Tell me if I’m wrong – I let a group of bikers walk my foster child into a courthouse and now my supervisor is threatening to have me removed from the case.
I’ve been a court-appointed special advocate for six years. I’ve worked with dozens of kids in the system, but this one – Maddox, age 8 – is the one who keeps me up at night. He’s been in three placements in fourteen months. He has to testify against the man who hurt his mother. And every single time we’ve brought him to that courthouse, he shuts down completely. Won’t get out of the car. Goes nonverbal. Last time he threw up in the parking garage.
His caseworker, Denise (51F), told me point blank that if Maddox can’t get through this testimony, the case falls apart. His mother’s abuser walks. And Maddox goes back into a home where nothing has changed.
I tried everything. Comfort objects. Practice runs. A child psychologist walked him through breathing exercises for two weeks. Nothing worked. The second he saw that building, he froze.
Three weeks ago, my neighbor Todd mentioned he rides with a group called Shields Up. They’re a motorcycle club – big guys, leather vests, patches, the whole thing – and what they do is escort kids to court. They’ve done it in other counties. They stand with the child. They walk them in. They sit in the gallery so the kid can see them. Todd said they’ve never lost a kid to a panic episode.
I called the chapter president, a guy named Rick Muñoz. He talked to me for forty-five minutes about how they work with kids. They don’t touch the child unless the child initiates. They introduce themselves days before. They let the kid pick a road name.
Maddox picked “Tank.”
The morning of the hearing, seven bikers met us in the parking garage. Full leather. Bandanas. Rick kneeled down and said, “Tank, you see all these guys? Nobody gets past us. Not today, not ever.”
Maddox grabbed Rick’s hand and WALKED INTO THAT COURTHOUSE. No freezing. No vomiting. He looked up at Rick the whole way.
My supervisor, Patricia (58F), was waiting inside the lobby. She saw the group coming through the metal detectors and her face went white.
She pulled me into a hallway and said, “What the HELL is this? You brought a gang into a federal building with a minor in state custody? Without authorization?”
I told her they weren’t a gang. I told her about the program, about the track record, about the fact that Maddox was STANDING in the courthouse for the first time in four attempts.
She said, “I don’t care if he’s doing cartwheels. You exposed a vulnerable child to unvetted strangers. I’m filing a report tonight.”
My friends and family are split. Half of them say I did what nobody else could do for that kid. The other half say I went around the system and that’s exactly how kids get hurt.
Maddox testified that day. He sat in that chair for twenty-two minutes. Every time his voice started shaking, he looked at the gallery, and Rick gave him a nod.
Patricia filed the report that evening. Two days later I got a formal letter saying a review board will decide whether I stay on Maddox’s case. The hearing is Friday.
But this morning Denise called me. She said Patricia had also contacted Maddox’s foster parents and told them the bikers were “unscreened individuals with potential criminal affiliations.” The foster parents are scared. They’re talking about requesting a new advocate.
Maddox doesn’t know any of this yet. All he knows is that for the first time in his life, he walked into a building that terrified him and he didn’t fall apart.
I just got a second call. This one from Rick. He said Patricia’s office left a voicemail asking for the names and addresses of every member who was present, and that if they don’t comply –
What Patricia Doesn’t Know About Rick Muñoz
He didn’t finish the sentence. Not because he was scared. Because he was laughing, this low, dry laugh, the kind that says I have dealt with worse than a woman in a beige blazer.
“She’s going to do what, exactly?” he said. “Call the cops on guys who escort traumatized children into courtrooms?”
I didn’t answer. I was sitting in my car in the parking lot of a Walgreens, engine off, staring at the steering wheel.
Rick told me that Shields Up has been running their program for eleven years. Eleven years. They’ve walked kids into courtrooms in seven counties. They’ve got a formal relationship with two district attorneys’ offices in the state. They carry documentation. Background checks on every member. A liability waiver framework they built with an actual attorney. He told me all of this in the same tone a guy uses when he’s explaining how to change a tire. Patient. Slightly bored.
“We’ve been vetted more than most of the people sitting in those courtrooms,” he said.
I believed him before he even said it.
What I didn’t tell Rick, because I didn’t want to say it out loud, is that Patricia isn’t actually concerned about vetting. She’s concerned about optics. She’s concerned that a child advocate went around her, got results she couldn’t, and now there’s a paper trail that shows the system’s standard approach failed four times before a guy in a leather vest fixed it in ten minutes.
That’s what’s in the report. Not child safety. Her.
The Three Weeks Before the Parking Garage
I want to be clear about something, because my family keeps saying I acted impulsively. I didn’t.
After Todd mentioned Shields Up, I spent four days reading everything I could find. News coverage. A segment from a local TV station in another county where they’d done this. Comments from judges, from prosecutors, from caseworkers who’d used them. I called two of those caseworkers directly. One of them, a woman named Gail who’d been doing this for twenty-three years, said, “The first time I saw it work, I cried in my car for fifteen minutes. It’s not magic. It’s just big guys who show up.”
I called Rick. That forty-five-minute conversation wasn’t small talk. He walked me through their intake process. He asked me questions about Maddox that nobody had asked me before. Not his history, not his case file details, but things like: does he respond better to humor or to seriousness? Does he like having choices or does too many choices overwhelm him? Is he a kid who needs to feel in control, or is he a kid who needs to feel protected?
I thought about it. “Protected,” I said. “He’s been the only one looking out for himself for a long time. He’s tired.”
Rick was quiet for a second. “Okay,” he said. “We’ve got a guy for that.”
They came to meet Maddox at the foster home six days before the hearing. Just two of them, Rick and a guy named Dennis who is roughly the size of a refrigerator and has the gentlest voice I’ve ever heard on an adult male. They brought Maddox a Shields Up patch, the same kind they wear, and told him he’d earned it just by agreeing to try.
Maddox held that patch for the rest of the afternoon.
The road name conversation happened on day two. Rick told Maddox he could pick any name he wanted. Maddox thought about it for a long time. He asked if “Destroyer” was taken. Rick said it wasn’t. Maddox thought some more. Then he said “Tank.” Just Tank. Rick said, “Tank it is,” and shook his hand like a business deal.
I watched an eight-year-old who had not made eye contact with an adult male in the fourteen months I’d known him shake hands with a six-foot-two biker and stand up a little straighter.
That was six days before the courthouse.
What Denise Actually Said This Morning
The first call, the one about the foster parents, lasted nine minutes. Denise was careful with her words, which told me she was scared. She’s not usually careful.
She said Patricia had reached out to the foster family, a couple named the Hargroves, and had described the Shields Up members as “unscreened individuals with potential criminal affiliations.” She’d apparently mentioned that some motorcycle clubs have documented ties to organized crime, which is technically true of some clubs and completely irrelevant to this one, but if you say it fast enough to worried foster parents it sounds like a warning.
The Hargroves are good people. I want to be clear about that. They took Maddox when two other placements had already sent him back. They’ve kept him for four months. They put a Lego set on his bed the first night. But they’re also people who have to weigh risk, and Patricia handed them a reason to be afraid.
Denise said, quietly, “I think Patricia’s trying to get ahead of something.”
I asked her what she meant.
“Maddox’s testimony was good,” she said. “Really good. The DA’s office is calling it the strongest they’ve had in a case like this in years. If this conviction happens, people are going to ask how. And the answer is going to be that a CASA volunteer went outside protocol and it worked. That’s not a story Patricia wants told.”
I sat with that.
“What do I do about the Hargroves?” I asked.
“I’m going to call them,” Denise said. “I’m going to tell them what I actually know about Shields Up, which is the same thing you know. But you should probably call them too. Before Friday.”
What the Review Board Is Actually Deciding
The formal letter used phrases like “deviation from established protocol” and “unauthorized third-party contact with a minor in state custody.”
I’ve read it four times. I keep looking for the part where it mentions Maddox. His name appears once, in a case number.
The review board has five people on it. I know two of them by reputation. One is a former CASA volunteer herself who moved into administration. The other is a man named Gerald who has been on that board for nine years and who, from what I’ve heard, does not like being surprised.
My advocate coordinator, a woman named Bev who has been doing this longer than Patricia and likes her about as much as I do right now, told me to bring documentation. Everything. The background checks Rick gave me. The two caseworker references. The news coverage. The DA’s office statement about Maddox’s testimony.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Bev said. “But you did do something without asking, and you need to show them why asking would have gotten you a no, and why the no would have been wrong.”
She said it matter-of-factly, like a mechanic explaining what’s broken.
I’ve been building the folder for two days. It’s thick.
The Part I Keep Coming Back To
Maddox doesn’t know any of this is happening.
Right now he’s at school. He has a Shields Up patch in his backpack, which the Hargroves told me he’s been carrying since the day Rick gave it to him. He testified twenty-two minutes in a room with the man who hurt his mother, and he didn’t fall apart.
He also asked Denise, two days after the hearing, whether Rick would come back. Not for court. Just to come back. Denise didn’t know what to tell him.
I don’t know what to tell him either.
What I know is that the system spent fourteen months trying to get this kid stable enough to speak, and what finally worked was a group of strangers who showed up in leather and kneeled down to his level and told him nobody gets past us. Not today, not ever.
I went around protocol. I did. I’d do it again before I finished the sentence.
Friday is four days away. Rick called back after we got cut off and told me to tell Patricia’s office that Shields Up’s legal contact will be responding to any further requests directly. He said it the same way he said everything. Patient. Slightly bored.
Then he asked how Tank was doing.
I told him Tank was doing okay. Carrying his patch. Going to school.
Rick said, “Good. That’s the whole point.”
—
If this one got to you, pass it along. Someone out there needs to know this kind of thing happens.
For more stories about judging a book by its cover, check out My Supervisor Is Reviewing Me for Getting a Seven-Year-Old to Talk for the First Time, I Let a Stranger with Tattoos and a Leather Vest Say What I Couldn’t to My Son’s Bully, and I Called Him a Thug in Front of My Family. Then I Found Out Who He Actually Was..
