Hundreds Offer to Adopt Children of Mother Who Contracted AIDS : Compassion: Woman, an ex-addict, sorts through bundles of letters from strangers offering help. She dedicates life to making up for lost years with her three daughters.

Valerie and her husband have eight little pairs of used boots lined up on their porch for somebody else’s children, three dark-eyed girls from the South Bronx they have grown to love.

They are the daughters of Maria Ferrer, a mother with AIDS. Maria’s search for a family to care for her children became real to the Albany couple the day they read it in their local newspaper.

“It touched my heart. I couldn’t let go of it,” said Valerie, who doesn’t want her last name or husband’s name revealed to protect their privacy. “There are very few Americans who wouldn’t offer to help if they knew who needed help. When the children become real, the people will respond.”

They were among the more than 350 people who reached out to Maria after reading a wire service account last summer. In November, Valerie and her husband found themselves sitting across a conference table from Maria, awkwardly sizing each other up and wondering what to say.

It was Maria who reached out at the end. “You are welcome at my home anytime,” she said, and gave them her address and phone number.

“It was incredible how early on she trusted us,” said Valerie, who is 36, two years younger than Maria. “That still amazes me. I often wonder, have I done enough to earn her trust?”

There were years on heroin and crack when Maria trusted no one. Then, in 1988, she almost died. After that, she placed her trust in God and found the strength to defeat her addiction and face life with the AIDS virus. She dedicated her life to making up for lost years with her three daughters, now 11, 9 and 7.

Maria’s search for their future goes on in her tiny apartment, where she sorts through bundles of letters full of the kindness of strangers and their offers of help, homes and hope.

The response has surprised and overwhelmed her, and the letters still come. Some people sent money, others shipped boxes of toys and clothes. There were sweaters from Texas and hair ribbons from Maryland. Some offered good wishes and prayers. Many sent detailed descriptions of their lives, their families and their ability to open their hearts and homes to Maria’s girls.

“During my whole life, the way I lived, I never received that kind of attention from people,” Maria said. “I’m very grateful. I really am.”

She has spoken by phone to a number of people, but Valerie and her husband are the only ones who have met the girls. They have taken them skating and bowling and brought them home for a weekend.

It was a trip Valerie will never forget: the sight of the three eager little faces in the window as she and her husband drove up; the girls’ delight at their first time in a restaurant with waiters; their thrill at being in a new place, free from the fears that dog them daily in the South Bronx.

“On the way back, (the youngest) said, ‘This is a junk street! Turn around and go back to Albany,’ ” Valerie said. “We had to let them know this is where they live and it was OK. They said, ‘Mommy doesn’t want us to grow up in the city.’ ”

Last summer, Maria’s 21-year-old son was wounded after an argument with a co-worker. He took three bullets in the stomach and one in the back, as he turned to run. He walks with a cane.

“This winter it’s been bad, there’s been a lot of shooting, shooting in the street,” Maria said, ticking off five recent murders in her neighborhood. Whenever her husband goes to church, he hears gunfire outside. “It’s so dangerous. Can you imagine what’s going to happen when the summer comes?”

Valerie and Maria’s social worker, Eula Johnson, have been trying to arrange camp for the girls, and Valerie hopes to have them evaluated to determine the source of problems they’ve been having at school.

The couple’s decision to continue their involvement with Maria and her family came only after much soul-searching and discussion with an adoption counselor. What if they weren’t the people who should adopt them? Could they even afford it? What about the timing of the child they planned to have?

“I have to be real honest: I don’t know what would happen if I was seven months pregnant and Maria called and said, ‘I’m going in the hospital. Take them,’ ” Valerie said. “The one thing I now feel is, if that ever happened, and it was going to be wrong for us, my feelings for Maria are so strong that I would have to go through those letters, and I would have to find the family.”

The bundles contain postmarks from every state, from the loving couple in Indiana, the wealthy doctor in Florida, the welfare mother in Hawaii who already has three little ones of her own but would gladly take on three more.

Maria answers letters when she can, usually late at night after the children are asleep and the dinner dishes done. She has tackled about 30 so far; it is a slow process.

“I want people to know I haven’t made a decision. It’s hard to make a decision through the mail,” she said. “I’d like for them to give me time to write to them. I would love to meet all of them.”

Maria knows she must keep her options open. Valerie and her husband are not ready to make a commitment; at one point, frightened by their growing love for the girls, they considered ending contact altogether.

“We had no idea what we were doing. We went into it with incredible ignorance, and around Christmas, we thought we had to let it go,” Valerie said. “Then we received a card from Maria saying that having met us, she knew there were good people in the world.”

Valerie remembered crying as she read it. “We had done so little, but what an impression it had made! With all the enormous problems in the world, you think there’s nothing you can do. But we’ve come to realize how little you really have to do to make a difference.”