Love And The Line Of Duty Single Mom Juggles Family, Foster Care, Sergeant’s Badge

The four children call Diane Bowcutt “mom” even though she isn’t their mother.

Their real parents are in prison or dead.

To Bowcutt, the children are no less precious than her own son and daughters.

At 41, she is a single mother of three, a foster parent to four and an Osburn Police sergeant.

Bowcutt’s life is a whirlwind of cooking, cleaning and child-bathing interspersed with midnight patrols and attempts to soothe troubled psyches.

To these troubled children, Bowcutt is the calm eye of the storm - the only patch of stability and security most have had.

“Diane is one of these people who’ll find a place for a kid in the middle of the night,” says James Miller Jr., a Shoshone County social worker. “She’s amazing. I don’t know where she gets half her energy.”

Since May 1989, at least 50 children have passed through Bowcutt’s home - some for just a day, others for more than a year.

The mother of one boy she cares for now is in prison for stabbing her husband to death. The other three, all siblings, were taken from a home overrun with filth and pornographic movies.

Bowcutt’s house is one of only seven foster homes in Shoshone County - a region badly in need of more foster parents.

Working in tandem with her 17-year-old daughter, Bowcutt is able to handle the enormous challenge.

“I don’t have the best of everything,” Bowcutt says. “But I have a lot of love.”

At 5 feet 2 inches tall, Bowcutt is a bundle of muscle sheathed in a neatly pressed police uniform.

Sinewy forearms dusted with freckles have grappled with much larger men. But it’s her eyes, set into a heart-shaped face, that broadcast her warmth.

From her patrol car, Bowcutt’s hand repeatedly waves in greeting as she rolls through Osburn. She calls everyone by first name as she interviews witnesses on a forged check case.

Bowcutt was born and raised in the Silver Valley. She graduated from Kellogg High School and married when she was 19. From that nine-year marriage came her three children: two daughters, 21 and 17, and a son, 19.

Divorced 14 years ago, her route to the police department was circuitous, with stops at a convenience store and a fiberglass plant coming first. In 1988, Bowcutt joined the Osburn Police Department, one of only three full-time officers.

Bowcutt believes some of the hard times she’s faced have made her a better cop.

She’s lived through an abusive marriage and has been “so broke” she explains, “I didn’t know where my next penny was coming from.

“I can identify with these people. I can understand where they’re coming from.”

At home, Bowcutt slips into her mom uniform - shorts and a tank top.

The four foster children - perpetually moving bundles of barely restrained energy - think they’re about to get chicken noodle casserole for dinner.

Just don’t tell them it’s really tuna noodle casserole. Bowcutt whispers that they think they hate tuna.

A year after joining the police force, Bowcutt’s daughter told her about a friend who was afraid to go home.

Bowcutt got a foster-care license so she could take in the abused girl. “It has just kind of snowballed since then,” she says. “It makes you feel like you’ve done something right.”

She is licensed to house six children, but that rule is bent in emergencies. Once, she had seven children from one family.

The four foster children, along with Bowcutt’s 17-year-old daughter, Janie, her son and his fiancee stay at her cozy home.

A white fence circles the back yard where five dogs romp with the children. A small creek runs through Bowcutt’s seven acres.

This is a temporary haven for the foster kids.

John, 9, David, 8, and Melanie, 6, were skinny and gaunt when they came to her in April.

“It’s terrible seeing what has happened to some of these kids,” says Janie Bowcutt, as the youngsters chase one another through the back yard. “They’re so little.”

Janie Bowcutt uses goofy antics and a sense of humor to make the children who come to her home comfortable. She doesn’t approach them about their problems but instead lets them come to her when they need to talk.

Jamie Pherigo, 5, has stayed with Bowcutt the longest. She is now the boy’s legal guardian. His mother, Nancy Pherigo, is in prison for killing her husband during a drunken argument.

“She is one of the bigger blessings in my life,” Nancy Pherigo said of Bowcutt.

Pherigo will be up for parole in less than two years, but even when she’s free she plans to let her son stay with Bowcutt.

Jamie survived his parents’ bouts with alcoholism and knows that his mother killed his dad.

“I think he is as well-adjusted as possible and I think it’s all Diane’s credit,” Pherigo said. “This lovely lady just gives all the time, she gives of herself, of her time, of her life.”

It’s a lot of work.

In the morning, the family heads to the kitchen for breakfast and their “pancake ritual.”

Hotcake after hotcake is piled on an assembly line of plates. “By the time the last one is fed the first is ready for seconds,” Bowcutt says.

When her three newest foster children first arrived, they gobbled up 12 pancakes each.

The afternoon is play time. For the adults “there’s always laundry and there’s always dishes,” Bowcutt says.

After helping start dinner, Bowcutt heads to work from 6 p.m. to 3 a.m.

She tries to sneak her bath when she comes home. But even in the wee hours of the night she has yet to get a bath without interruption.

Sleep comes sometime around 4:30 a.m. She’s up again by 10 a.m.

“Some people call me crazy,” Bowcutt says with a laugh. “Some days I even think I am.”

The key to Bowcutt’s success is Janie.

The girl helps cook, clean and takes care of the children when mom heads to work. She loves to watch “Sesame Street” with the kids in the morning.

“Sometimes I feel like these are my kids,” Janie Bowcutt says.

But that closeness and concern for their welfare take their toll.

“It’s hard,” she admits. “It really is, because they come in and then they leave.”

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