Home sweet home

WASILLA - For some teens, spending a birthday with grandma might be just nice, but for Tabitha Fields, it was a long-awaited dream come true. On Halloween, the day she turned 16, Tabitha flew home to Alaska with the grandmother who raised her, fought relentlessly for her safe return, and won.

&#8220I kept bitching,” said Ruby Ewing, Tabitha's grandmother. &#8220And screaming and yelling and calling.”

Ewing and her husband, Rick, raised Tabitha for about seven years, until 2004, when Tabitha's mother told everyone she was doing well, was clean and sober and wanted Tabitha with her. Tabitha wanted to go, and was becoming more difficult and rebellious.

So, the Ewings agreed to let her go live with her mother in Portland.

This week's homecoming was the first time Tabitha had been in Alaska since she left, and the first time she had been out of foster care in about a year and a half.

Tabitha and her two younger half-sisters ended up in foster care after she could no longer endure her mother's methamphetamine use. The 7- and 9-year-old girls had been in foster care twice before, she said. The younger girls returned to their father's care, but the Ewings were thwarted in their attempts to regain custody of Tabitha.

In September, the Wasilla Office of Children's Services deemed them unfit guardians for their granddaughter. And although the Ewings could not get anyone to tell them why, they were told the decision was final.

&#8220Nancy, the social worker at OCS, told me the buck stopped with her,” Ewing said. &#8220Nancy said she would not reconsider her evaluation.”

Ewing warned the workers at OCS they would get tired of hearing from her, she said, and she never let up.

At a Portland court hearing Oct. 30, Ewing stated her case to the judge, and showed the judge Tabitha's plane ticket to Alaska, she said.

The hearing lasted about 45 minutes, Ewing said, and the plan submitted by the Portland foster care case worker would have allowed Tabitha to visit her grandparents for 30 days in December, and then, if all went well, would close the case in January.

&#8220I said, ‘Just let her come home now. I have a ticket in my purse with her name on it,'” Ewing said. &#8220The judge fired the foster-care system. She fired them right there on the spot.”

Tabitha said she knew she was going home before that.

&#8220I could feel it,” she said. &#8220I prayed too hard to be able to come home. I said good-bye to all my friends at school the week before.”

Thursday was Tabitha's first day at Wasilla High School, where she enrolled in the sophomore class.

She found out she already completed an economics class in Oregon that is offered to juniors at WHS. And she is taking a junior-level government and history class.

&#8220She's no dummy,” Ewing said. &#8220She's always been a very good student. Now, she is excelling in ecology.”

Tabitha admitted being &#8220a tree hugger” and an artist who found her first day back at school exciting.

&#8220I got to see all my friends,” she said. &#8220I got hugs everywhere.”

But Tabitha's birthday flight home to Alaska, with her grandmother by her side, remained a highlight.

&#8220It was an amazing birthday present,” she said. &#8220I wish every kid could feel as good as I did on my 16th birthday.”

Contact Mary Ames at

352-2284 or mary.ames@

frontiersman.com.