A Wrong Turn Family Struggles To Understand Why Foster Daughter Chose Life On The Streets

On a warm and sunny Spokane morning recently, my husband, Jim, headed out the door around 7 a.m. to go to work at a local welfare office. He climbed into his battered orange pickup, a perfect haul-the-yard-waste-to-the-dump vehicle, and headed down the hill to pick up a co-worker he carpools with. This co-worker is a homeowner living in a part of Spokane that is plagued with drug selling and prostitution.

When Jim pulled up to his co-worker’s house and stopped, the passenger door of the truck’s cab suddenly flew open. A young woman plunked down on the seat beside him and slammed the door shut. She stared straight ahead, not making eye contact. Jim sat stunned, staring at the person beside him, unable to believe his eyes.

“Charity Rose, what are you doing here?” he asked.

She slowly turned, looked at him blearily, finally recognizing him as her former foster father.

“Just hangin’,” she replied blandly. Then she got out of the truck.

My husband and I have been foster parents for eight years and some of the kids we had in the early days are grownups now. Not all have chosen the paths we hoped for them. The following is not a happy story, and one that most people would prefer not to look at. But it is a story that should be told.

And so back to the morning my husband ran into Charity Rose. By the way, Charity Rose is not her real name. But the pseudonym, and her real name, are both whimsical, hopeful and giving. The names provide a sharp contrast to the life she is living now.

Anyway, Jim’s co-worker, having observed all that happened, glared angrily at Charity and snapped at her. They’d had words before, because this woman does not appreciate Charity conducting business in front of her house.

But the co-worker held back all she could have said because, as she later told Jim, “You looked like you were about to cry.”

When Jim called and told me what happened, his voice still shaking, my first reaction was, “What did you say? What did you do? Did you bawl that girl out for what she’s doing? How could she be so foolish?” But for once, my husband admitted he was without words, because he was so stunned.

Charity was a member of our household for more than a year, when she was 11 and 12 years old. She’s 18 now, and last we heard, she’s expecting a baby in September. I asked Jim if he thought she looked pregnant and he said no, she looked thin and her skin was in bad shape. But as he was so shaken, he wasn’t really looking, either.

Some people, myself included, might read this and say: “So what’s the big deal? Just another scuzzball on the streets.”

And they might be right, except that the Charity Rose I know and love — and whose sixth-grade school picture still hangs on the wall of our home amid our other family pictures — was pretty and bright. She was a handful even back then, but so very talented.

She had been smoking since she was 6 years old, and wasn’t too happy that, at age 11, she had to quit when she came to our house.

She was born into a home where she was the youngest of four siblings. Both her parents had physical disabilities. The kids ruled the roost and were the major breadwinners, anyway they could “win” it. The cards were stacked against Charity from the beginning of her life, but there have been so many people in her life who have seen the potential in her, and she has been given so many chances to have a good life, that it breaks our hearts to see what’s happened to her.

Her talents. Let me tell you about some of them. A coach at the YMCA saw her swimming one time, said she was a natural athlete, and offered her a position on the swim team. She did wonderfully well, competed all over the area and won medals and ribbons. And then she was discovered stealing money and checkbooks from gym bags in the women’s locker rooms. She apologized, was forgiven, but continued on until it was too much.

She moved away from us and on to other foster placements, again with people who gave her the moon only to have it thrown back at them.

Her sixth-grade teacher at Grant Elementary School in Spokane was impressed with her innate street smarts and great intelligence. Given a bit of responsibility and leadership, she excelled in everything she did in class. It was an exciting time for us, to watch this young person with so much potential before her, but we knew she was balancing on a tightrope.

Would she go for “our way” of living, or would she go the more familiar, comfortable and, doubtless “exciting” lifestyle she grew up in?

We have kept in touch with Charity throughout the years. We took her to a birthday celebration at Beverly’s at the Coeur d’Alene Resort when she was about 14. I remember how lovely she looked, long blond hair shining, dressed to the hilt. She conducted herself as a lady. No one would ever have guessed she would be a future prostitute.

After that, the most contact I had from her came in the form of collect calls and letters from juvenile detention where she stayed often, usually because of drug-related crimes. In one letter she wrote: “I’ve got a lot ahead of me and I’m not gonna let it go down the drain.”

I asked my husband recently, “Why does she treat people so badly who try and help her?” His reply was, “Because she was taught at an early age that people who are generous are simply suckers who need to be used.” A harsh reply, but probably accurate.

Charity has made her choice. She stands on her corner and sells her body for drugs, and sells drugs for somebody. I must resist the urge to go find her, plead with her, yell at her, lecture her, and whisk her away to safety, away from dirty old men, pushers, and serial killers.

My daughter said to me, “No mom, don’t do that, you don’t know what she might be carrying on her.”

This is true. I guess if I were in her situation, I’d be carrying no less than an Uzi with me in the battle zone in which she’s chosen to live.

My daughter the other night had this dream: Charity had come back home to live with us. She was sharing a room with my daughter and was just the way she used to be. She was laughing and joking with my husband, bantering like they used to do. And she was just acting like a goofy, silly and normal young girl. My daughter told me she’s had a lot of dreams about Charity lately. She hopes she is OK.

I hope Charity’s guardian angel is with her and she somehow stays safe. If she ever reads the paper anymore, I hope she’ll reach out to those who are there to help her. She knows who we are.