The Court Where Families Are Made

For the 130 children who wriggled playfully inside Monterey Park’s Edmund D. Edelman’s Children’s Court, Saturday morning was a long-sought day of permanence in their fractured young lives.

And for the dozens of would-be parents with them, their signatures and a proclamation from a judge would finally cut the red tape that could have delayed their adoption of the children they had loved and cared for as foster parents.

As part of “Adoption Saturday,” judges and court personnel processed 130 adoption confirmation hearings in the second part of a volunteer program that began last month.

Coordinated by the Alliance for Children’s Rights and the Public Counsel Law Center, 40 attorneys and adoption officials from the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services offered free legal advice in March to families who had begun adoption proceedings. The intent, said organizers, was to prove they could shorten the time it took to file paperwork to a single day.

As parents-to-be waited anxiously to enter one of five courtrooms on the fifth floor of the courthouse, children dressed in their Sunday best either played with crayons or drank boxed juice, not knowing exactly what the fuss around them was about, but happy nonetheless.

“This is such a positive atmosphere,” said Alan Holmstrom of Palmdale. He and his wife, Carol, were adopting 2-year-old David, their sixth adopted child.

“Usually, we have to come on a weekday at the crack of dawn, and it’s a whole different atmosphere,” he said. “You’ll see some parents crying because they are losing their kids, and some are happy because they have gained custody.”

Some parents, like Marshell Mitchell, a single mother from Altadena, never thought they would be in adoption court. Inside Commissioner Robert J. Sandoval’s courtroom, Mitchell sat next to 5-year-old Christine and swore to the court that she would raise her brother’s child as her own. After the commissioner granted the petition, Mitchell pulled the girl she had always thought of as a daughter onto her lap and cried. Older daughter Veronica, 12, hugged them both. “She’s my baby,” Mitchell said as she rocked in her chair. “She’s my baby.”

“Before she was placed in our home, we had a close relationship--the love was already there,” said Mitchell, who was granted custody four years ago when her brother could not take care of Christine. “She immediately started calling me Mom.”

Andrew Bridge, executive director of the Alliance for Children’s Rights, called Adoption Saturday a “wonderful day.”

“It shows what can happen when a bureaucracy and the courts can come together,” he said. “A child’s life should not be one of courts and lawyers and social workers. A child should not have to live in foster care.”

Bridge said he knew firsthand what many of these children had been through. At the age of 6, he was placed in the foster system after his mother died. At that time, said Bridge, a 6-year-old child was often considered too old for adoption.

“There’s a part of me that remembers that there is a terrible uncertainty that a foster child lives in,” Bridge said.

“This is the single biggest record of adoptions in the history of Los Angeles County,” said Peter Digre, the agency’s director. Interested foster parents can call (888) 811-1121 for free legal advice.

Presiding Judge Michael Nash called the event a “day of celebration,” and dedicated Adoption Saturday to Department of Children and Family Services Manager Sara Berman, who died last month in a car accident. Berman was responsible for placing Los Angeles County at the forefront of adoption reform, and she helped to conceive Saturday’s program.

“I hope this day is proof positive that good things can happen at court,” Nash said.