Foster Care Month spotlights Cindy Locke and foster son Mykal

When Ivan, the son Cindy and Lenny Locke fostered and adopted, lost his fight with cancer at the age of 17, the family was devastated. He had been in remission and recovery seemed likely. "After all we went through; it was more heartbreak than I could take. At 46, I thought, this is enough," Cindy explained.

Cindy and her husband decided to take a break from foster parenting, but one exceptional request changed their minds. A teenage boy currently in foster care urgently needed a heart transplant.

To be eligible for a donor heart the youth, Mykal, would have to be in close proximity to Children's Hospital in Seattle and his current foster home in the Tri-Cities was too far away. The 16 year-old also needed a caregiver who could provide intensive post-transplant care.

At an age when her friends were going to parties and dating, Cindy Locke was foster mother to a 15-year old who required a ventilator and around-the-clock care for a condition that left him without the use of his arms and legs.

Her foster son and other children the then 23-year old nurse cared for were the center of her life; so much so that she didn’t mind when her father teased her. "You'll never find a husband because you never leave the house," he said. "He's not going to just knock at the door you know." Chance would soon prove her father wrong.

Cindy met her husband, Lenny, when he actually did "just knock at the door" while delivering oxygen for her foster child. Before they married she challenged him, "These kids are my dream, you take me and you take them and more like them too." He took her up on the challenge and the dream. With his skills as a medical technician and her nursing experience and caring nature they were a winning team.

Through the years the Lockes fostered 25 medically fragile, special needs and other children, adopted three special needs children, and had three children by birth. Some of the children they took into their home had terminal illnesses and with the Lockes found a real home and love in their final years and months of their lives.

So the Lockes were well known and liked in the caring and healing medical and foster parent communities. Their many friends felt they could be the perfect match for the young man in need of a heart transplant.

"Our phone must have rung three times that day with other foster parents telling us about him. We live very near Children's Hospital. They know I am a nurse and we can cope with his medical needs." Cindy explained. "We are the right family for him at the right time, so he is right for us too."

In what seemed like record time the paperwork and other details between the Department of Social Services Children's Administration, non-profit agencies and state case workers, foster parents and medical administrators, the placement with the Lockes was completed.

Mykal is now on the transplant waiting list at Children's Hospital, a potentially lifesaving operation that will give him the chance at a full and healthy life. "The doctors told him, 'you want to live? You have to get a new heart,'" Cindy Locke explains, "He understands that there are some things he just can't do like other kids just now, but we just do the things we can as a family with Mykal included."

Now the Lockes and Mykal wait for one more call -- the one that will tell them a donor heart is available. They know it could be days or months until a donor heart becomes available. Cindy makes sure to keep pagers and cell phones in close range and a bag packed and ready for Mykal's stay at the hospital.

Being placed with a foster family who met the specific criteria of medical caregiving skills and location can mean the difference between life and death for Mykal. For the entire Locke family, it is a big commitment. They know the kind of around-the-clock care Mykal will need after the transplant operation and the risk that comes with bonding with a child with his medical history. "My kids know how to share and care for someone; what life is like and how much it means."

You can be a hero to a kid who needs the guidance of an adult who cares. For information about becoming a foster parent, go to the foster parent Web site at www.dshs.wa.gov/ca/fosterparents/index.asp or call 1-888-KIDS-414.

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