COUNTYWIDE : Foster Parents’ Efforts Win Salute

Andrea Mathews’ grown-up children tell her she should be spending her time by the pool in a lawn chair, drinking mai tais.

Instead, the 54-year-old nurse cares for medically fragile, sometimes drug-addicted babies, witnessing firsthand the effects of alcohol and illegal drugs their mothers took during pregnancy.

Today, the Orange County Board of Supervisors will recognize Mathews and six other foster parents for their efforts with the 1991 Foster Child Advocacy Award. Also being honored today for exemplary service to foster children are James and Linda Darden, Michael and Lynn Glezos, Midge Nativo and Jennie Salteil.

Mathews said she doesn’t see what all the fuss is about.

“I’ve been a single parent since 1975, and even as a young person I thought of being a foster parent,” she said. “I love this more than anything else. I can’t imagine a time in my life when I’m not holding a baby.”

Mathews’ modesty is typical of most foster parents, said Barbara Labitzke, executive director of Southern Area Fostercare Effort, a public-private partnership aimed at improving foster care in eight Southern California counties. The parents “don’t see what they’re doing (or) why they should be recognized for something that gives them so much satisfaction.”

When Mathews, who has been caring for foster children since 1980, made her last tuition payment for her youngest child’s college education in February, 1990, she decided to quit working full-time and devote all of her attention to medically fragile babies.

“That’s when I decided what I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” she said. For 11 years she has cared for 25 foster children in her Anaheim home, taking a second mortgage on her house, converting the garage into a fourth bedroom and putting a pool into the back yard.

Mathews has two children by birth, ages 25 and 23, and she first adopted a child in 1980. That daughter, now 22, had four heart surgeries before she turned 16.

“We never knew if she was going to live any of those times,” Mathews said. Besides suffering from severe congenital heart disease, the girl had been abused by foster and adopted parents for years before she was placed with Mathews.

Mathews’ caring for sick and troubled has continued through the years. One of her current foster children, a 19-month-old girl--her name cannot be released under state law--was born prematurely and went through a traumatic birth. She was already ill at birth and her brain was damaged when she went into cardiac arrest. She has lived with Matthews for 15 months and her adoption is about to be finalized.

The child’s brain stopped growing two months after her birth and eventually her body will outgrow her brain. Mathews vowed that whatever life the girl has left will not be spent with tubes down her throat in an institution.

“I won’t let them do that to her,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes. “The other kids are so good with her. They’ve always recognized her as a special baby.”

Besides the 19-month-old girl, Mathews is currently caring for five other foster children, feeding and clothing them, picking them up from school and taking them to Girl Scout meetings and ballet lessons. She plans to adopt four of them.

“I believe in giving my foster kids all my original kids had,” said Mathews.