Oh, Thank Goodness : A ‘Risk’ That Helped Expand One Family

In 1989, the Earth trembled, skies poured, killer winds howled, tankers spilled and revolutions swept the globe. In Los Angeles, gang violence claimed yet more victims and traffic seemed to grow ever worse. Still, amid the tide of oft-tragic happenings, small rays of hope keep shining through. Here are a few of many stories worth sharing on a day of feasting, family and friends. They’re enough to remind that it’s still worth saying: “Oh, Thank Goodness.”

Rosalind and Donald Urista of Torrance and their son Mark, 9, this season are giving thanks for Rachel, a ward of the county for most of her six years, who in three weeks will legally and officially become a member of their family.

Rachel has claimed their hearts since October, 1987, when she was placed with them under a “fostadopt” program until legally freed for adoption.

“We were told,” Rosalind says, “there was a slight risk the parents might reappear.”

They took that risk.

Rosalind, a teacher, and Donald, an electronics technician for the government, had waited two years since applying to the county Department of Social Services to adopt. Unable to have another child, they had wanted a sister for Mark, preferably a youngster close to his age.

“Of course, we wanted the All-American child--and they just aren’t there,” Donald says. So, they said they would consider a “special needs” child.

They still waited more than two years. Rosalind says, “We were told: ‘You’ll never get a Hispanic child because we’re not a pure Hispanic home.’ (She is Anglo, he is Latino.) Then they said: ‘You’ll never get an Anglo child because you’re not a pure Anglo home.’ We were considered a racially mixed couple, which we never considered ourselves.”

Then along came Rachel, at age 4 1/2 a veteran of foster homes with no memory of her mother or father.

She was one of the unadoptables, one of the hundreds of “special needs” youngsters waiting. She was too old. She had vision problems, badly needed dental care and had a severe language disorder. The agency could tell them almost nothing about her. But, Rosalind says, “that’s not important to us.”

From the first, they were smitten with Rachel and her coal-black hair and big, dark eyes.

Mark, though he wanted a playmate, was apprehensive. Could she pitch a baseball? She can. Did she need to refer to him as she did? “She was always calling me the Mark,” he says, referring to her confusion between the Spanish she had forgotten and the English she hadn’t learned properly. “It made me feel like I was something from the green swamp.”

But getting-to-know-you outings quickly dissolved any doubts the Uristas had.

Today, two years after coming into their home, Rachel is a bright, affectionate first-grader, busy with piano lessons and Brownies. Special classes have developed her verbal skills and vision therapy has straightened her eyes. Her I. Q. has tested above average.

At home, clutching her doll, Rachel cuddles with her mother and father on the sofa, an appealing imp in a Cinderella nightshirt. She knows she is home.

Now and then, Rosalind says, “she still has a fear of abandonment. If you’re in a store and she doesn’t see you, she thinks she’s going to lose you.”

Not a chance.