Tell me if I’m wrong – I let twelve members of a motorcycle club into a government building to sit with a seven-year-old during her hearing. My supervisor wants me fired.
I’ve been a child welfare social worker for nineteen years in Maricopa County. I’ve handled over four hundred cases. I have NEVER had a complaint filed against me. Not one. Until last Tuesday.
The girl’s name is Bree. She’s seven. What she’s been through – I can’t say here, but she was set to testify in a dependency hearing against her biological father, and she hadn’t slept in four days. Her foster mom, Denise Kowalski (51F), called me Monday night in tears saying Bree was shaking so hard she couldn’t hold her cup at dinner.
Denise’s brother rides with a group called Iron Shield. They’re not a gang. They’re mostly veterans and retired guys – electricians, teachers, a damn pediatric nurse – who escort kids to court. They sit in the room. They don’t speak. They don’t interfere. They just sit there so the kid doesn’t feel alone. It’s a real program. They do it in sixteen states.
Denise asked if they could come. I called the courthouse, confirmed with the hearing officer, got verbal approval. Everything by the book.
Tuesday morning, twelve riders showed up to the family services office where we were meeting before the hearing. Leather vests. Patches. Big guys, most of them. They lined up in the hallway and when Bree came around the corner holding Denise’s hand, she stopped dead.
A man named Gary Womack, sixty-three years old, got down on one knee. He said, “Hey Bree. We’re here for you today. Nobody in that room is gonna scare you while we’re sitting there. Okay?”
Bree nodded.
She walked into that hearing room with twelve bikers behind her and she sat in that chair and she DID NOT SHAKE. Not once. She spoke clearly. She answered every question. The hearing officer had tears in her eyes.
Then my supervisor, Linda Ferraro (58F), pulled me into her office afterward. She said I created a “security threat” and an “intimidation issue” by allowing “unvetted civilians” into a government proceeding. She said the father’s attorney was already drafting a complaint claiming the bikers were there to influence testimony through physical intimidation.
I told her I had approval from the hearing officer. She said that wasn’t her approval. She said I went over her head. She said I put my “personal feelings” above protocol.
I said, “That little girl spoke for the first time in three hearings. She looked at the man who hurt her and she didn’t fall apart.”
Linda looked at me and said, “That’s not your call to make.”
My friends and family are split. Half of them say I’m a hero. The other half say I should’ve gone through Linda first and I knew exactly what I was doing by not asking her. And honestly – they might be right. I knew Linda would say no. That’s WHY I didn’t ask her.
The disciplinary hearing is Friday. Linda wants a formal reprimand and a thirty-day suspension. I’ve been told the father’s attorney is requesting the entire dependency case be reviewed for procedural misconduct.
I walked into the office this morning and there was a manila envelope on my desk. No name on it. I opened it, and inside was a single sheet of paper – a drawing in crayon. A little girl in the middle, surrounded by a circle of people on motorcycles. Underneath, in wobbly handwriting, it said –
What It Said
Thank you for my frends.
No name. Bree can’t write her last name yet. I know her handwriting because I’ve been in her life for eight months, and I’ve seen her draw before – horses, mostly, and one recurring picture of a house with a very large door. This was different. The motorcycles were purple and red, every single one of them, and the people on them were bigger than the buildings she’d drawn in the background. The little girl in the middle had yellow hair, which is right. And she was smiling, which is – that’s not something I’ve seen from Bree. Not on paper. Not in person. Not once in eight months.
I sat at my desk for a while with that drawing in my hands.
Then I put it back in the envelope, put the envelope in my bag, and went to my nine o’clock.
What Nineteen Years Looks Like
People ask me sometimes why I’m still doing this job. The burnout rate for child welfare workers in this state is brutal. I’ve watched colleagues walk out in the middle of shifts. I’ve watched good people go numb, which is maybe worse than walking out. I’ve had a therapist since year four, which my therapist says is the reason I’m still functional, and I believe her.
I took this job because I had a professor at ASU named Dr. Carla Reyes who told our cohort that child welfare work was the closest thing to load-bearing work she’d ever seen. Meaning: you pull out of it and something collapses. I was twenty-four and I thought that was the most important thing anyone had ever said to me.
Nineteen years. Four hundred and thirty-one cases, give or take. I stopped counting somewhere around year twelve, then started again because I needed to know the number. I don’t know why. I just did.
In those four hundred and thirty-one cases, I have never once had a complaint filed against me. Not from a biological parent, not from a foster placement, not from a colleague or a hearing officer or a CASA volunteer. I’ve made calls that kept me up at night. I’ve made calls that were wrong. But I’ve never been written up, never been suspended, never had my judgment formally questioned.
Until Linda Ferraro decided that a seven-year-old’s composure in a courtroom was a procedural problem.
Linda
I want to be fair to Linda because I’ve been trying to be fair to Linda since Tuesday and it’s not getting easier but I’m still trying.
She’s been in administration for eleven years. Before that she did casework for six, which means she knows what the job is. She’s not ignorant. She has, in my observation, a genuine belief that the rules exist for good reasons, and she’s not wrong about that. Rules in child welfare exist because the system has been catastrophically abused in every direction. Biological parents’ rights get trampled. Kids get placed in dangerous homes. Evidence gets contaminated. Cases get thrown out. The rules are not decoration.
But here’s what I can’t get past.
Bree had not spoken in two prior hearings. Two. She sat in that chair and went somewhere else entirely – you could see it happen, her eyes going flat, her whole body just checking out. The first time, the hearing officer had to reschedule. The second time, they got through it, but Bree’s answers were monosyllables and her attorney told me afterward she was worried about what the record looked like. A child who can’t or won’t speak in her own dependency hearing – that’s a problem for her case. That’s a problem for her future.
Tuesday she spoke for forty minutes. Clear sentences. Direct answers. She looked at her father twice and didn’t look away first.
And Linda’s concern is that the father’s attorney is upset.
The father’s attorney is supposed to be upset. That’s his job. His client is a man who did things to a seven-year-old that I am not going to describe here, and his attorney is looking for any procedural thread to pull. That’s the game. You don’t restructure the entire board because the opposing player complained about your move.
I said something close to that in Linda’s office. She told me I was being reductive.
What I Actually Did Wrong
Here’s the thing I keep coming back to, the thing my friend Pam has said to me three times now in three different phone calls.
I knew.
I knew Linda would say no. I’ve worked under her for six years and I know how she reads situations like this. Twelve bikers in a government building, leather vests, the optics of it – she would have seen the father’s attorney’s complaint before it was filed. She would have said no to protect the case, which is an argument I actually understand. It’s not a crazy argument. You can make a real case that bringing in Iron Shield, however legitimate the program is, handed the father’s defense team a gift.
I didn’t ask her. I went to the hearing officer directly, got my approval, and moved forward.
And I did that because I had seen Bree shaking so hard she couldn’t hold a cup. I did it because I’d been in that room twice and watched her disappear. I did it because Denise called me at 9 PM and was crying and I had something I could actually do.
So yes. I made a choice. I made it deliberately and I made it knowing there would probably be a cost and I made it anyway.
That’s not heroism. That’s just – I don’t know what that is. It’s the job as I understand the job. You do the thing that helps the child. When the thing that helps the child and the thing that protects the institution are the same thing, that’s easy. When they’re not, you make a call and you live with it.
I’m living with it. I’ll keep living with it Friday.
The Disciplinary Hearing
I have a union rep. Her name is Sylvia, and she’s been doing this for twenty-two years, and when I told her the whole story she was quiet for a long time and then she said, “You got verbal approval from the hearing officer?”
I said yes.
She said, “In writing anywhere?”
I said no, it was a phone call.
She said, “Okay,” in a way that meant several things at once.
The hearing officer’s name is Rosario Beltran. She’s been on the family court bench for nine years. I’ve appeared in front of her maybe thirty times. I called her office Wednesday morning and her clerk told me Judge Beltran was aware of the situation and had submitted a written statement to the court administrator confirming she had granted approval for the support group’s presence.
I don’t know what’s in that statement beyond that. Sylvia says it matters. Sylvia says the father’s attorney’s complaint about procedural misconduct is a longer shot than it looked on Tuesday, because if the presiding officer approved the arrangement, there’s no procedural misconduct. There’s just Linda being angry that I didn’t loop her in.
Which is, to be fair, a real thing. That’s a real issue. Chain of command exists for reasons.
Sylvia thinks we can get the suspension knocked down or eliminated. She thinks the formal reprimand might stick. I’ve been trying to figure out how I feel about that and I keep landing in the same place: a reprimand in my file after nineteen years and four hundred cases, for making a call that got a little girl through the worst day of her young life.
I can live with that.
I think.
Friday
I haven’t told many people at work what’s happening. The ones who know are split almost exactly the way my friends and family are split, which tells me this isn’t a simple question even if it feels like one to me at 2 AM.
My colleague Deb, who has been in this office for twenty-six years and has seen everything, stopped me in the break room Thursday morning. She poured her coffee and didn’t look at me and said, “Bree’s doing okay. Placement’s stable. Thought you’d want to know.”
I said I did want to know.
Deb said, “Gary Womack called the office to check on her.”
Gary Womack. Sixty-three years old. Got down on one knee in a government hallway and told a seven-year-old nobody was going to scare her.
I said, “What’d you tell him?”
Deb said, “I told him she was doing okay.” She picked up her coffee. “I told him she drew him a picture.”
She walked out. I stood there for a minute.
The drawing is in the envelope in my bag. I’ve been carrying it with me since Monday. I don’t know why I haven’t taken it home yet. Maybe I’m not ready to put it somewhere permanent. Maybe I need it close for Friday.
A little girl in the middle. Purple and red motorcycles all the way around. Buildings smaller than the people.
Thank you for my frends.
I go in at nine.
—
If this one hit you somewhere real, pass it along to someone who needs to read it.
If you’re still reeling from that story, you might be interested to read My Mother Threatened Me in a Government Hallway While Bikers Kept My Daughter Safe or perhaps My School Board Told Me to Cancel the Assembly. I Said See You Friday. And for another dose of family drama, check out My Future Mother-in-Law Begged Me to Lie to My Fiancรฉ in a Hospital Hallway.
