When I was younger, I never would have believed anyone who told me that I’d one day be rescuing child slaves in West Africa – or for that matter, take into my care more than 200 former street children in Vietnam, or travel to a remote jungle area to find a legless baby whose parents had tried to kill her in a family suicide pact, or visit a brothel for teenage prostitutes in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. For most of my adult life, my idea of “travel” typically entailed a drive to Target or to visit my parents, who lived a good five minutes away, in the house where I grew up in Neosho, Missouri.
When I was a high school sophomore, I met my first – and last – boyfriend, Randy Cope. We got married in a ceremony in his parents’ front yard. I was 20 years old and had recently graduated from cosmetology school, having decided long ago that I was not college material.
Two years later, our son Jantsen was born. His delivery did not go well. In fact, it was an excruciating experience that nearly killed both of us. After an emergency C-section, he spent several days in the ICU, unable to breathe on his own. But ultimately, everything turned out fine, at least this time. Eleven days later, he made a full recovery, and, other than suffering from asthma, he was a healthy, spunky, and easy child.
After the ordeal of Jantsen’s delivery, we decided that rather than try to get pregnant again, we would instead adopt. Three years later, Crista Marie Cope came into our lives.
At the time, mine was a typical small-town American life: days organized around our children’s activities, family vacations, and running the hair salon that I started with my sister. All that changed forever on June 19, 1999 – the day that Jantsen died.
After football practice, Jantsen and his cousin Darius had gone to my sister Cheryl’s house to watch a movie. Jantsen sat on the couch, fell asleep, and his heart just stopped. The doctors later explained that he had a congenital defect that was undetected. They said that even if it had happened in a hospital, there might have been no way to save him.
