Third Way Center History

Third Way Center, Inc. was originally founded in 1970 by Dr. Hildegard Messenbaugh, M.D., as an overnight shelter for runaway youth.  Having experienced poverty and the atrocities of an Austrian concentration camp as a young girl,  Dr. Messenbaugh can empathize with the troubled lives and turbulent pasts of the abandoned, abused and emotionally disturbed adolescents treated at the Center.  She knows firsthand the challenges children can face, yet she is committed to the concept that there is always hope. 

Accordingly, Dr. Messenbaugh has made it her life’s work to treat the so-called “untreatable” teens at Third Way.

Third Way Center is a private, not-for-profit, licensed residential treatment program that has grown to four residential facilities (including Denver’s only residential treatment center for teen moms), a transitional supervised aftercare program and an accredited alternative school.

Since 1970, we have served over 2,000 of Colorado’s homeless, mentally ill, abused and at-risk youth.