THE WHITE VAN SNAKES ALONG the winding roads of the Marin Headlands, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. The moment it stops at the white cottage above Rodeo Lagoon the doors fly open and half a dozen exuberant children explode into the sunshine. “Bikes! We want to ride bikes!” some shout, while a pint-sized Barry Bonds finds a baseball glove on the lawn and begins searching for a bat and ball. They run hither and yon for a few minutes, until an adult asks, “How about some snacks?” then they dash up the steps and inside for chocolate cookies and lemonade.

Since 1994 this cottage, known as the Beach House, has been a place where homeless children come from shelters in San Francisco to be wild, safe, and free, cared for, and indulged, if only for a few hours. It is part of A Home Away From Homelessness, a unique program founded and led by Jeanie Kortum-Stermer, a writer, children’s advocate, and former preschool teacher.

On the wall by the front door a ceramic plaque reads: “Welcome to our home away from home.” Inside, sunlight streaming in through the windows reflects off pastel yellow walls. Stuffed animals perch on soft chairs and couches; other playthings and books are within a child’s reach on shelves and in baskets. It feels like a cozy home, and that’s what it has been for many homeless children since 1994.

Several years ago, Jeanie Kortum-Stermer was working as a volunteer at one of San Francisco’s downtown shelters. She started to take some of the children on outings to her family’s dairy ranch in Petaluma. Their delight inspired her. Was there a way to give a similar experience to more homeless children? She knew that there were empty buildings at Fort Cronkite and thought that perhaps one might be put to the use she envisioned. She talked with Rep. John Burton, then with Brian O’Neill, superintendent of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA), who offered a cottage near the beach. It once had been the base commander’s house but at the time was standing empty. Although it needed work, Kortum-Stermer was sure she could get it in shape with the help of volunteers and donated materials.

“I thought it would take a couple of weeks,” she recalls with a laugh. “It turned into six months.” At one point, the whole enterprise was close to foundering. But then the San Francisco Chronicle ran a story; a local contractor read it, “pulled in all of his buddies,” and got it finished.

In 1994, Kortum-Stermer formalized Home Away as a nonprofit organization and became its executive director. Since then about 100 children aged five to 10 have come here each month from 13 San Francisco shelters. They are picked up on a rotating basis six days a week. Some have come numerous times. The Beach House was there for them as their families moved from street to shelter to shelter. (Shelter rules limit family stays from overnight to at most a year.)

GGNRA, pleased at what was happening, accepted the group as a Parks Partner, joining the Marine Mammal Center, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Bay Area Discovery Museum, all of which use former military buildings in the Headlands. Today Home Away has five full-time and three part-time employees, a corps of eighty vo unteers, and occupies four buildings in the GGNRA.

In the Headlands, a second building has been renovated to house a mentor program, a respite program for parents and pre-schoolers, larger group activities such as holiday celebrations, and for the occasional overnight stay. At the Club House (also the organization’s headquarters) in San Francisco’s Fort Mason, homeless families can drop in for emergency help, including food and clothing. On June 15, another Fort Mason building, the School House, was opened as a learning center. Here after-school tutoring and a variety of enrichment activities are available to a group of 15 homeless children age 10–15, in partnership with the San Francisco Unified School District. This four-day-a-week program includes Beautiful Sites field trips, which take children to various natural places.

Kortum-Stermer has a unique understanding of the world these children live in. In 1989 she and her husband, Dugald Stermer, adopted an eight-year-old girl who had lived for several years on the streets with her mother, a heroin addict. Her close friendship with the mother gave her insight into the personal struggles of the homeless, and continued until the mother died. Her adopted daughter is now 16 and thriving. “But she had a mean, mean childhood,” says Kortum-Stermer.

The philosophy underlying Home Away’s programs “is not that these people are broken and we are going to fix them,” she emphasizes. “They come in and they’re treated like real people.”

In a 1997 letter to friends and supporters she wrote, “Though it seems on the surface like ‘just fun,’ what we offer—memories, community, ritual—goes deep inside the hearts of our clients. There is a hunger in both the adults and children for the beauty, joy, trust and decency that we provide through our different programs, a mandate different from what other agencies provide for the homeless.”

Many homeless children rarely get out of their immediate neighborhoods, and some don’t even have words to describe the ocean, volunteer coordinator Sarah Kennedy said. She has had to explain what waves are, and a few children were surprised to learn that the water is salty. One girl was afraid to touch a tree: “She told me it was covered with bacteria.” But when this girl returned to the shelter where she and her family were sleeping at the time, she stepped casually over the foot of a man in police handcuffs who was lying in the doorway.

Rodeo Beach is a mere half-hour’s ride away from the grim streets where the children live, but it can open up a larger world. “Nature doesn’t have to be something foreign,” says Jeanie Kortum-Stermer. “Dark skies at night don’t have to be menacing.”

Bill O’Brien is a freelance writer based in Oakland.