CHICAGO - The young caller's voice is high-pitched and trembling.

Her mother's been drinking, she says. They got into a fistfight, so the girl grabbed her backpack and a cell phone and bolted, with little thought about where a 13-year-old could go on a cold night.

Hiding in an alley off her rural hometown's deserted main street, she calls the only phone number she can think of: 1-800-RUNAWAY.

"I just don't feel like I'm taken care of like a daughter should be," the girl tells the volunteer who an¬swers the phone at the National Runaway Switchboard.

Her story is a common one at the Chicago-based hot line, which handles well over 100,000 calls each year.

National Runaway Switchboard data recently provided to The Associated Press shows the overall number of young callers facing crises rose from 13,650 in 2000 to 15,857 last year. About two-thirds of the latter figure were young people who were thinking of running away, had already done so or had been thrown out of the house.

Federally funded since the 1970s, the National Runaway Switchboard is regarded by people who work with troubled youth as an organization that provides one of the best overviews of the shadowy world of teenage runaways.

Some callers just want someone to talk to. Others who already have run away use the hot line to exchange messages with their families. Some are desperate for a place to stay, for safety, for options.

"I'm scared of my parents, and I don't want to go back there. Please don't make me!" pleaded the 13¬-year-old girl who called this particular night.

It also quickly became apparent to volunteer Megan McCormick - who has been trained to spot the occasional crank call - that this girl's fear was real.

"I know it must be really scary," said McCormick, a graduate student in social work at the University of Chicago. As they spoke, she checked the call center's extensive computer database for shelters in the girl's hometown.

The closest was in a larger city, 90 minutes away. But when McCormick called, she was told they didn't take anyone younger than 14.

Such scenarios are common in many regions of the country, particularly rural areas where resources for runaways are scarce. Many institutions also lack the resources to deal with the severity of issues young people face today.

"The population is much more disturbed than the runaways who were being seen 20 or 30 years ago," said Victoria Wagner, chief executive of the National Network for Youth, a coalition of agencies that serve troubled young people.

Long-standing government support for the Runaway Switchboard has been a vital component in ad¬dressing the problem. But Wagner added federal dollars for shelters and other services, also through the Runaway Youth Act, have remained largely stagnant since it first passed in the 1970s. So she and others are pressing Congress for more.

Meanwhile, the 13-year-old girl who called the Runaway Switchboard sounds even more anguished when McCormick tells her there no shelters in her area will take her.

Several times McCormick asks about other options, but the girl says she has none - even though she has little doubt that one or both of her parents will soon be looking for her.

That's not the case for many other runaways, who are thrown out of home for anything from being gay to exhibiting aggressive behavior.

While some states have taken aggressive action to address the runaway problem, the response is spotty.

In New York, for example, a bill requiring safe-houses and other services for sexually exploited youth has stalled. And in Wyoming, runaways often still spend the night in jail.

That's a mind-set Rusty Booker, an 18-year-old former runaway from Louisville, Ky., hopes will change.

Last year, he told members of Congress how, at age 12, he ran away from an abusive home. He got help at a library affiliated with National Safe Place, an organization with more than 16,000 locations nation¬ally where young people are put in touch with local crisis workers.

Still, many communities that want to establish Safe Places are turned down because they have few or no services to offer. Nine states have no Safe Places at all, including the home of the 13-year-old girl who was on the line with the Runaway Switchboard for more than an hour.

Several times, she adamantly refused to call the local sheriff or to get child protective services in¬volved.

Eventually, though, she changed her mind. She asked McCormick to stay on the line while she spoke with a social worker and then the sheriff.

McCormick waited until a sheriff's deputy found her and picked her up. The girl was safe.

"You get used to some aspects of this,' said Cori Ballew, a Runaway Switchboard supervisor. "But you never get used to some of it, especially when it ends with no resolution."

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National Runaway Switchboard

- Telephone number: 1-800-RUNAWAY

- Callers can remain anonymous

- Information is considered confidential

- Assistance is available 24 hours a day, year-round.

- Hot line provides support to teens and their families