Joyous Day in Court

Christmas came early this year for Shoshana Corin Pralgo, a 2-year-old with a mischievous smile and eyes the color of winter chestnuts.

Wearing a candy pink dress and tugging half a dozen balloons, Shoshana marched into a Ventura County courtroom last week to receive the greatest gift of her young life: parents.

Moorpark residents Amy Corin and Mel Pralgo have cared for Shoshana since she was an infant thrust into foster care, but it took an afternoon in adoption court to permanently join them together.

“This step means everything. It means we are finally a family,” Corin said last week, breaking into tears in the courthouse hallway. “We spent a lot of tearful nights awake, praying for this day to come.”

Each year in Ventura County, about 200 children find permanent homes through adoption. Many are infants linked with their adoptive parents through private or international organizations. Others are preteens seeking adoption by their stepparents. And a growing number are abused or neglected children who have spent years in foster care before being adopted by their foster parents.

In each case, families must finalize the process by going to court, where in what is typically a joyous, tear-jerking affair, a judge legally binds parent and child. It is a job coveted by Superior Court Judge Donald D. Coleman, who has handled the adoption calendar plus other duties for the last year and a half.

“It is one of the most enjoyable positions I’ve ever had in any job,” Coleman said last week. “On many of these adoptions, it really reaffirms your faith in the kindness of human beings. More judges should see this.”

More judges would like to. But because adoptions are such a small assignment--about seven to 10 are held weekly--the task is typically left to one judge. For years, that was William L. Peck.

“I picked them up when I was doing the dependency calendar,” Peck said. “I did them for five years and just had a wonderful time. And finally what the other judges realized was I was robbing them of some fun.”

During his tenure, Peck kept a box of windup toys under his desk, plus a stash of lollipops and other candy.

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“I would go back and do it again in a minute,” he said. “It is probably the only thing we get to do in which everybody is happy.”

That was evident last week as 10 families with strollers, cameras and balloons crowded into Coleman’s courtroom. The children, ranging from ages 1 to 10, were dressed in their finest: patent leather shoes, ribbons and velvet.

After a few minutes, Coleman walked into court. Rather than sit on the bench as in most court hearings, however, he stood before the crowd in a long, black robe and explained that the cases would be handled informally in his chambers. He welcomed cameras and grandparents.

“It’s your day. You are the special people and they are special children,” he said. Then he introduced the first adoptee of the day: Shoshana.

At 3 days old, she was placed in foster care with Corin, 49, a Moorpark College music instructor, and Pralgo, 59, a Newbury Park High math and English teacher, after being taken from her birth mother who was incarcerated in a youth jail.

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The couple had wanted to adopt for years and were told foster care adoptions would be faster than waiting for a newborn. They had taken three foster children into their home before Shoshana. All were later reunited with their biological parents. Corin became discouraged. She told a social worker they wanted to take a break from foster care for a while. Then the call came: could they take a 3-day-old.

“We just fell madly in love with her from day one,” Corin said.

Over the next two years, the couple fought to adopt Shoshana. They appeared for several contested court hearings with her birth mother’s relatives. Ultimately, Coleman decided to grant the couple custody.

“There weren’t any family members who were either available or appropriate for her,” Corin said, not wanting to divulge too much information for her daughter’s sake. “We didn’t know it was going to turn out this good.”

Finalizing an adoption in court is the last step in a typically long, nerve-jangling process.

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Parents who want to adopt from a foreign country, for instance, must undergo two government background checks, four visits from social workers, home inspections, and a probe into their financial history.

“We document everything from the deed to their home to three years’ worth of tax returns,” says Marilyn F. Adams, executive director of Ventura-based Adoption Services International. “It’s very intrusive.”

One of two statewide agencies that specialize in international adoptions, ASI works with 47 countries; each has its own additional requirements.

“Every one of them wants to know different things,” Adams said. “The Philippine government wants to know where the bus line is, the nearest park, and the nearest church and where grandma lives. In their mind, these are very valuable assets.”

In Russia, which along with China sends the largest number of adoptive children to the U.S., officials are more interested in knowing whether a family is financially stable, Adams said.

Last year ASI placed about 100 children in adoptive homes across California, most under age 2. But the process isn’t cheap. Beginning to end, international adoptions run between $15,000 and $21,000 depending on the country, Adams said. Some countries, such as China, impose larger fees to support state orphanages.

Adopting locally through the county’s social services department is less expensive, around $500, but can take at least twice as long.

“The reality is we do not have a lot of newborn babies coming in to the county system,” said Sandy Duncan, program manager for Children and Family Services. “If it’s a family waiting for a healthy newborn, it could be forever.”

Duncan said it used to be that young mothers came to the county to relinquish unwanted infants for adoption, but that has changed. Now, more mothers are working with private agencies or attorneys to negotiate private adoptions.

“The independent adoption route allows people to have babies placed with them right out of the hospital,” Duncan said. “It costs more money, but it is more comfortable.”

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That was the choice made by Liz and Augustine, a Ventura County couple who declined to give their last name. Married for 11 years, the couple were unable to have a child.

They went to the county, but were discouraged by how long an adoption might take. Liz was wary of growing close to a baby in foster care, only to see it reunified with its biological parents.

Eventually, the couple were referred by a lawyer to a pregnant woman who wanted to give her baby up for adoption. They met the mother in advance, and last December rushed to the hospital for the birth of Isabella.

Just three days shy of the baby’s first birthday, the couple formalized the adoption before Judge Coleman last week.

Most of the children the county now places for adoption are foster kids, which 10 years ago was not the case, Duncan said. That trend is consistent with statewide figures that show the number of foster care adoptions have doubled in the last decade.

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“We don’t want to mislead people. What we are really looking for are special families that can take children who are a little bit older, children who may have been subjected to physical abuse or neglect. Our children come with some problems,” she said.

In the last three years, new laws have sought to hasten the flow of abused and neglected foster care children to adoptive homes. Last year, President Clinton announced the Adoptions 2002 initiative, which seeks to double the number of public adoptions in the next few years.

To ease the process, federal legislation has outlawed racial discrimination in adoptive placements and the government has offered a one-time $6,000 tax credit for foster care adoptions.

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Meanwhile, the state has shortened the period of time biological parents have to reform bad behavior to win back their children. Parents now have one year to rehabilitate themselves--just six months if the child is under 3. In addition, judges can cut off reunification efforts if parents commit severe offenses, such as child abandonment or chronic abuse.

These tougher laws are not intended to strip children from their biological parents, but to free them from bad situations and quickly get them settled into permanent homes of their own, according to social workers and court officials.

“My main goal is for children to be with their parents,” Duncan said. “But if children do come to our system . . . they should not have to suffer because their parents cannot get their act together.”

One of the newest twists in adoption will begin Jan. 1, when kinship adoptions become legal. The new state law allows children to be adopted by relatives without cutting off legal rights to the biological parents, as previously required.

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As a longtime juvenile court judge, Judge Melinda Johnson has seen many changes in the adoption system over the years.

“There seems to be more variety of the types of families adopting,” she said. “You never saw any single-parent adoptions, you never saw any homosexual parent adoptions. You did not see too many mixed race adoptions.”

The other type of adoptions that have increased steadily over the years is stepparent adoptions--which Oxnard resident Robert Harris had a double dose of last week.

Harris and his wife, Rosalind, have a two-year-old, Miles, and live with her two children from a previous marriage: Shari, 8, and Robby, 10. Last year, Harris decided to adopt them both.

Sitting in the courtroom last week waiting for the judge to call their case, the brother and sister jabbered about their expected Christmas gifts and which teachers they liked and didn’t like. And they talked about what it meant to be adopted.

“It means that I’m special,” Shari said with a giant grin.

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“It means that I am loved in this world,” Robby chimed in.

Back in Coleman’s chambers, they munched on chocolate marshmallow candy as the judge finalized the process with the swipe of a pen and a few brief words.

“Well, Shari, you got him,” the judge said. “He’s dad now. But I know these are just legal formalities for what you’ve known in your heart for a long time.”

Rosalind Harris handed each child, including Miles, a small gray jewelry box. Each one contained a ring to symbolize, she said, the love between father and child. And with that, the family walked out of court to celebrate the holidays for the first time as the Harris clan.

“The timing is good,” Robert Harris said. “It’s a nice Christmas present.”