Unlike most parents who see their child for the first time as a
tiny black-and-white image in an ultrasound, Fernando and Tina
Lopez were introduced to their daughter Lucia in a book.
Unlike most parents who see their child for the first time as a tiny black-and-white image in an ultrasound, Fernando and Tina Lopez were introduced to their daughter Lucia in a book.
The Gilroy couple already had two biological sons, Eduardo, 5, and Adrian, 3, and wanted a baby girl to complete their family. So, they turned to adoption, and were given a book of photos and brief descriptions of adoptable children. The girl they had their eye on, 1-year-old Lucia, and her older sister, Victoria, 2, had to be adopted together.
The Lopezes agreed to take both girls into their home – Lucia, with her chubby cheeks, and Victoria, with her hair pulled back in braids and wide eyes, inquisitively leaning toward the camera.
“She seemed to be so smart,” Fernando said.
The faces of the remaining foster children in the book also struck them.
“There were so many older children in need of homes, and more boys than girls,” Tina said. “At one point, you have to be a little less picky and have a little more heart.”
In Santa Clara County, 1,493 children are currently in out-of-home care of some type, including foster families, relatives and group homes. Many of the children will return to their parents once their home is safe again, but others are in need of permanent homes. In 2008, 112 children in the county were adopted from foster care by relatives, and 99 children were adopted by non-relatives like the Lopezes.
“The need right now is for older children, 5 and up,” said Jenny Debutts, clinical program manager with Rebekah Children’s Services of Gilroy in charge of Family Linkage Foster Care and Adoption. “There’s a huge need for teenagers.”
Only 18 children between the ages of 12 and 17 were adopted in the county in 2008.
“It’s really difficult to get families to open their hearts to children,” said Eleanor Villarreal, public relations director for Rebekah Children’s Services.
For the Lopezes, adoption was always a possibility that they kept at the back of their minds. Tina, whose family emigrated from Mexico to Salinas when she was 11, grew up with nine siblings and wanted to have a large family of her own one day.
However, during a health exam, Tina’s doctor discovered that she had fibroids in her uterus, a fairly common condition among women in their 30s and 40s. Her doctor said he could perform surgery to remove the fibroids, but one risk of the surgery was infertility.
Tina hesitated to have the surgery. She shared the news that she might be unable to have children with Fernando shortly after they began dating.
“He was so in love with me he said, ‘I don’t care. I’ll adopt,'” she said.
Fernando’s answer gave Tina the courage to go ahead with the procedure to remove the fibroids, and the surgery went well.
The couple married in 1997. The fibroids returned, and Tina went under the knife again. Afterward, doctors urged Tina to get pregnant soon if she wanted children. She gave birth to her first son, Adrian, in 2000.
The fibroids returned, and Tina had them removed once again. Her doctor told her to get pregnant immediately if she wanted another child, but told her this would be her last pregnancy. Tina had their son, Eduardo, in 2002, before undergoing a partial hysterectomy.
“When Eduardo was 3, we started saying we’d like a little girl,” Fernando said.
First, they considered foster care but decided against it.
“I knew I’d be a basket case when we’d have to give the kids back,” Fernando said.
Next, they looked into adoption. Since Fernando is from Ecuador and he has an aunt who is a social worker there, they thought about adopting a child from his home country. But it meant that they would need to live overseas for several months until the process was finalized, and Fernando couldn’t leave his job as an engineer at Apple for that long.
Then one day Tina was chatting with an acquaintance about adoption. The woman said she worked for Rebekah Children’s Services in Gilroy and told Tina who to call.
She and Fernando attended an orientation at Rebekah’s to learn more about foster-care adoption. They waited a year before deciding to take the next step, worried about the psychological trauma a child they’d adopt could have, since most children are placed into foster care because of neglect or trauma. They also worried the biological parents might want their child back, but in foster-care adoption, either the parents sign over their rights or a judge terminates their rights.
When ready, the Lopezes went through 18 hours of training. Then they completed the paperwork, fingerprinting, background check, health screening and home study – during which the Lopezes endured eight hours of interviews and home safety inspections.
It also wasn’t easy to find a little girl.
“The process of matching was frustrating,” Fernando said. “It felt like we weren’t hearing anything for weeks at a time.”
Rebekah’s eventually found Lucia and Victoria, living with a foster mother in Riverside. The Lopez family went to Riverside for the weekend to meet the girls in July 2007. In October, the girls came to Gilroy for a six-month “trial.”
The girls arrived with behavioral issues and some small developmental problems. Lucia had a delay in speech and was still crawling when they met her, although she was a little over a year old.
“Lucia when she came, she was afraid of males,” Tina said. “Now, she is Daddy’s little girl. Victoria had tantrums and showed a lot of anger bottled up inside of her. She didn’t know how to speak English or Spanish. She wasn’t taught how to express herself in a spoken way.”
On Sept. 16, 2008, the adoptions were finalized – roughly two years after the Lopezes began their search.
“I feel complete now,” Tina said.
Fernando coaches the boys’ soccer teams twice a week, and the whole family attends their matches on the weekends. The family regularly goes to mass at St. Mary Church and enjoys camping at various California parks. They traveled to Ecuador to visit Fernando’s family last year.
Like all parents, the Lopezes worry about being able to put children close in age through college.
“I want all four of them to have the tools to move forward and be good citizens,” Fernando said.
But Tina tries not to worry about the future.
“We just take it one day at a time, just do what our parents did. They did what they could with what they had,” Tina said. “We give them love, comfort and security. They have the tools to make it.”
