Another troubled mom opts to change
A future foster mother turns her life around
Chapter 4 of a six-part series: When you’re getting by, when you have a house and a job and can manage the kids, you don’t always think about the choices you make, the good ones or the bad.
And the bad choices never seem like the worst, never as hopeless as the ones Laurell Florence made on the streets of Phoenix. She lost her apartment, lost her daughter, lost everything. She had to walk away from a courthouse where a judge said she wasn’t fit to be a mother. That’s not a choice you make if you can help it.
So some days are not easy to navigate, but you’ve found a routine and it’s easy to believe you can get away with a few detours. You convince yourself no one will care if you’re spending some of your money on drugs, that no one will notice if your mood seesaws while the kids are at school.
After a while, scoring a hit feels as easy as going next door to borrow sugar. It’s no big thing.
And then for Lorraine Mendoza one day in 1987, on a street in Hawthorne, California, it was. She would confront a whole new set of choices. Those choices would deliver her to a whole new life, and that life, in turn, would deliver a visitor to her front door.
Hawthorne, California, 1987
Lorraine Mendoza checked on her kids, 8-year-old Michelle and 7-yearold Eddie. They were getting ready for school, too busy to notice their mother slip out of the house. Lorraine walked a few doors down the street to another house. She was going to buy cocaine.
She took longer than she meant to. Michelle and Eddie came looking for her to say goodbye before they left for school.
Lorraine was ushering them out to the bus stop when the police kicked in the door of the drug dealer’s house, pointed guns at everyone, and told them to get on the floor.
Lorraine was arrested. Michelle and Eddie were taken by an officer, who called child welfare workers to pick
them up. They were in foster care for two weeks until they went to live with their dad.
Lorraine didn’t see her children much after that. She broke more promises than she kept. She blamed the drugs.
She slept on the street or on friend’s couches. She sometimes had to eat out of trash cans. She was raped. Someone put a gun to her head.
Anytime she got money, she bought another fix. “God, please help me,” she would pray.
Lorraine hooked up with a man who managed an apartment complex and she helped him, not knowing he was stealing rent money.
When he got caught, she took the rap to protect the man she thought she loved. She spent two years in jail, convicted of grand theft.
When Lorraine got out of jail, she met another man. He talked to her about God. He told her she was worth something.
She didn’t believe him. She thought she would die on the streets.
One day in 1999, the man asked Lorraine if she would like to go for a drive. He took her out to eat. He drove for hours and finally pulled up to a recovery center, where he left her.
She stayed for 90 days.
When she got out of drug rehabilitation, she married the man. Two years later, she divorced him when he cheated on her.
“I’ll find you on the streets again,” he said.
She swore she wouldn’t be there.
Lorraine had been clean for five years in 2004 when she met James Agnew.
James’ son, Josh, was dating Lorraine’s younger sister, Denise. Lorraine heard Josh talking to his dad on the phone and asked, “Is he single? Let me talk to him.”
James lived in Phoenix. They talked on the phone often. James sent Lorraine his picture, which showed a good-looking man with a long, scraggly beard.
Lorraine was working in property management, had a nice apartment and a nice car.
When James came to visit, she took him to dinner and made him sleep on the couch. He asked if he could visit again. She said he could if he did something about that beard.
The next time he visited, he had shaved. He visited every weekend after that.
James was different than other men Lorraine had dated. He opened doors for her. He didn’t use drugs. He believed in God.
He got a job transfer to California. Lorraine proposed to him and they married in 2005.
On a trip to Phoenix to visit James’ family, he took her to look at houses for sale. Lorraine swore she’d never leave
California, but housing prices meant she’d never own a house there. She dreamed of a two-story house with a pool in the backyard.
They moved to Phoenix in 2011, bought Lorraine’s dream house, just the two of them, and two dogs. They were happy.
In 2012, she had a revelation. “The Holy Spirit told me I had to do — for kids.”
She applied to become a foster parent, but was turned down because of her conviction. She appealed the decision and was licensed.
By Dec. 3, 2016, Lorraine had been a foster parent for four years, with a houseful of children. She was at home that day when the doorbell rang.
Lorraine opened it to find a foster mother standing there and, half hidden behind her, a scared-looking 8-year-old girl.
“This is Aliyah,” the foster mother said, and pushed her in the door.
September 2017
The Agnew family gathered around the kitchen table, heads bowed in prayer. Lorraine and James and six girls, two of them adopted, four there as foster kids.
“Please help those suffering with the disease of addiction. Help their mothers who are without their children,” Lorraine said.
“Please help the parents to know in their hearts that their children are safe here with me. Give me the knowledge and strength to help me continue to love and care for these children.”
And finally, “Bless these doughnuts.” The children let go of each other’s hands and took turns picking out doughnuts, delighted with the Saturday morning treat.
“Gosh, I’m so blessed, you need to know,” Lorraine said, watching the girls. “They’re all a blessing.”
It was a world away from the one Lorraine once lived. But she hadn’t forgotten it and she could sympathize with the mothers of these children.
“I did the same things the mothers are doing now,” Lorraine said. Promises not kept. Bad choices.
“I thank God I’m even here,” Lorraine said.
She wanted Aliyah’s mother to make it, to get off drugs and pull her life together, not only for her daughter but for herself.
“She’s lost. She’s out there, and it’s a tough life,” Lorraine said.
Lorraine tells the girls in foster care who come to stay at her house, “It’s not Mom. It’s the disease.” They pray she will get better.
“Every child should be able to know their mother if their mother is fit to be known,” Lorraine said.
It will be Aliyah’s mom’s choice. If she gets clean and sober, she will see Aliyah again.
Coming in Chapter 5: