of the Georgia Office of Consumer Affairs.

"We want to make sure they are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

Mills said the companies that brought the students to Atlanta dumped them into state officials' hand.

"To us, SGES has come to stand for sorry guys, everything sucks,'" said Blake Le Blanc, a 17-year-old senior at Teurlings Catholic School.

Merle Zmak of Atlanta, president of Creative Travel, could not be reached for comment. He is one of the individuals at the center of the investigation, officials said.

Parents mobilize to get kids

Realizing their children were without adequate shelter and funding, a number of Lafayette-area parents either drove to Atlanta this weekend or wired airline tickets to get their children home.

"We had enough of what was going on so we drove out here in our van overnight to pick our daughter up," Marilyn Guidry of Lafayette, mother of 17-year-old Courtney Guidry, said shortly after she arrived here, at around noon Saturday.

Back home in Lafayette, parents who chose to wait for their kids to be brought home tried to remain patient while waiting for news from Atlanta.

Louis Dupuy, father of twins Patrick and Elizabeth, 17, said he thinks the experience will be good for the children despite all that has happened.

"What can I say ... it's life," Dupuy said Saturday.

"It has been a big mess, but we are trying to handle it," he said. "If they would have been downtown and in some danger, I'd have been burning up the highway to get them."

"They made a commitment and they stuck to it to the end," Dupuy said.

Greyhound has agreed to take the Louisiana group home at a discounted rate of \$80 a person but with no initial up-front payment, Colsby said. The transportation will be paid for by private sponsors, she said. Because some students have already left Atlanta, the exact number to be transported by Greyhound was unknown.

The Lafayette group signed up with SGES several months ago, with plans to make some extra summer money while enjoying the Olympic experience as well. The students, aged 17 to 20, were told they would be bunked at Atlanta schools at night and work concession stands for $5 an hour or more during the day.

But when they arrived in Atlanta late Tuesday, the schools were overcrowded and unsafe. The state Fire Marshal called the accommodations a fir hazard and ordered them evicted. They were forced to sleep on the floor of a Welcome Center Thursday before a local hotel took them in for two nights.

The students were not given the meals and jobs they were promised. The 50 or so Lafayette students who did work for two days have not been paid.

Many of the adult chaperones were in tears when they talked of their experience.

"I don't even have the words to describe how I feel about the whole thing," said Marc Conque, a religion teacher at Teurlings High School in Lafayette and the head Lafayette chaperone. "What they have done to these kids, it just ... it just ... I just can't describe it."

Youths give their side

Donny O'Pry, 19, of Carencro, said he has lost all hopes of making any money this summer because of the aborted trip.

"A lot of us had summer jobs back home, but we had to give those up to come here,"O'Pry said. "Now we won't be able to get those back and we won't be able to make any money."

John Freeman, president of a Texas-based company that financially backed SGES and Creative Travel Services, signed a written agreement with Georgia officials to pay $200 to all of the students who were sent home and $1,000 to all the chaperones, Mills said.

"Mr. Freeman signed an agreement in which he agreed to compensate these people," Mills said. "So if we get this money from him, the students will be paid."

Mills said it was her understanding that Creative Travel Services was created to rent out local homes to Olympic visitors.

"How they wound up in the business of transporting all these kids here, we're still investigating," she said. "It was an adventure that, had it not broke down, could have been very profitable for them, with $5 an hour labor."