exposing the dark side of adoption
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CATCHING UP ON SOME UNFINISHED BUSINESS

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Dan McGrath

SACRAMENTO BEE

Support trickles in for Lea and Matt Darrah in their efforts to win back custody of their 15 month old daughter, Michelle, whom they gave up for adoption within three weeks of her birth in April 1991 . . . coerced, they claim, into doing so.

In May, I wrote about Lea, who was 19 and a UC Davis freshman when she gave birth to Michelle alone in her dorm room. The baby was five weeks premature, and Lea had not made arrangements for medical care, nor had she told her parents of her condition. In desperation she turned to Davis' Crisis Pregnancy Center, which agreed to help her.

Less than two weeks after her first meeting with volunteer counselor Kathy Huntziker, Lea had turned her baby over to the Children's Home Society of California, a private adoption agency, which placed Michelle with a Sacramento couple. She believes that was Huntziker's intention all along because she brought Dee Heszler, a Children's Home Society social worker, to their first meeting. She says the two women gradually coerced her into believing that adoption was the best course for Michelle because Lea and Matt, whom she has since married, were not equipped to care for her.

Within days, Lea was heartsick over the decision and went to her parents, who hired a Davis law firm and filed a civil suit against Huntziker, Heszler, Davis Crisis Pregnancy Center and the Children's Home Society of California. Jury selection is to begin in Yolo County Superior Court on July 13.

Davis Asians for Racial Equality (DARE) and the Yolo County chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) have come forward to support the Darrahs, though neither group can furnish funds for a sustained legal battle. We've come this far, and we're not going to quit now, Lea said. Our baby belongs with us.

Eiko Tyler, Lea's mother and a UCD graduate student in math, said adoption was totally unnecessary because the family would have provided Lea with whatever help was necessary to raise the baby.

I can't believe these supposedly well-meaning organizations would take advantage of a young woman when she was so vulnerable, she said.

After the original column on the Darrahs appeared, several people wrote or called to criticize it for its insensitivity to the adoptive couple's side they've had Michelle for a year, loved her as their own and would be devastated by losing her.

I did consider them, and I feel for them, deeply. But I think the Darrahs were wronged, and I think the adoption process needs an overhaul when one social worker and a crony, however well-meaning, can take it upon themselves to play God, deciding who gets children and why.

In April, I wrote about Angela Nordby, a seven-year employee of Sacramento Savings who was dismissed by the bank over her handling of an extortionist bomb threat at the Hillsdale branch on Madison Avenue. The extortionist made off with $70,000, but most of it was recovered from a suspect now in custody. According to sources familiar with the case, it wasn't the amount of money lost but Nordby's perceived disregard for the safety of customers and fellow employees that prompted the bank to dismiss her. She has been subpoenaed to testify at a July 15 hearing for the suspect.

After some early frustration with the lack of available banking positions, Nordby has happily postponed her job search: She and her husband, Jack, are expecting their first child in November.

For about a month I was so devastated . . . but now I can't believe I was that devastated, she said. I've put it all behind me. I'd like to be working, but I have something else to concern myself with.

Ray Lujan, dismissed in May from his volunteer position at the information desk in the Sacramento County Courthouse despite three citations and more than 2,000 hours of volunteer service, is helping out in the courthouse cafeteria while waiting to see if a position opens at the Juvenile Court facility.

Patricia Dawes, the county's coordinator of volunteer services, said Lujan's termination was not a blanket dismissal, that he'd be welcome to apply for a different position, be treated like any other volunteer and evaluated on the basis of background and experience and mutual benefit.

Dawes had promised an investigation of Lujan's dismissal after being informed of it. I was left with no degree of discomfort at all about the action taken, she said. It sounded justified to me.

Meanwhile, the information desk goes unattended for hours at a time, sometimes entire days, the various court calendars left to the interpretation of various court customers, rocket scientists who have no trouble deciphering where and when they're supposed to be.

DAN McGRATH'S column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Write him at P.O. Box 15779, Sacramento, 95852, or call (916) 321-1062.

1992 Jul 1