Jordan first step foot onto the ranch in 1985. The ranch is a nonprofit organization that helps provide behaviorally challenged children and their families with a fresh start. It is a voluntary, live-in program, and both children and their parents have to agree they want to change. The children live in cottages with a set of cottage parents. Jordan, the son of a single mother who worked often to support him and his sister, said he was a troubled child. His father, an alcoholic, left the family when he was 2 years old. While his mother worked, he often was left home alone to do as he pleased.