For Teen's Adoption Dream, It's Never Too Late

At home, in the minivan, at the dinner table, Damien Harris was badgering Marseeda Reed for something he badly wanted before his 18th birthday. It wasn't an ordinary teenage desire, like a new phone, an iPod or a car, even.

He wanted to be adopted.

Three weeks before he legally became an adult, his foster mother granted him that wish, something exceedingly rare for a 17-year-old foster child. They celebrated with strawberry shortcake, Damien's favorite.

Of the 2,300 children in the District's foster home system, about 800 are, like Damien, "legacy kids" -- teenagers who have been in the system for years and are, for all practical purposes, unlikely to be adopted. Their future is to stay in foster care until they can walk away as adults, Roque Gerald, the Child and Family Services Agency director, said in a recent symposium about the state of the agency.

Damien didn't want that. "I'm not ready to be on my own," he said. After five years of pestering, doggedly doing his chores and boring his way deep into Reed's heart, Damien legally became her child.

"I just really wanted a family, my own family," said Damien, who likes to point out that he is now "Damien Harris dash, don't forget the dash, Reed."

Today, 16 children will also get that wish amid an unusual amount of fanfare because it is National Adoption Day. In the District, judges hope the day will highlight the 289 children eligible for adoption this year.

"There are kids sitting in foster care who really have no idea about whether they will be reunited with their own families or if they will have a permanent family," said D.C. Superior Court Judge Anita Josey-Herring, who has presided over the celebratory adoption days for eight years. "It's just critical for people to know these kids are out there."

Damien was set on the path to a permanent family six years ago, when he and his five siblings were taken from their mother and placed into foster care.

"She couldn't take care of us," Damien said. He didn't like his first foster home, which he shared with another boy who Damien said constantly beat up on him. He met Reed while on a weekend respite: She was offering her home as a foster parent on weekends. Damien clicked with Reed's sons -- one biological, one adopted. They went to a Redskins kids' event, and Damien didn't want to go back to his foster home.

Reed thought Damien was sweet. He has a learning disability and doctors told Reed that even though he was 13, he was more likely to relate to boys about 7 or 8 years old, the ages of Reed's sons.

So eventually, the family grew, even more when Reed gave birth to a girl and when two of Damien's younger siblings, who are still Reed's foster children, arrived.