An Olympic effort

Young Chang

Adam Taylor likes to play man of the house. The 17-year-old mows the

lawn, takes out the trash, settles fights between the younger ones.

Joey Taylor is genuine, lovable and likes to see if he can get away

with things. At 15, he also thinks it’s funny when he gets caught.

Tony Taylor is quiet, passive and sweet. The 12-year-old will write

little notes that say “have a nice day” and tuck it in his sister’s

books.

DJ Taylor is the jokester. He’s an extremely intelligent 7-year-old,

having grown up around so many older people.

Finally, there’s Amy Taylor. She’s 27, the biological mother to DJ;

the sister to Adam, Joey and Tony; and the legal parent to all four.

Last month, Amy, who had been in and out of foster homes since she was

4, bore the Olympic torch in Newport Beach on behalf of foster care and

the prevention of child abuse.

She has a 3.8 grade-point average as a scholarship student at Vanguard

University in Costa Mesa.

She works part-time doing light bookkeeping.

She pays the bills in the Taylor household.

She cooks, cleans, packs the lunches, checks the homework, does the

laundry, drops off and picks up whoever needs a ride, watches the school

plays, attends the conferences and does everything else parents do.

She also gets scared and discouraged sometimes and always feels “close

to the edge.”

But more than anything else that defines her, Amy Taylor is the one

who kept her boys together despite a collective history of more foster

homes and more social workers than any of them can count.

“All it takes is one look at them and seeing that they didn’t ask for

the life they were given,” she said.

That’s what keeps her going as the head of the Taylors.

BECOMING THE TAYLORS

Amy Taylor and her brothers come from a broken background of one

mother and five fathers. Each of them spent childhood in a combination of

places: very briefly with their mother, in different foster homes and

with their grandmother, who was eventually made everyone’s care provider.

But 10 years ago, social workers determined that Taylor and her

siblings should be placed outside their grandmother’s care.

It seemed likely that the siblings would be split up into different

homes.

So Taylor, then 17 and close enough to 18, became legally emancipated

and proved to a judge that she could handle temporary custody of the

boys.

“With good grades and no police record, I was granted that,” Taylor

said.

Her sacrifices included a scholarship to UCLA.

“I couldn’t go away to UCLA and live on campus and all that with [the]

kids,” she said. “But I did it without second guessing it.”

It was at a courthouse in Orange that the Taylors became the Taylors.

Until then, everyone had a different last name because of the different

fathers.

“It was embarrassing, trying to be a family. The judge said, ‘Here, as

a little gift to you guys, I’m going to change your names for free,”’ Amy

Taylor said.

So during a 15-minute recess in the hallway, they grabbed a phone book

and huddled around to pick their family name. They agreed on Taylor.

For the next eight years, the Taylors appeared before a judge every

six months to renew their temporary-custody status by proving that

everyone was being taken care of.

“Nobody in the world said a family has to have a mom and dad,” Taylor

said.

Two years ago, a judge tearfully agreed.

Social workers were trying to separate the crew again. They claimed

the three boys had been in the foster system too long and should be put

up for adoption. So Taylor, then 25, decided to adopt Adam, Joey and Tony

as her children.

DJ had been born by then, but because Taylor chose to take care of her

family, she and DJ’s father went separate ways.

At the courthouse the morning of the adoption hearing, Taylor

remembers being so nervous she wanted to throw up for the second time

that day. She remembers her court-appointed special advocate being a

“godsend” and keeping her from fainting.

She also remembers the judge having tears in her eyes before

announcing the decision.

“She said, ‘You boys better be good for your sister,”’ Taylor said.

The judge also added that the boys were to come back and visit her

once they graduated high school.

The new, official family drove home quietly that morning. None of them

really believed that they -- Amy, Adam, Joey, Tony and DJ -- would be

together forever. Joey, being the jokester, of course said something

about everyone acting like somebody had died.

“We kept expecting some social worker to come and say we didn’t sign

the right papers,” Taylor said.

That night, the family ordered pizza and rented “Forrest Gump” to

celebrate.

THE LITTLE THINGS

Now, pizza and a video mark special occasions in the Taylors’ lives.

For birthdays, the person aging a year gets to choose the topping and

the video title.

Also for birthdays, Taylor will bake a cake, and the family will play

football after the pizza’s been eaten and the video’s been watched.

“I have to pay the bills first and the rent, and they know that rent

and bills and food come first,” Taylor said. “But I make each person feel

like it’s their day.”

DJ’s birthday is just two days after Christmas. Despite his day being

so close to the most expensive of holidays, Taylor immediately rips down

the tree every year and hangs the birthday banners.

“I remember being the kid that got shuffled around,” she said. “You’re

nothing but basically a number at foster homes. I hated when they called

me the wrong name. I just don’t ever want them to feel like that.”

Which is also why Taylor shows up at every school function her

schedule can handle. She goes to the talent shows, the plays, even offers

to be the chaperon mom during field trips.

No one ever came to watch Taylor’s school shows.

“But they get excited when they see you sitting there,” she said of

her siblings.

Her part-time job -- bookkeeping for two investors -- lets her work at

night.

She also studies at night, from 1 to 3 a.m., after she’s made dinner

and washed the dishes and done the laundry. Every day is like a race, she

says, and free time alone is a privilege she almost never has.

But for Taylor, a second chance at college is enough. After giving up

the UCLA scholarship 10 years ago, she took night classes at junior

colleges to try to compile credits and bits of knowledge while working

full time. Last year, having saved some money, she decided to apply for a

scholarship at Vanguard. She got it and now works part time.

“The problem is, if I don’t have money to raise the kids, then I don’t

have money to go to school,” she said.

During class, while she’s trying to concentrate on everything from

sociology to business, she’ll usually end up worrying about how to pay

the rent and bills.

Taylor receives minimal assistance from the state because she’s a

sibling instead of a foster parent, and she studies hard to keep her

scholarship every semester. She’s had to spread out the expenses, buy her

school books over three weeks instead of at once, and take the kids to

places such as the beach and the park, where having fun costs next to

nothing.

“People think you need money to go to Disneyland and have fun, but you

just have to spend time with the people you love,” Taylor said.

The five of them laugh a lot. They go everywhere together, even though

DJ sometimes asks why he and his mom can’t go to the grocery store alone.

“Everybody’s equal,” Taylor said.

It doesn’t matter if you’re technically her son or her brother.

Joey and Adam, who often fight for the man-of-the-house role, treat

Taylor like one of the guys.

The two younger ones fight “like a married couple.” The older two have

their clashes. But the minute an outsider causes trouble, the boys band

together.

“We’re a tight family,” Taylor said.

Their rules include discipline.

“I don’t act like the old mother,” Taylor said. “I don’t mind pillow

fights, don’t mind arguments. But the one thing I don’t budge on is

respect for other people and education, because those are the two things

that are going to take them far in life.”

Taylor grew up not wanting to be like her mother or the other adults

in the family. She also decided against being poor and living out of

foster homes.

“A lot of what I’ve done is based on fear,” Taylor said. “I don’t care

what it takes, I don’t care how long it takes. There’s no reason in the

world why I have to continue the cycle that they gave me.”

GO NORTH

It’s as if Taylor was born with a compass pointing north, says her

friend and mentor, Barbi Rouse.

“Amy has an intuitiveness about her. All her life, even in the midst

of the trauma and the destructive pattern her family was in early on, she

was determined,” said Rouse, director of learning skills at Vanguard.

The mentor first got to know Taylor last year while teaching her study

skills and encouraging her not to feel overwhelmed. They still talk

regularly about school, Taylor’s ambitions, about helping the boys learn

and about Taylor’s life at home.

“There’s no way Amy cannot bring her home life into her educational

experience because her home life is the center of her heart,” Rouse said.

“And she makes sure to let her boys see her study.”

No one gave her the same guidance, but Taylor’s innate intuition about

what’s right and wrong and what’s good and bad guides the family’s lives,

the mentor said.

She remembers Taylor saying that her pregnant mother smoked and that

she could tell by the way the baby moved in the womb that it wasn’t

healthy.

“She remembers, as a child, she got this uh-oh feeling. She continued

to think about it, and she’s taken that on as a cause as well,” Rouse

said.

Whether it’s not smoking while pregnant or remembering the “pleases”

and “thank yous,” Taylor’s compass continues to point north.

At a recent trip to their regular McDonald’s -- one where the jungle

gym is indoors -- DJ came up to Taylor and started telling her about what

he and Tony had just done on the playground.

“Tony and me,” the boy began.

“Tony,” Taylor interrupted, promoting DJ.

“And I,” he continued.

Years ago, after moving from Los Angeles to Orange County, Taylor

realized she didn’t know how to talk properly.

“There was a lot of cussing, a lot of slang,” she said of life in

Compton and South Central. “Coming up here, it was so embarrassing. I was

behind academically. So I nip everything in the bud that I can, because

no one corrected me.”

Minutes later at the same McDonald’s, DJ ran back from his play area

again and took a bite of his hamburger. While chewing, he started talking

to his mom.

“Do you have food in your mouth?” she asked.

DJ nodded.

“Then why are you talking to us?” she continued.

DJ quieted immediately and continued chewing. In the Taylor household,

there are two cardinal table-manner rules: Talk without food in your

mouth, and have a napkin in your lap.

AMY ROCKS

During the first months after the adoption, Taylor tossed and turned

herself to sleep every night. She worried about whether she’d be able to

support the kids financially and whether she’d be able to raise them

right.

So far, the job’s proved doable, she said. She’s long eliminated the

possibility of having her own social life. She’s adopted two cats -- Max

and Mimi -- because they would’ve otherwise been put to sleep, and her

apartment is often bustling with neighborhood kids who like to drop in

and talk to Taylor.

“It seems they don’t think they can talk to their parents,” she said

of her young friends.

Taylor also works with teenage girls who are in foster care.

“Her way of making a difference is to become their friends and to gain

their trust,” Rouse said. “The same with her sons.”

Taylor’s dream is to start a legal, counseling and resource center for

foster kids.

Earlier this month, leaders of Orange County Foster Care nominated

Taylor to be an Olympic torch bearer. For half an hour, she ran down

Newport Boulevard with the torch in her hand on behalf of foster care and

the prevention of child abuse.

Swarms of kids from Newport-Mesa schools sat on the sidelines

cheering. Taylor remembers seeing them and noticing their innocence,

thinking none of them was likely to have her sort of past.

When asked if her own kids appreciate her, Taylor gave an immediate

“yes.”

“They like to say ‘Amy rocks,”’ she said, smiling.

The two older ones will often say, “You rock, man!”

Taylor, who is less familiar with popular teen jargon, will say, “I’m

not a man, and what does rock mean?”

She worries less now than she did two years ago and says, with

confidence, that her boys are good, sweet boys.

Her method is to handle life by the day.

“Before you know it, time goes by and you’re actually doing

something.” she said.

-- Young Chang writes features. She may be reached at (949) 574-4268

or by e-mail at o7 young.chang@latimes.comf7 .