James Hancock stood at the end of table, hands in his pockets, explaining he’s not much of a public speaker.
He was quiet. He looked at the floor. He sighed. Then he had a realization.
“I am going to do this like I do with my kids,” he said.
A deep breath.
“At the age of 13,” he began, “I was put into foster care.”
Hancock, and four other storytellers who gathered to rehearse Tuesday, shared the hardships and the inspiration they have experienced being connected to Arizona’s child-welfare system.
Now a foster parent himself, Hancock will share those remembrances again Friday as part of “Celebrate Our Story,” a fundraiser for Arizona’s Children Association that’s being carried out in collaboration with Odyssey Storytelling. The other speakers include Cindy Hansen, who oversees in-home services for Arizona’s Children, and Dimon Sanders, a recently adopted foster teen who competes in state and regional Miss America pageants.
The rehearsal audience included Penelope Starr of Odyssey Storytelling and Tony Paniagua, producer of “AZ Illustrated Nature,” who was there as an Odyssey curator and volunteer. Odyssey Storytelling is a local nonprofit, founded by Starr in 2004, that brings monthly storytelling events to Tucson.
Lori Riegel, an Odyssey board member and the Southern Arizona development director for Arizona’s Children, was also there to help the storytellers round out their stories.
“I see myself
in some of my kids”
The day after Hancock joined his foster family, they set off on a 3,000-mile trip that took them into California and Oregon. Hancock had never been away from Arizona before, but he had moved 32 times and attended 17 elementary schools before foster care.
“Stability?” he said, referring to life with his mom. “None.”
This was the start of a more normal life, he said.
Hancock’s transition wasn’t easy, though. There were rules and boundaries he’d never before experienced. He railed against homework, often disrupting the “homework table” his foster parents had set up in their home. But, he said, his foster mother would not relent and, eventually, he got it.
“They showed me that if I wanted something, I had to go for it, do it. I had to concentrate,” he said. “And, if you fail, you get up and you do it again.”
Hancock and his wife run a therapeutic foster home. They have one biological child, and are in the process of adopting for the first time.
“I see myself in some of my kids,” he said. “They say, ‘You’ve never been in my shoes’ and I sit them down and tell them, ‘Oh, yes I have.’”
“A great, great day”
Kyle Hetherington started his story with life as it is now: He’s a senior at Rincon High School, angling to go into politics and learning from local politicians like Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild, and state Sens. David Bradley and Steve Farley.
He is a confident speaker with a knack for making people laugh. But the story of his early childhood is far from funny.
Kyle was still a toddler when his maternal grandparents, visiting Tennessee from their home in Green Valley, realized their daughter was incapable of caring for their grandson. There was serious neglect, including Kyle being left with acquaintances for long periods.
They fought for custody and won. In third grade, when they legally adopted him, Kyle’s whole class attended.
“It was a great, great day,” he said.
But it has also been challenging to accept what didn’t happen. His little sister went to live with her father, he said, and her visits to Southern Arizona were upsetting for Kyle. “That, in itself, messed with me a lot,” he said.
The turbulence of his middle-schools year subsided when he started high school. He joined Junior State of America and began debating. He met state lawmakers and became part of Tucson’s Metropolitan Education Commission.
Last July, he was invited to study at Georgetown University and visited the sites in Washington, D.C. It was a fantastic trip, he said.
“Even when things start off hard,” he said, “you can have two great people who come into your life, who help you and mold you.”
“We’ll take her”
Greg Wilson’s voice was powerful in the small rehearsal room at the Arizona’s Children Association.
As a young man, he said, his primary focus was to succeed as a corporate executive and achieve a certain lifestyle. His wife was equally driven, he said, and they spent their time — then living in Los Angeles — pursuing that goal.
But it didn’t last. They found they hated it.
With the boat and expensive cars sold, they aimed to simplify, with less stressful jobs and more time outside of work. They wanted to start a family, but were unable to conceive. That’s when they decided to become foster parents and, eventually, adopt a child.
The phone call came in the middle of the night: a preschool-age child who had suffered significant abuse needed help.
“We just said, ‘We’ll take her,’” he said. That was over six years ago. Wilson is now on the board for Arizona’s Children and his life, he said, is about helping kids.
“She has been such a blessing to us,” he said. “We both make a fraction of what we made in our corporate years, but our lives are 10 times richer.”
