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For Her New Family, She Is Grateful

Tribune photo by JASON BEHNKEN

Loryn Smith talks with her daughter Shadreka as the two finish putting away groceries in their Wesley Chapel home.

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By MICHELLE BEARDEN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 26, 2008

Updated: 01/02/2009 08:13 pm

WESLEY CHAPEL - She had just three years left to find a family. After that, her childhood would be over.

The prospect made Shadreka a little desperate, but it gave her the courage she needed. She called a woman she knew had adopted other kids.

"I know this sounds a little bold," she said into the phone. "But would you be interested in adopting me?"

She had called the right person.

Today, Shadreka Smith, in foster homes and group care since age 5, is surrounded by her chosen family.

And it's a big one: Thad and Loryn Smith, who insist they're just "regular folks," have five biological children, six adopted and a boy they raised to adulthood as a foster son. Over the years, they've opened their home to some 90 foster children. Like America, they are a swirl of colors and ethnicities.

This holiday season marked 16-year-old Shadreka's first anniversary as an official Smith.

She is a girl with a permanent home. She says it out loud – "Permanent" – and she can't stop grinning.

She says she feels normal and secure. A 10th-grader at Hillsborough Baptist School, she talks happily about her favorite things: the dream of going to cosmetology school, her crush on former Buccaneers player Mike Alstott, her love of basketball.

She's almost forgotten the little girl who never knew her father and was given up by a troubled mother.
"I have a family that is always going to be there for me, no matter what," she says. "I'm thankful to have people around me who love me and only want the best."

The Family That God Built

Some 600 kids are available for adoption in Hillsborough County.

Of that number, about 160 have no identifiable family and are caught in limbo, says Jeff Rainey, president of Hillsborough Kids, Inc., the nonprofit agency that manages child welfare for the county.

Few children will ask a family for a home and love, as Shadreka did. Especially those who have been so disillusioned for so long. The closer a child gets to 18, the chances of adoption grow dimmer.

"Teenagers, kids with special needs and sibling groups – those are our biggest challenges," he says.

Over the past three years, HKI has overseen some 1,160 adoptions. It's a good number, Rainey says, but never enough.

That's why he's so grateful to people like the Smiths.

To Rainey, anyone who adopts or fosters a child is a hero. But he concedes the Wesley Chapel couple, both 49, stand apart for the sheer numbers they've welcomed into their home.

"The thing about Loryn, she doesn't realize how amazing her story and her life is," Rainey says. "She really believes what she's done for these kids is no big deal. When people ask her 'Why?', she's the type who would answer 'Why not?' "

Loryn was a divorced mom with two kids – one biological and one adopted – when she married Thad in 1985. He was happy with the ready-made family and if they had stopped there, that would have been fine with him.

But Loryn, who grew up with two adopted brothers, knew there would be more. She just didn't know how many.

As a little girl, she dreamed of running an orphanage one day. Instead, as her high school friends have told her, she created her own.

"Well, it's not as if we planned this," she says. "The running joke is that every time we tell God we're done, he adds two more. So now we're trying some reverse psychology with God, by telling him we'll take as many as he wants – and hoping he'll stop."

It's hard for someone like Loryn to say no because she works in the system. She sees desperate cases every day.

She's the director of training and community resource development for The Sylvia Thomas Center for Adoptive and Foster Parents. She also works at Woven Basket, a private adoption agency, and is on a task force to launch a faith-based foster-care program. She says if every church in the county
challenged its congregants to become more involved in fostering or adopting, every child would have a home.

Some of the calls to the Smiths for foster placement came in the middle of the night. Babies with cocaine alcohol in their blood; kids too young for group homes and no other home available. Each had a story. Some became permanent fixtures in the Smith household.

Loryn admits she sometimes fantasizes about driving around in a two-seat Jaguar instead of her 15-seat passenger van. But those are fleeting moments. Her sprawling family, including seven grandchildren, gives her and Thad great joy and constant reason to count the blessings in their lives.

Blessings

At today's holiday feast which, by tradition, is open to all of their former foster kids and extended families, the Smiths have more reason than ever to give thanks.

Their third son, Micah, 21, just returned home safely from his second tour of duty in Iraq. Their oldest son, Christopher, a Tampa police officer, and his wife, Amy, with four children of their own, are hoping to adopt the foster baby now living with them.

And Thad, chief information officer at Achieve Management, a management services company for nonprofits, is grateful to be alive. Earlier this year, he was misdiagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given only a few months to live. He's thrilled to be planning for Christmas instead of his funeral.

Like Loryn, he says having a house full of children helps keep him focused on "what's important, instead of things that really don't make a difference."

"I could not do it without my faith. It would be impossible," he says. "You know how [Apostle] Paul wrote many times that your faith is evidenced by your work. So I guess that's what we're trying to do."

The Smiths know there aren't any material gains to raising so many children, especially in an economy like this. But they do have a game plan for their future.

"We tell our kids that when we retire, we're buying a motor home and parking it in each of their driveways for one month of every year, and they can support us," laughs Loryn.

For Shadreka, Happiness

Shadreka keeps a scrapbook under her bed. It's filled with pictures and mementos from a childhood spent in group care and homes with strangers. There are very few images of adults in the photographs. And there are no images of her at a family function.

She points to a school picture, taken when she was about 7. The photo is of a little girl with bright eyes and a big beaming smile. But Shadreka knows that appearances don't always tell the real story.

That little girl was "really hurt, frustrated and confused." She wanted to know why she'd been given up, and why nobody wanted her. She wanted things to get fixed, fast. It would be years before she could accept that she had been abandoned.

When Shadreka called Loryn Smith, the nice woman she had met at Joshua House years earlier, she really didn't expect a fairy-tale ending. She hoped for something good and braced for the worst.

Shadreka Smith shuts the book and hugs it close to her. She won't forget that little girl, but she's a different person now. She has a family.

Michelle Bearden can be reached at (813) 259-7613.

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