FAMILY AFFAIR

WASILLA — At age 75, Rozann Kimpton still throws a mean bowling ball.

Her movements are precise and her advice comes with a patience learned through decades of parenting. On Saturday, she helped her great-grandchildren, Luke, 7, and Amanda,11, guide their bowling balls down Lane 4 at North Bowl in Wasilla.

It’s an outing like many other grandparents cherish with their grandchildren. In Kimpton’s case, however, she’s also the primary caregiver for Luke and Amanda. Kimpton adopted the siblings after the state threatened to take them from their biological parents, who abused alcohol and other substances. Luke was born with cocaine in his system.

Adopting the children was the only way to keep them safe, Kimpton said. “It was either adopt them or let the state take them. For me, that’s not a choice. Adoption was the only thing I could live with.”

Kimpton’s story of adoption isn’t unique. It’s one she shares with other adoptive parents at the bowling outing organized by the Wasilla office of Alaska Center for Resource Families. November is Adoption Awareness Month, and the event was a way to raise awareness of the important role adoption and foster parenting plays in the lives of hundreds of Valley children, said Betsy Woodin, family support specialist for the center.

“The need is there,” she said, pointing out that there are about 150 licensed foster homes in the Valley and about 300 children in out-of-home placement. “These kids need a safe and stable home. We need to make sure we have families that can provide that.”

For Kimpton, adopting her great-grandchildren was a choice she shares with many grandparents, she said. At a time in their lives when people are thinking about retirement, they instead have to raise another family.

“I’ll admit that it is frustrating at times and tiring, and it’s not the way I intended to spend the rest of my life,” she said. “This is not the first set of kids I’ve raised.”

Indeed, Luke and Amanda represent the second time she’s adopted and raised children since raising her own.

It’s that level of commitment that prompts Tom Hildreth to proclaim Kimpton is a rock.

Hildreth represents the state Office of Children’s Services and said he has great respect for people who open their hearts and homes to children through adoption or foster care.

“You can’t speak highly enough of anybody who has to raise another family,” he said. “We celebrate the families who take in these kids who need parenting. Kids have a right to be treated like human beings.”

Extended family

If Linda Helmick makes parenting look easy, it’s because she’s had plenty of practice.

She sits at a table at North Bowl on Saturday scrapbooking and chatting with other adoptive parents. At the same time, she fields questions from her children like a general on a chaotic battlefield.

“You can sit over there, Mr. D,” she tells her 11-year-old, Dillon.

“No, I don’t know where Craig is,” she says about her 12-year-old.

Dillon and Craig were among the nearly 70 adopted and foster children who enjoyed bowling and lunch with others who share similar stories, Helmick said.

Linda and her late husband, Michael, had two children of their own, adopted four others and have been foster parents to more than 50 children since 1996. It’s a dedication that earned the couple the state Parents of the Year recognition in 2001.

“I was adopted, and we decided when we got married that we’d have two of our own kids,” she said. “If we wanted to have more kids, we’d do it through adoption.”

They did have two children — Eric, who’s now 39, and Brandy, 34 — and added to their family 24 years ago with the adoption of Aaron, a 6-week-old baby with Down syndrome. Helmick said she is asked all the time about why she would adopt a special needs child. For her, the answer is simple.

“They are the forgotten people,” she said. “As a foster parent, you really have to be a strong advocate for the children and their needs. We have had some who have gone into foster homes, some who have gone into adoptive homes, some who have gone back into the state system and some back to birth parents. There’s a lot of heartache, but we’ve had a lot of success stories, too.”

Helmick was adopted at age 18 months and knew about it right from the beginning, she said. “And my kids always knew. To me, it was normal, I probably thought everybody was adopted. I had a great home, the extended family accepted me as part of the family. I wasn’t an outsider.”

Had she not been adopted, Helmick doubts she would have had as stable and loving a home.

Helmick’s work with foster care and adoption in the Valley extends beyond her considerable family.

Judy Edwards was working a few hours a week in Helmick’s home providing respite care to her son, Devon, who also has special needs. She was inspired to foster and adopt Eric, a 3-year-old boy born with cerebral palsy.

“We weren’t afraid of a little (disability),” she said. “She’s the reason I went into foster care. I had to get a foster license for that purpose, then we happened upon this little angel here.”

Eric is a happy, squirmy 3-year-old who elicits coos and comments from most of the parents in the room.

“He doesn’t sit up by himself, he doesn’t stand, he doesn’t walk,” Edwards said. “And he’s the most happy boy you could ever imagine. He’s very bright, he’s not at all delayed.”

Along with his disability, Eric was also born with cocaine in his system, Edwards said.

“He’s had so much in his short life so far,” she said. “He was a cocaine baby and he wasn’t diagnosed with the cerebral palsy until he was 8 months old.

By that time, he had already been through one foster home. It’s a story Helmick is also familiar with — children uprooted and moved from foster home to foster home. The stories behind their placement in the foster care system or being available for adoption are hard to hear, she said, like babies born addicted to drugs, children physically and sexually abused or neglectful parents.

“The heartbreak is hard, but I wouldn’t trade a single moment for all the heartbreaks,” she said. “It hurts, but the thing the system needs the most is to definitely make the child the priority.”

Events like Saturday’s bowling and lunch are important to promote awareness of the need for foster and adoptive parents, Edwards said. In addition to Eric, she has six natural children; the oldest is 30. Her message for anyone thinking about becoming a foster parent was delivered with passion.

“You will never regret it,” she said. “You gain so much, and when people look at us and say, ‘Oh, you’re doing such a great job’ and ‘He’s so blessed,’ you know what? That’s nonsense. He’s the reason we are blessed. There can be no better reward in this life than receiving a child like Eric.”

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.