My wife and I helped a family years ago after the father went to jail for manufacturing narcotics (he provided the shed to do it in). When he went in we helped the family with food and shelter. There was 5 children. The youngest was a boy that was 11 at the time. I helped his father get a job and a small house to rent when he got out. The youngest son was the only child that stayed with him. The mother was the one who was the biggest problem. I know for a fact that the mother actually prostituted the 14 year old daughter for drugs. This family was a mess.
The father however never returned to that lifestyle. He quit the drugs when he went to jail and has been clean ever since. He has worked for me for 6 years now. The house he lived in was in a rough school district so when his youngest son started high school he moved in with my wife and I to attend a better school. He did pretty good but after 2 years he had an opportunity to move in with his grandmother to attend school there with some kids he had known from the past. Plus he said he wanted a break from my wife and I’s rules. He did however for the first time in his life see what a real family that loves and looks out for each other was like. All of his extended family was either drug addicts or drunks.
The boy regularly would come to our house on the weekends, come over for holidays, pretty much anytime he felt like it. I have spent many hours talking to him about “life”, helping him buy a car (with money he saved thru a job I got him), and helping him make plans for his future.
One of his sisters got pregnant when she was 15 and after the child was born the state took him away from her and terminated her parental rights. My wife and I adopted him. He is a special needs child due to her drug use while she was pregnant so we have a special relationship with him and he is an uncle to my children.
He graduated this year from high school, being the first one from his known family to do so. This was a great milestone in his life.Then after much consideration he choose to join the Army.
Last Monday night his father and I took him out for a steak dinner for his last meal before he flew off to boot camp. He will be in the infantry when he gets done. I told him how much I loved him and then I let his father say goodbye. The scene of him walking away thru the doors of the terminal is forever etched in my mind.

The one thing he asked me for before he left was to come to his graduation from his training. I promised him I would be there.
He also wanted me to take him to the dunes again, and I told him "see I helped raise you right".