Tell me if I’m wrong – I let a motorcycle club show up to my foster child’s placement and now the agency is threatening to pull my certification.
I’ve been a court-appointed special advocate for six years. In that time I’ve been assigned eleven kids. The one I’m about to tell you about is a seven-year-old boy named Dustin, and in three weeks he has to sit in a courtroom and testify against the man who was supposed to be taking care of him. Dustin hasn’t slept through the night since April. He won’t eat unless I’m sitting across from him. He shakes when cars pull into the driveway.
His foster parents, Greg and Tammy Wojcik, are good people. They’ve had Dustin since May. But Dustin’s biological uncle – the one he’s testifying against – lives eleven minutes away. Same town. Same grocery store. Two weeks ago Dustin saw him in the parking lot at the Rite Aid and threw up on the sidewalk.
I’d heard about this group called Shields on Steel. They’re a motorcycle club, but not the kind you’re thinking. They’re all background-checked, most of them are veterans, and what they do is show up for kids. They escort them to court. They stand outside the courtroom door. They ride past the house so the kid knows someone big and loud is watching out for them.
I called their chapter president, a guy named Dale. Told him about Dustin. Dale said they could have six riders at the house by Saturday morning just to meet him, let him sit on a bike, give him a vest with his name on it.
I told Greg and Tammy. They were all for it.
Saturday morning, six bikes rolled into the driveway. Dustin hid behind Tammy’s leg for about four minutes. Then Dale got down on one knee and said, “Hey brother. We’re here because nobody messes with one of ours. And you’re one of ours now.”
Dustin walked over and touched the handlebar of Dale’s bike. First time I’d seen him smile since I met him.
Then a neighbor called the agency.
My caseworker, Brenda Holloway (58F), showed up Monday morning. She said I had “introduced unauthorized adults into a foster placement” and created a “safety liability.” She said the bikes were “intimidating to the neighborhood” and that I had “overstepped my role as a CASA volunteer.”
I told her these men were background-checked, that the foster parents consented, and that Dustin has to walk into a courtroom in nineteen days and face the person who hurt him. I said he deserves to feel like someone’s got his back.
Brenda looked at me and said, “Your job is to write reports. Not to play hero.”
My friends and family are split. Half of them say I did exactly what Dustin needed. The other half say I went around the system and I’m lucky I’m not already removed from his case.
Yesterday Greg called me. He said Brenda had been back to the house. She’d interviewed Dustin alone for forty minutes and told Greg and Tammy that the agency was “reviewing the placement.”
Not reviewing ME.
Reviewing DUSTIN’S placement.
I drove to the Wojciks’ house last night. Tammy was sitting on the porch steps. She’d been crying. She said Brenda told her one more incident and they’d move Dustin to a different county.
I called Dale this morning. Told him what was happening. He was quiet for a long time. Then he said, “How many people are in that courtroom on the twenty-third?”
I said it was an open proceeding.
He said, “Then she can’t stop what she can’t control. How early do those doors open?”
I haven’t answered him yet. My phone is sitting on my kitchen counter and his last message is still glowing on the screen. Because if I say yes, Brenda pulls Dustin from the only safe home he’s ever had. And if I say no, that little boy walks into that courtroom alone.
I picked up the phone. I started typing –
What I Typed
“Eight o’clock. Parking opens at seven-thirty.”
I sent it before I could talk myself out of it. Then I put the phone face-down on the counter and stood there with my hands on the edge of the sink for a while. The faucet was dripping. I didn’t fix it.
My name is Carol Pruitt. I’m fifty-one years old. I have a daughter in college and a dog named Biscuit and a spare bedroom I’ve never once slept in because it’s always been full of file folders and court documents and sticky notes with phone numbers for therapists who take Medicaid. I became a CASA volunteer because a woman named Ruth did it for my nephew back in 2003 and I watched what it meant to him to have one consistent adult in the room who was only there for him. Not for the agency. Not for the state. For him.
That’s the job. That’s always been the job.
Brenda Holloway knows what the job description says. I know what the job actually is.
The Part Nobody Asks About
People hear “seven-year-old testifying in court” and they picture something from a TV drama. A little kid in a nice outfit, coached, composed, answering questions in a clean bright room.
It’s not like that.
Dustin is going to sit in a chair and look at a man who used to be family. A man whose house he ate dinner in. A man who, based on what’s in the file I’m not allowed to quote from, made Dustin feel like what happened to him was his fault. Dustin is going to have to say things out loud that he has never said out loud in a room full of strangers, while that man sits twenty feet away and watches.
He’s seven.
He weighs forty-three pounds. He still sleeps with a stuffed dog named Blue that Greg bought him at a Walgreens in June because Dustin didn’t have anything from his old life that he wanted to keep. He learned to ride a bike in the Wojciks’ backyard in July and Greg has a video of it on his phone that he showed me and I had to look at the ceiling for a second before I could respond.
When I tell you that child deserves to walk into that building knowing someone is standing outside who thinks he matters, I am not playing hero. I am doing the only math that makes sense.
What Six Riders Actually Did
I want to be specific about Saturday because I think the specifics matter.
Dale Hatch is fifty-four. He did two tours, came home with a knee that doesn’t fully straighten, and started Shields on Steel nine years ago after he helped escort a ten-year-old girl to her custody hearing and watched her face change when she saw the bikes lined up outside. He told me that story the first time we talked on the phone. He wasn’t sentimental about it. Just said, “It works. Kids understand that somebody showed up.”
The other five guys: Rooster, who teaches middle school shop class during the week. Big Mike, who cried at Dustin’s vest presentation and then looked embarrassed about it. Terry, who brought a bag of Skittles because his own grandson likes them. Frank and Dennis, brothers, who spent most of the morning sitting on the porch steps talking to Greg about truck engines.
Nobody was intimidating. The bikes were loud for about ninety seconds when they pulled in, then the engines cut and it was just six guys in a driveway on a Saturday morning.
Dustin came out from behind Tammy’s leg on his own. Nobody pulled him. Nobody coaxed him past what he was ready for. He walked to Dale’s bike and put his hand on the chrome and looked at Dale and said, “Is it hot?”
Dale said, “Not anymore. You can touch whatever you want.”
Dustin touched the mirror. Then the seat. Then he looked up and said, “Can I sit on it?”
He sat on that bike for eleven minutes. I know because I was watching the clock on my phone, thinking about how long it had been since he’d wanted anything.
What the Agency Is Actually Doing
Here’s the thing I keep coming back to.
Brenda didn’t call me after the neighbor complained. She didn’t call Greg or Tammy. She showed up Monday morning unannounced, spent two hours at the house, and then told Greg and Tammy the placement was under review.
The placement.
Dustin has been at the Wojciks’ for four months. He knows where the bathroom is in the dark. He knows Tammy puts his sandwich on a blue plate because he said once that he liked the blue plate. Greg drives him to school every morning and waits until Dustin is through the door before he pulls away. Tammy told me that the first week, Dustin used to stand at the kitchen window after dinner and watch the street, and now he doesn’t do that anymore.
Moving him would undo all of it. New house, new smells, new people, three weeks before he has to testify. The research on this is not subtle. Placement disruption before a court appearance for a child trauma victim is one of the worst things you can do to a case and to a kid.
Brenda knows this. She has a master’s degree in social work. She has been doing this job for longer than I have.
Which means she’s either not thinking about Dustin, or she is thinking about Dustin and she’s decided something else matters more right now.
I don’t know which one is worse.
Nineteen Days
I called my CASA supervisor, a woman named Pat, on Monday night after I left the Wojciks’. Pat has been running our program for twelve years. She is careful and measured and she does not panic, which is why I called her.
She was quiet for a long time after I explained everything.
Then she said, “You should have told me before you called Dale.”
I said, “I know.”
She said, “The foster parents consented?”
I said yes.
She said, “And the men were background-checked?”
I said yes.
Another long pause. Then: “I’ll make some calls. But Carol, you need to understand that if Brenda decides to push this, there is a version of this where you’re removed from Dustin’s case before the twenty-third.”
I understood.
I understood it sitting in my car in the Wojciks’ driveway, and I understood it driving home, and I understood it standing at my kitchen counter looking at my phone with Dale’s message glowing on the screen.
I understood it when I typed back and hit send.
Here’s what I also understand. If I get pulled from this case, someone else gets assigned to Dustin. Someone who doesn’t know about the blue plate or the stuffed dog named Blue or the eleven minutes on the bike. Someone who will read a file and see a case number.
And on the twenty-third, when Dustin walks into that building, he’ll look around for a face he knows.
The Twenty-Third
Dale texted back four minutes after I sent him the parking time.
He said: “How many can we fit on the steps without blocking access?”
I didn’t know. I told him I’d find out.
He said: “Tell Dustin we’ll be the ones in the vests.”
I’m going to the Wojciks’ tomorrow morning. I’m going to sit across from Dustin at breakfast, because that’s the only way he’ll eat, and I’m going to tell him that on the twenty-third there are going to be some guys outside who think he’s one of theirs. I’m going to watch his face when I say it.
Brenda can review whatever she wants to review. Pat is making calls. My certification might be gone by Friday.
But that little boy is going to walk up those courthouse steps and he’s going to see a row of vests and he’s going to know that somebody showed up.
Tell me I’m wrong.
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If this one got to you, pass it on. Someone you know might need to hear that showing up for a kid is never the wrong call.
For more stories about navigating the complexities of the foster system, you might find solace in reading about the judge who looked at me over her glasses or even the time forty motorcycles pulled into the parking lot when things got tense. You can also hear about the guy I got fired from his new job and wonder if I was wrong.
