I’ll be your mom

Pam Bolke is riding impatiently in the backseat of a car with a pair of social workers headed to New Orleans’ DePaul-Tulane Behavioral Health Center.

A mom and owner of a small sandwich shop, Bolke is worried how she’ll handle the impending confrontation, and whether she’s up for a fight. But she stays poised by focusing on her responsibility—being a good parent to Danielle, the pre-school Danielle, who was placed with Pam and Tom Bolke of Zachary after she had been through four other foster homes.

It was Pam Bolke’s own reports to state health and welfare professionals about Danielle’s behavioral problems that prompted social workers to send Danielle to the New Orleans doctors in the first place. The moment the Bolkes welcomed Danielle into their home, she started to exhibit destructive behavior and suffered disturbing nightmares.

“The doctors thought she was disturbed and didn’t think she could make it in a normal home environment,” Pam recalls.

But to Pam, Danielle’s temporary third-floor hospital home felt like anything but. Stark walls. Locked doors. Everyone wearing lace-less shoes for safety.

Bolke’s mission on this day is to convince doctors that she and Tom can care for Danielle. She aims to get Danielle discharged and take her home. But doctors insist the young girl’s problems are too great for Bolke to handle at home. She pleads her case, after only about 15 minutes of discussion the doctors relent and agree to release Danielle to her foster mother.

“I felt relieved at that moment. I had won and I wasn’t going to give up,” Bolke says.

That was eight years ago, and a key day in a chain of events that led to the Bolkes adopting Danielle, and then her four siblings from their own troubled, young biological parents who’ve since moved out of state.

Today, despite the children’s mountainous problems, Bolke says she knows it was the right choice, and her confidence is reinforced by the children: Kelsey, 10, recently told Bolke she thinks her biological mom missed out on a lot. “Yes, she did,” Bolke told Kelsey. “But you’re such a prize.”

That anxious drive to New Orleans for Danielle was only one of countless battles this mother of three of her own grown children has fought in order to care for five troubled, challenged siblings. Life has thrown every kind of obstacle at the children, and she has helped them tackle all of them.

Danielle, now 12 years old, has been diagnosed with significant emotional and mental health disorders, while 8-year-old Leah faces some health problems of her own. Ten-year-old Kelsey suffers from attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder.

And then there are the twins, Jennifer and JT, who came to the Bolkes at three months old. Jennifer suffers from speech problems, while JT has spina bifida and hydrocephalus.

As a foster mom Bolke chose them all. Indeed, the Bolkes adopted the siblings so they wouldn’t be separated again.

Pam has found that being a foster parent can be radically different from traditional parenting. “We don’t pick our own children, we don’t know how they’ll turn out,” she says.

But one aspect is identical: Parents who love their children fight for them at all costs.

Pam Bolke’s path to becoming a foster mom started when she read an article in the newspaper about Danielle, a young child who needed a foster home. The Bolkes quickly decided to take her in.

It was important, Pam says, that someone step up and stick with that child. “Four families had already given her up.”

“I cried a lot those first three months,” she recalls. Danielle had problems sleeping, hoarded food and generally behaved irrationally.

After three months the Bolkes found out her sister, Kelsey, needed a home. They didn’t hesitate at the chance to reunite the siblings.

The Bolkes may have stopped there but for a local news report about three more young children desperately in need of a home: Danielle and Kelsey’s younger siblings.

Pam phoned the social worker that night and promised they’d adopt them all.

A few days later, Leah, Jennifer and JT arrived at their new home.

“People looked for me to fail,” Bolke says. “I wasn’t.”

It turned out that three months of working closely with Danielle emboldened, rather than overwhelmed her. She became more confident she could handle the siblings as well.

Tom, a licensing specialist at River Bend nuclear power plant, says his own upbringing helped prepare him for the challenges. “I’m so blessed, I came from a family of five,” he says. “And Pam had experience—she’d already raised three kids.”

Pam draws strength and insight from her own childhood.

She’s generous with her affection, the way her parents were with her when she was a child. And the kind she missed as well. Her father, Johnny Richardson, died when she was eight years old, leaving her mom, Sybil, a widow with four children. They had to grow up quickly.

Pam says she was her dad’s little girl, so after he died she felt she simply wasn’t allowed to remain a little girl anymore. Now, when she plays with her children, she feels the kind of child-like joy she missed out on after her father died.

“God has a bigger plan,” she says. “Giving back is a cycle, and I am on a mission to help people.”

Before the Bolkes adopted Danielle, Pam asked her own children how they felt about it, and without exception they supported the decision. She didn’t have to ask them again when Danielle’s siblings came along. “Mom,” they asked her, “aren’t you going to get the (other) kids?”

Despite years of struggle focusing on her foster children’s many obstacles, none of Pam’s own children begrudge her instinct to become a mother again. Samantha, 30, and Jason, 29, both treat Pam’s adopted children like brothers and sisters. They encourage their mom’s “go for it” spirit when it comes to the kids.

For all their challenges and unique needs, the children are living normal, happy lives, Tom says. “They’re just like normal kids. I find them all amazing.”

Tom and Pam separated in 2007, but they continue to organize their lives around their adopted children. The children live in the family home while the parents alternate their time there.

Pam’s grown children remain supportive, even when they still have to lean on their mother for support. Two years ago Melissa, now 33, was diagnosed with leukemia, so Pam finds herself in a traditional mom role once again.

How does she do it?

Mainly by staying hyper-organized, she says, and by concentrating on keeping a positive attitude.

She spends Sundays preparing meals for the week, as well as washing and organizing the children’s school uniforms. Having each day’s outfits pre-arranged and sorted allows for a swift morning routine. “Busy is happy,” she says.

She also makes sure that the family takes an annual vacation to the

Tennessee mountains. “We’re instilling memories. I’m showing them that life isn’t bad. Things can be good.”

This positive outlook drives her. And she pushes her children to accomplish more than expected. Children with spina bifida, for example, usually are unable to walk. That’s what doctors told her about JT—he’d never walk on his own.

Pam resolved to help JT walk, and she helped him practice walking with a broken broom handle.

Now JT walks with leg braces below his knees and rides the regular school bus.

Adds Tom, “He’s my little Forrest Gump, he just kept working at it. He keeps up with his siblings and he’s smart as a whip.”

For the past few years Pam sharpened her parenting skills at her former job at Volunteers of America. After seeking help from VOA to learn how to raise children adopted from abusive homes, VOA hired her to work with Parker House, the organization’s crisis service for children. And until recently she worked as a VOA outreach coordinator and advised people on adoption and foster care.

She won the Angel in Adoption Award in 2004, presented by then-U.S. Sen. John Breaux. Bolke also won the 2007 United Way Campaign Speaker MVP award for sharing her powerful story with others.

“Pam’s the real thing,” says Monique Marino, president and CEO of Volunteer! Baton Rouge. “She’s incredibly positive, and that allows you to accomplish hellacious things. She’s also not afraid of asking for help.”

The frightened little children who arrived at the Bolkes’ home are older now. They ride the bus to school, they pursue lives like most other kids.

Just a couple of years ago she and the twins made the drive to the A.C. Lewis YMCA for day care singing “The Wheels on the Bus,” or playing Herbie Derby. Today Pam commutes to work in an empty car.

“One day you wake up and the twins are six years old,” she says. “They don’t throw Froot Loops at me anymore.”