Happy ending to grandparents' custody fight

Nov. 3, 2006

By MARY AMES

Frontiersman

WASILLA - After Ruby Ewing allowed her 14-year-old granddaughter to go live with the girl's mother in Portland, Ewing thought everything was fine. Then she opened a letter from the state of Oregon.

&#8220The kids had been in foster care four months by then,” Ewing said. &#8220Portland sent a letter to Anchorage, and they sent the letter to me, informing me my grandchildren were in foster care and I was being considered as a guardian.”

Since getting that letter, Ewing and her husband, Rick, have been up against what seemed to them to be a never ending series of bureaucratic blockades. Their 16-year-old granddaughter, Tabitha Fields, returned to live with them just this week. Ewing's 7- and 9-year-old granddaughters were released from their third time in foster care to their father's custody, but have an uncertain future.

&#8220If somebody had called me at the beginning, I would have swooped in and taken them all home,” Ewing said.

Ruby and Rick Ewing went through the guardianship process with the Wasilla Office of Children's Services. They contacted Oregon's social service agencies.

&#8220I called and called, and they told me to quit calling so much,” Ruby Ewing said. &#8220I told them if they returned my phone calls, I wouldn't call so much.”

Promises made to the grandparents were broken, she said. Ruby Ewing stayed by the phone at work all day after she was told she would be included in an Oregon court hearing. When Ruby Ewing finally got in touch with her daughter's probation officer, she was told &#8220they decided not to include you,” she said.

&#8220By that time, I was livid,” she said. &#8220I called a Department of Human Services worker who said, ‘I hear you're half the problem,' and hung up.”

Wasilla OCS denied the Ewings custody of the granddaughter they raised from the time she was 5 years old until she was 14, leaving Tabitha in foster care more than a thousand miles from family and friends.

But the Ewings had to go through a roundabout route to find out the reasons they were denied custody. When they did get the OCS report, it was filled with errors, including listing Tabitha's birth date as 1960, and errors in the dates she lived in Wasilla.

Although they have their granddaughter back, their finances have been decimated by their struggle, Ruby Ewing said, and they still have to hire a lawyer. More than anything, Ruby Ewing doesn't want other people to have to go through what she and her husband did.

&#8220I agree there are people who need to have their kids taken,” she said. &#8220But I'm supposed to trust these people? I don't think so.”

Contact Mary Ames at

352-2284 or mary.ames@

frontiersman.com.