It’s estimated that there are currently more than 400,000 kids in foster care in the US.
Children can enter foster care for one of several reasons: they have been abused, abandoned or neglected by their parents or guardians.
Giving up a child is a concept that the majority of us can’t even begin to fathom, but it happens on a huge scale every single day.
Brian Zach, a police officer in Kingman, Arizona, has to deal with a horrifying number of child abuse cases.
The hardest thing for him is that he bonds with every abused child, but he never had the opportunity to take them out of their bad situation.
In 2018, Brian, a dad of two children, met a young girl called Kaila while checking on a residence.
The pair spent 5 hours together, waiting for a DCS to show up, and in that short space of time, they formed a bond that had a lasting impact on Brian.
What did they do that brought them together like that? Not much, according to Brian, who said to AZ Family:
“We colored. We watched Wreck-It Ralph. She loved Wreck-It Ralph.”
But when Brian returned home to his wife, Cierra, he couldn’t stop talking about Kaila.
He told Cierra that Kaila was “the cutest little girl” and “so awesome” – and Cierra knew that she and Brian had to help her in any way that they could.
So, after being treated for injuries at the hospital as a result of physical abuse, Kaila was sent to the couple’s home, and they agreed to look after her while criminal charges were filed against her caretakers.
They had no supplies for children and not much from Kaila’s home either.
Brian said:
“We had to get a bed. We had to get a high chair, potty chair. She came with a bag of clothes that didn’t fit her and a sippy cup and that was it.”
But with Cierra and Brian being all too willing to help, they’d soon settled Kaila into what they hoped was a normal life – or as normal as possible, considering her situation.
Brian enrolled the little girl at a local school, and she quickly became a part of the family.
“Within the second day she was calling my wife ‘mom’ or ‘mommy,'” Brian recalled to Good Morning America. “I was ‘guy’ for a week or two and then when she started preschool she learned who dad was.”
In this case, for both Brian and Cierra, adoption wasn’t even on the cards – it was a definite.
And finally, at the end of this year, the adoption process was complete, and four-year-old Kaila became their own child for life.
The difference Brian has seen in the little girl is phenomenal. He said:
“She’s happy and she’s flourished, and when we got her, she knew three words. Basically, she grunted like a caveman, she didn’t know how to talk. And now she loves to talk.”
Having been so inspired by their successful adoption story, Brian and Cierra are renewing their foster license.
They want to be able to help other kids in Arizona, and they’re keen to spread the word about how rewarding it is to foster.
“I would definitely encourage people to do it because there’s so many kids who need guys even if it’s just for a small amount of time you can make such an impact,” Cierra said.
You can watch an inspiring interview with new foster parents Brian and Cierra in the video below.
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