380 Children Join New Families in Mass Adoption

In a way, there was nothing they needed from this court. Patricia Kirkwood may technically be Khalilah McGill’s aunt but, in reality, she’s been her mother since the day she saw her at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, where the baby lay dehydrated and undernourished, her ribs showing. She was 9 months old. She couldn’t sit up. She couldn’t crawl.

Kirkwood had four sons already when she began raising her sister’s baby seven years ago. “That’s family,” said Kirkwood, 51, of Apple Valley. “If she’d had three or four more, I’d have taken them too.”

Khalilah’s birth mother died in 1996, and Kirkwood started adoption proceedings in 1997. On Saturday morning, Khalilah, 8, stepped off an elevator in the Edmund D. Edelman Children’s Court in Monterey Park, carrying her doll, Buddy, and a white patent leather handbag.

Kirkwood and her youngest son, Delvin Tumbling, followed her. “This is going to be her baby brother,” said Kirkwood. Khalilah playfully patted the chin of Delvin--who is a husky 6 foot 2 and 25 years old--as he leaned over her, smiling.

In half an hour, the judicial decree that Kirkwood hardly needed, but eagerly awaited, officially turned her niece into Khalilah Nefeti McGill Kirkwood.

“She’s been my girl all this time,” said Kirkwood, smoothing Khalilah’s meticulous braids. “Now, she’s really going to be my girl.”

Khalilah was one of about 380 children whose uncontested adoptions became legal Saturday in a mass adoption. Aided by a small army of volunteer lawyers, beaming judges and bailiffs who snapped family portraits, the proceedings are part of an effort by the Los Angeles Juvenile Court and the county’s Department of Children and Family Services to accelerate adoptions.

Several thousand children in foster care and ready to be adopted wait years (three to four is common) for the legal proceedings to be completed. Since 1998, the courts, along with the Alliance for Children’s Rights, the Public Counsel Law Center and dozens of pro bono lawyers, have worked to speed up paperwork and get adoptions finalized in mass numbers on several days each year. Many of the cases and preliminary paperwork are handled by lawyers and staffers from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher working on a pro bono basis.

“Our first year we did 1,800 adoptions,” said Judge Michael Nash, the supervising judge of the Dependency Court. “This year we’ll do more than 3,000.”

The mass adoptions Saturday spread across 22 courtrooms on two floors. The waiting areas outside the rooms were one continuous party: balloons were tied to tiny wrists, cookies were eaten, crayons were in abundance. Shirts were pressed; hair was clamped with barrettes. The fashion look of the morning was patent leather shoes--white or black, just as long as they were shiny.

“You look at these faces,” said real estate lawyer Diane Stanfield, who was working pro bono on Saturday, “and all of a sudden it makes you feel good about being a lawyer.”

Judges handed out teddy bears and invited new families behind the bench to pose for pictures. Judge Randy Rhodes doffed his black robes and put them on Angel Bailey, 4, of Littlerock, after her adoption--and that of three siblings--was made official. “You can be adopted and appointed all in one day,” Rhodes told her as he stood in shirt sleeves with Ethel and Melvin Bailey and their brood for pictures.

In another courtroom, E’Lisa Evans and January Evans, both 2 years old and in matching navy berets, sat on the lap of the court official, Referee Valerie Skeba, who had just made their adoption legal. Their new adoptive mother, Eloise Evans, finally had children to call her own.

“Girl, I just got lucky,” gushed Evans, 45, who is single and lives in Inglewood. She’s raised the girls since birth but the adoption was exhilarating. “It’s just legal. They’re all mine.”

The proceedings officially sanctified intricate blendings of adoptees and new families. Explaining those relationships ends up being more difficult than living them. Family members have already absorbed the distinctions.

Yvonne Rodriguez, 62, of Alhambra was adopting her great-grandchild, Jessica. Jessica’s mother--who was 16 when she gave birth to Jessica--lives sometimes with Rodriguez too. “She was going to come today,” said Rodriguez, “but she decided not to. She thought it would be too hard.”

All the children at court Saturday found themselves in the system through parental abuse or neglect. Some adoptive parents said they didn’t know what transgressions the birth parents had committed. In cases where family members were adopting, they knew but explained it Saturday in the most low-key of terms. “Her mom drank a lot,” Kirkwood said of Khalilah’s birth mother.

Kirkwood and Khalilah listened in a courtroom as Juvenile Court Presiding Judge Terry Friedman made their lives together legal.

“The adoption petition is granted,” he said. Kirkwood gasped and started to clap. Khalilah grinned at her and clapped too.

“Anyone for a teddy bear?” asked Friedman’s 7-year old daughter, Kate, who functioned as her father’s assistant.

They posed for pictures with the judge and then left the courtroom. Khalilah clutched a purple balloon. Kirkwood said she told her sister before she died that she would take care of Khalilah.

Kirkwood looked at Khalilah’s balloon. “We’re going to release this up to heaven to your mom,” Khalilah’s newly decreed mother told her, “so she’ll know.”