Heart Is Where the Home Is : Relationships: For 15 years, medically fragile children have been coming to Marisol, based in a Costa Mesa residence, for comfort, care and a chance to live.

Jennifer Warner was an ambitious graduate student pursuing a career in genetic research when she met Erica, a terminally ill 2-year-old with large, expressive brown eyes that seemed to reflect a deep sense of peace and a keen intelligence.

Warner, then a reserved, pragmatic student in her mid-20s, spotted the frail, disarmingly beautiful child in a ward among 50 other patients in the state hospital where Warner worked as an intern.

It was love at first sight.

“When I picked her up and held her in a rocking chair, it was like a part of me came into place--the vulnerable part that I’d tried so hard to hide behind the mask of becoming a professional woman,” Warner, now 44, recalls.

Erica, who was born with a severe seizure disorder and wasn’t able to walk or talk, was not expected to live longer than a year. Warner couldn’t bear to see her die in an institution. It was Erica who had helped Warner realize that she didn’t belong in the dispassionate world of genetic research, that she was meant to love severely disabled children--not study them. And Warner wasn’t about to let this little girl “who turned my life around” spend her last days in a sterile state hospital.

It was out of her determination to give Erica a warm, nurturing home for whatever time she had left that Marisol Inc.--a state-licensed group home for medically fragile children--was born.

It took nearly two years for Warner to go through the licensing process and break down bureaucratic barriers at the hospital, but Erica held on. And she surprised everyone close to her by living for four more years after Warner brought her home.

When Erica died, Warner drew comfort from the knowledge that “no child on earth had been more loved.”

Making every day as rich as possible for children with life-threatening conditions caused by abuse or birth defects has been Warner’s mission ever since Erica inspired her to turn her own home in Costa Mesa into Marisol Inc. in 1977.

She named the home after a South American artist whose painting of a child emerging from a flower--”coming from nothing into the light”--symbolized the nurturing environment that she planned to create for children such as Erica.

Over the past 15 years, about 60 severely disabled children--most of whom were victims of abuse--have become part of Warner’s family at Marisol Inc., a nonprofit operation that depends largely on donations and volunteer efforts to provide special care in a home setting for children up to age 17. (For more information, call (714) 645-7074.)

Most of the children who have lived in the five-bedroom, two-story house have died there--in Warner’s arms. But Marisol, which is licensed to accommodate no more than six residents at a time and is always full, is neither a hospice nor a hospital.

“There’s a lot of living here,” Warner stresses. “We’re not into massive life-support systems. A child may have sniffles and we still go to the park because who knows what tomorrow will bring?

“We see the children as whole, perfect and complete just the way they are. They live a life full of peace and serenity. They’re deeply loved, deeply treasured.”

Katherine Miller, placement coordinator for the special medical care program of the Orange County Social Services Agency, says Marisol is unique because it offers the comforts of home along with the kind of round-the-clock care that an institution would provide.

Children as severely disabled as those Warner takes in usually end up in skilled nursing facilities or convalescent homes because foster homes are not equipped to care for them, Miller adds.

Marisol’s paid staff is assisted by a number of doctors, nurses, physical therapists and volunteers who work--and play--with the children on a regular basis to help them push the limits of disabilities that keep them from interacting with the outside world.

“Marisol has had children who have made remarkable progress,” Miller says. “The love and nurturing is very apparent.”

The warm, family atmosphere that Warner cultivates is obvious as soon as visitors enter the house, which is filled with toys, stuffed animals, oversize pillows, cozy furniture and--in what Warner calls the “halls of eternity”--photographs of all the children who have lived at Marisol.

Warner--the “main mom” at Marisol--welcomes visitors with an eagerness that lets them know she can never get enough volunteers. Many newcomers are surprised at how quickly they end up with a child in their arms.

Michelle Morris, an Irvine novelist, says Warner greeted her by giving her a child to hold during her first visit to Marisol last Christmas, when she attended a fund-raiser sponsored by the local chapter of Women in Business. From that moment, she was hooked, says Morris, who has been working as a volunteer ever since and has even added a place like Marisol to the novel she is writing about a victim of incest.

Morris recalls that, during her first visit, she was particularly impressed that Warner had furnished the house with valuable family antiques.

“I thought, ‘Here’s somebody who knows these children are worth it.’ There’s a reverence there. Jennifer has a total respect for the children. She really thinks they are a higher form of life, and she treats them that way.”

Vicki, a 32-pound 5-year-old with big brown eyes and a captivating smile, is one of the children who has blossomed in the nurturing environment that Warner has created at Marisol.

Warner says Vicki was the most severely abused child taken into protective custody by the county in 1989. She suffered brain damage when she was thrown onto the floor by her father, who had also sexually abused her. She was semi-comatose, paralyzed on her right side and blind in one eye when she arrived at Marisol at age 2.

For two years, she hardly moved on her own, didn’t speak and never even cried. One volunteer says being with her was like “being in the presence of pure spirit.” In the past year, however, a sweet, curious, active child has emerged. Vicki is gradually regaining movement in her right side and is now learning to use a walker. Her vision has returned, and she is able to say a handful of words. And when she gets frustrated or angry, her tears come naturally now.

Warner gives a great deal of credit for Vicki’s progress to Colleen Carver, a nurse who lives in Tustin and has been visiting Vicki three days a week for the past year and a half.

Carver, who spends about 45 minutes each visit helping Vicki with exercises to strengthen her right arm and leg, admits she has become emotionally attached.

“She got her little hooks in my heart a long time ago,” Carver says. “Every time she does something she’s never done before, it’s an absolute thrill.”

Kay Johnson, the full-time house manager who lives at Marisol, says she and her staff are so busy meeting the children’s basic needs that the involvement of volunteers like Carver is vital.

“The children couldn’t do without them. Volunteers are the ones who make the difference in their lives,” she says.

Warner points out that, like Erica and Vicki, most of the children at Marisol have lived longer and achieved more than the medical experts believed was possible.

Tommy, for example, was not expected to live more than six months after he arrived at Marisol. His mother had contracted a viral infection during pregnancy, and he was born with extensive organ damage and developmental disabilities. Today, however, Tommy is a bright, active 11-year-old who often cuddles up to Warner, gives her a big hug and says, “Mommy, I love you.”

Tommy--who says Warner reminds him of Wendy in “Peter Pan”--has hearing and visual impairments and is still behind developmentally, but he’s progressed so far that Warner is now looking for a volunteer “big brother” to get him involved in sports.

Another longtime Marisol resident is Aaron, who suffered severe brain damage at the age of 3 months when he was thrown against a wall by his father. He had cerebral palsy and severe seizures when he was brought to Marisol at age 1, and Warner was told he wasn’t likely to reach his second birthday. But Aaron has been part of Warner’s family for 16 years now.

Aaron can’t speak, but Warner believes he understands everything. And she says she is able to communicate with him “on a deeply intuitive level.”

“You learn to hear in a different dimension,” she explains. “I can sense when something’s wrong with Aaron.”

The close bond between them was evident on one recent afternoon when he arrived home from the special school he attends on weekdays. He broke into a huge grin and squealed with joy as Warner greeted him while his wheelchair was being lowered from the school bus.

“I love him a lot,” Warner says. “He’s comfortable being who he is. He’s helped me realize my true power is my vulnerability.”

One day several months ago, Aaron, who has never walked, amazed Warner by spontaneously pulling himself out of his wheelchair and taking a few steps across the living room as Tommy shouted, “It’s a miracle!”

“They surprise us constantly,” Warner says.

She makes a lifetime commitment to every child who comes to Marisol, so those who beat the odds never have to face the trauma that many foster children go through when they are moved from one home to another. The fact that Aaron is nearly 18 is a constant concern to Warner, who is considering starting a second home for his age group, because, she says, “I can’t bear to give him up.”

She recently acquired a partner who, as vice president of Marisol Inc., is helping her raise funds to establish a second home. Elaine Wagner, who is 50 and single, recently gave up her financial consulting business and is now donating her time to Marisol. She says she has always been the “consummate corporate woman,” but the children at Marisol have helped her get in touch with her long-neglected maternal side.

“All my life I was in a materialistic mode,” she explains. “While my checkbook was getting fatter, my heart was starving. This is fulfilling a dream. Now I get to be a mom for the first time in my life.”

Like Wagner and Warner, volunteer Michelle Morris has found that it’s impossible to keep her guard up in the presence of Marisol’s children.

“These kids have never learned that they’re supposed to be cool. You can’t defend against that because they’re not showing any defenses. There’s nothing calculated in them at all.”

Morris says the “restless workaholic” in her has calmed down since she began going to Marisol twice a week to visit Katie, a blond, lanky 7-year-old who was born with cerebral palsy and is just beginning to hold her head up and use her upper body.

A piano keyboard that was a gift from Morris has unleashed a passion for music in Katie, whose desire to play the instrument has motivated her to work harder in physical therapy. “She’s gained an amazing amount of control over her body,” Morris says proudly.

She’s also become very attached to Morris, who feeds her, takes her on outings, tickles her until she giggles and rocks her to sleep.

Morris says getting close to Katie and observing the other children at Marisol has taught her that: “It’s not what we do, it’s our very being that’s important. If you’re a religious person, when you leave Marisol, you feel closer to God. These children call out the best in us.”