Glenda Perez was on the verge of becoming an empty nester after raising six kids, when she accompanied a friend to an informational meeting about foster care. Learning of the desperate need, the single mom from San Jose mentioned that she’d be willing “to take on one child, a little girl about 3 years old.”

Today, Perez laughs at the irony of her request.

That was 1997. In the following years, she has served as a foster parent to eight boys – many of them teenagers, and many for years at a time. Not a single little girl. Now, she’s 67 and a grandmother, but she still has two foster sons, ages 16 and 20, at home. Many former foster sons visit on the holidays to be with the woman they call Mom.

 “We need more individuals and families like Glenda,” says Georgina Tapia, a social worker at the nonprofit Bill Wilson Center, a youth services agency. “(We) can always call Glenda when a youth needs a place to stay, and she is always open to learning about the youth’s needs to ensure that she can contribute to his well-being.”

Being a mother is something Perez always loved. A country girl from Tennessee, she married at age 17 and happily made a home for her husband’s three small children from a previous marriage. The couple had three children of their own, and although she and her husband divorced after 28 years, Perez remains close to the whole clan.

While working full-time at a printing firm as a single parent in 1990, she had an accident that pushed her toward foster care. A crane malfunctioned and tossed her backward, injuring her neck. She kept working for a few years despite the discomfort, later retraining as a dental assistant until that work also became too painful.

Perez saw foster parenting, and the stipend it provided, as a way to help pay her mortgage and, at the same time, aid children desperately needing a home.

Starting with Three

While Perez initially wanted just one child, a social worker told her of three brothers, ages 6, 7 and 9, who had been neglected by their parents, but were attached to each other. At the social worker’s urging, Perez agreed to take them for a weekend on a trial basis.

While Perez is white, her own children are half Mexican. The foster brothers are Hispanic, and they spent the weekend at a Perez family birthday party, hitting a piñata and enjoying Mexican music and food.

“We bonded automatically,” Perez says, smiling. “As I drove them back Sunday, I looked in the rearview mirror and could see that they didn’t want to leave. I was back there at 8am Monday. They were banging on the glass for the social worker to let me in.”

Back home, she found that the boys were malnourished, had lice and clung to her desperately. She cleaned, fed and hugged them, enrolled them in school and took them outdoors to play.

“I was a tomboy, so it came naturally to be with boys,” she says. “I taught them how to skate, pitch horseshoes and ride bikes. I taught them to play ball, swim and chop wood, too.”

She liked her new role, but it came with challenges. She recalls, with laughter, how the youngest boy was so active that he’d stay up until 10pm playing basketball on his bed. As a teen, he began to rebel and ended up moving to another home.

Perez took on other boys over the years, all ages 10 and up. She tells of the one she took to a local panaderia nearly every morning for comfort food, the one who gave her a huge scare when he left without telling her he was going to walk miles to his grandma’s house, and the one whose story broke her heart.

For a year, Perez took that boy, who was 13, weekly to see his mother, whom he loved and who was working to meet social service requirements for him to come back home. One day, Perez got a call that his mom had been killed in a crash, while going to visit the boy’s grandfather in the hospital. The grandfather himself died of cancer later that same night.

“I went to tell him at school,” Perez says quietly. “I held his hands, and he dropped his head and the tears just started coming.”

She gave him a cross pendant, telling him that God would always be with him. While he later went to live with his uncle, he still visits her and wears the pendant to this day.

Figuring Out What Teens Need

Raising teens requires not only understanding, but also structure, Perez says. Her current teenage foster son is “a good boy who loves sports,” but she still checks to make sure he is where he’s supposed to be, including in bed and at school on time.

“I made him a deal: Tend to your responsibilities and you keep your cell phone – and I’ll pay for it,” she says. “You have to do a lot of pep talking, a lot of understanding and a lot of hugging. If they nudge you away, hug anyway. Nine times out of 10, they hug back. And then I say, ‘Gotcha!’”

Perez loves to talk about all her kids and their accomplishments, but she brims over with pride when she tells of the oldest of the three original foster brothers. Though he didn’t finish high school, he later “got in the rhythm of taking care of business,” says Perez. Now at age 23, he works as a butcher at Safeway, is working toward his GED, is engaged to a great girl and – Perez brags – doesn’t even smoke.

Recently, he gave Perez a big hug – with a newly tattooed arm that read “Mom.”
“I was overwhelmed. I said, ‘Why did you do that?’”
He smiled and responded, “Because you’re my mom.”

Angela Geiser is an associate editor with Bay Area Parent.

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How You Can Go ABOVE & BEYOND

Finding new homes for neglected or abused kids would mean a great New Year for staff at the nonprofit Bill Wilson Center, which arranges foster care and manages local runaway and homeless youth shelters.

Some 650 kids require foster care in Santa Clara County each year. The need is especially keen for families able to foster siblings and teens, according to Gricelda Alvarez, recruitment coordinator at the Wilson Center.

Families who want to learn more can attend an information session, 6-8pm on Thurs., Jan. 6 at the Wilson Center, 1671 The Alameda, Ste. 201, San Jose.

Beginning in January, the center will offer a 24-hour foster care training spread over several Saturdays. Potential foster parents fill out an application and meet several times with a foster care coordinator to determine their suitability. Foster families receive $800 to $2,000 a month, depending on the child’s age and behavior. Parents receive weekly social worker visits, support groups and foster parenting seminars.

If you’re unable to be a foster parent, monetary gifts and in-kind donations are welcome. Especially needed are used vehicles, kitchen items, furniture, clothes and baby items to help teens and teen parents who are moving from shelters and foster homes out on their own.

For more information, call 888-922-KIDS (5437) or see billwilsoncenter.org.
Other agencies seeking local foster homes for kids include the Santa Clara County Department of Family & Children Services, 333 W. Julian St., San Jose (sccgov.org) and The Kinship Center, 3031 Tisch Way, Ste. 306, San Jose. (kinshipcenter.org).