The Wal-Mart Baby: Chapter 5

After Summer lived with us for 5 days in November of 2009, her biological mom took her back. 

We immediately called CPS and filed a report with them, explaining all that had taken place. We were very concerned for Summer's safety and of course, we were sad for our loss. Our house was filled with baby stuff, and we had no baby. We gathered everything up and stuck it out in the garage. 

I still had several items belonging to Summer's mom, such as the stroller and her medical cards. The next day I tried calling her mom and so did Cristal. No answer. I sent her a text reminding her that I had her stuff and asking her if she wanted to meet me somewhere. I sure was not going back to those apartments.

Sean and I went to a movie that evening and it was in the middle of the movie that Summer's mom texted me and told me that she didn't need the stuff anymore because CPS had taken Summer away from her that day.

When I read this text I had to call CPS immediately and remind them that Summer had been living with us and see if she could be placed  with us instead going to a foster home. There was no time to loose!

I jumped out of my seat and began running down the stairs in the dark theater, trying to find the door that exited into the lobby. I was so flustered that I picked the wrong door and ran out the emergency exit. A gust of icy wind hit me and I suddenly found my self outside the theater in the back alley. Of course the door shut and locked behind me. 

Great.

I beat on the door but apparently no one could hear and Sean must not have seen what happened because he never came to open the door. I called CPS as I ran all the way around the building, in the freezing weather, to the front doors of the theater. 

CPS took a report based on my frantic plea and said they would pass on the information to a social worker Monday morning. 

Monday morning??!!! This was Friday! We couldn't wait that long!

How naive we were then about the speed in which CPS operates.

Summer's mom must have been drinking that night because she began texting and calling to curse at me. She brought up something perfectly innocent that I had said days ago and she screamed at me for disrespecting her. She demanded that I give her stuff back to her that night and she kept cursing and raving about crazy stuff. I tried briefly to reason with her but finally, right before I shut my phone off, I told her I would be giving Summer's belongings to CPS instead of her.

It took me a while to explain to several employees that even though I did not have my ticket stub, I really had purchased a ticket earlier and I needed to get back inside to find my husband.

45 minutes later, emotionally shaken and freezing cold, I collapsed in my seat next to Sean and he whispers to me, "That was the wrong door you went out earlier."  

Ya' think!?

(It was many months later before we found out that the Thursday night Summer's mom took her back, Summer was shaken and suffered Shaken Baby Syndrome. CPS took custody of Summer when her mom cursed out the judge during a review hearing and she tried to leave the building with the baby. Summer was hospitalized and went through many different MRI's and testing to see if there was any lasting brain damage.)

Monday morning I was back on the phone to CPS to get the name of her social worker so I could call her directly. After several days, CPS finally returned my call and I explained everything to the intake worker who called. She was very nice and took down a lot of our information. She said Summer was in foster care and that she would not personally be handling Summer's case but she gave me the name of the worker who would be. 

We were relieved to hear that Summer wasn't given to the mother's aunt who was filing for guardianship.

I called the new worker directly and introduced myself.

This worker was very suspicious of us and she demanded that I bring Summer's belongings to the office immediately. I wanted to see if we could at least get visitation while Summer was staying in foster care, but she said there would be no visitations and she would contact me when they had everything straightened out. I tried asking her questions about Summer and she cut me off and refused to tell me anything. As she was hanging up on me, I told her again that we had an emotional interest in Summer and we wanted her placed with us. The worker asked if we were related to her and I said no. She told me that there were already relatives applying for guardianship and relatives have first priority for placement or adoption. I reminded her that Summer had lived with us, and not any of her relatives. She told us we could try to apply as a non-relative caregiver but there were no guarantees. 

 I made copies of Summer's medical cards and the letter that Summer's mom had written me and I included these documents in Summer's belongings and left them at the CPS office in care of the worker.

(Later we found out that the envelope I left for the worker marked CONFIDENTIAL was mistakenly given back to the mom! Summer's mom was delighted because she thought that she now held the only copy of that letter. She changed her story and denied that she ever gave us permission to take Summer. Thankfully I had made copies of the letter and documented everything, which was going to be crucial later on.)

A few days after Thanksgiving 2009, CPS called us and asked us to begin the placement process by getting Livescan's done. We had already done this for CPS a few months prior but we did them again assuming CPS had lost our old ones.

Around Christmas time, a home inspection worker came out and inspected our home. The standards were much less than we had gone through for foster care, so we were over-the-top prepared. This time our home was being inspected as a relative caregiver's home. If approved, we would not be allowed to foster multiple children, but we would be approved to foster Summer.  

Days after this home inspection, we received a letter in the mail, addressed by the original two women who denied us previously. 

The letter said that we were denied again.

Our hearts dropped. How did they find out we were trying to have Summer placed with us?  

This was finally the end. We had done everything we could for Summer and we could go no further.

With nothing to loose, we decided to make one final call to the lady who had just inspected our home and ask her why we were still being denied? I just wanted someone to confirm to me verbally why we were being blacklisted.

This worker had no clue what we were talking about. She said our home had passed inspection just fine. She had no knowledge of any letter.

We were mystified now. What was going on?

It turns out that because it takes CPS so long to do anything, we were just now receiving our formal denial letter from 9 months ago. The letter we received was from our past ordeal and it had nothing to do with our current process for Summer. 

We weren't denied after all!

Not only that, but we were now part of an entirely different division of CPS and they were not allowed to transfer records from one department to another. That's why we had to do our Livescan's all over again.

It was like we were brand new to the whole process, our past file could never be accessed by the Non-Relative Kinship Placement division. Mr. Spoon had been cast into the sea of forgetfulness!

God was so good! He let us in the back door of CPS, right under the noses of those who had turned us down!