Yolo County California teen dumped was another adoptee

I wanted to include a few more links about the boy from Davis in Yolo County, California who was dumped Friday before Governor Heineman signed the 30 day limit into law. I blogged about his case very briefly at the time, Squeaking in under the wire, another big kid safe haven dump.

Keep in mind, this was the roughly 16 hour drive from near Sacramento California to the Southwestern-most corner of Nebraska, and Kimball County Hospital . Basically a 'cross the state line and dump him quick before the law changes' dump.

Nebraska DHHS has their press release about his case from the 22nd. They label him the 36th case in the official statistics (link opens a PDF.)

Our unofficial stats, find him somewhere closer to at least number 47. (We feel secure in saying even our estimates are low.)

He is now in the process of being sent back to California.

These first two articles go into a little bit of detail about the way in which he was dumped:

Nebraska to send back abandoned Davis teen

She told the boy to pack his bags, and with her oldest son and a friend, drove all night.

Only when they were at the hospital did she tell her son she was leaving him there.

She said the boy got out of the car and walked into the hospital without looking back.

The woman said she had expected to feel relief but instead felt "sick to my stomach."

and

California 'haven' teen being sent back

The mother didn't stay long after reaching the Kimball hospital, local officials said.

She left "as soon as she dropped him off," said Kimball County Attorney Dave Wilson.

Interestingly, there is no word about whether the Mother went in with him to dump him or not.

If not, would he have otherwise been another self "haven" wherein the kid shows up without a designated dumper?

I'll be keeping my eye out for more details on this, as Nebraska has refused to accept self "haven" cases in the past as part of the official "safe haven" program. I'm wondering if an exception was made for this boy as they had traveled so far.

The following article (& videos) lay out the woman who adopted him's side of the story. (Legally, she's his "adoptive mother.")

Yolo Mom Who Abandoned Boy In Nebraska Speaks Out

Lori says she struggled to raise Kevin ever since taking him in as a foster child at age four.

(He had reached 14 by the time he was dumped.)

Be sure to see the 3 videos connected to this last piece. In one, the woman claims she was unaware that Friday was the last day before the law was set to age down, she thought it was going to change at the end of the month. (Note that at the end of this video segment, the California law is erroneously described as being for infants 14 days and younger, California's legalized abandonment law actually only applies to infants 3 days old or less.)

Despite her promise:

She told Kevin, her 14-year-old son, "if you walk into this hospital, they will find a home for you."

Odds are pretty slim a 14 year old with a so called "troubled past" is going to be adopted by someone new anytime soon. He has been in Nebraska foster care for the last few days as preparations were being made to ship him back to California.

This final article confirms his adopted status:

Davis mother drops kid off in Nebraska

She had adopted him when he was four years old.

19 of the 34 kids included in the most recent version, updated November 17th, of the Nebraska DHHS "matrix of commonalities of safe haven cases" (link opens a PDF) are currently or had previously been state wards.

12 of the 34 tabulated cases were listed as "Adopted/Guardianship or Relative Placement."

As the California boy came in after this latest version, he has not been included in these statistics yet. (Nebraska made it up to 36 officially counted cases before the law changed, the "matrix" only goes up through number 34 so far.)

As I have said before, the crisis these generation 1.0 of the dump kids in Nebraska face is in many cases a crisis of adoption and kids already entangled in state care.

The next generation, those dumped under version 2.o of the dump law, those 30 days and younger, remain to be seen.

There has however been one case of a self "haven" who falls squarely between the two generations, a 12 year old who was disqualified and is going by and large unnoticed. He came in on Sunday after the law had aged down.

But as for Kevin, from California, he is unfortunately just another kid dumped into Nebraska's "returns department" for no longer desirable adoptees.

Sure, everyone wants one when they're young and cute, but similar to many adopted pets, as they grow older, bigger, and less manageable, now kids like those once cuddly and adorable pets have been dumped, abandoned by those who no longer wanted them.