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She's not the typical court-appointed guardian for kids, but 74 years of dealing with life's bumps have given her the strength of purpose that her first tiny client would need.
By JOHN BARRY, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 27, 2002
ST. PETERSBURG -- She's 74. Widowed. Moves stiffly. Gets lost in unfamiliar neighborhoods. Pronounces her hometown "Balty-more." You picture her baking cookies for grandchildren, not banging on strange doors, or inspecting a child for bruises, or standing up to an errant father, getting in his face, telling him to "act like a man."
Bernadine Schultz said she couldn't read the child abuse stories anymore without getting involved: There was Rilya Wilson, 6, the subject of a massive, fruitless search since March after child welfare officials realized her Miami caseworker hadn't checked on her for 15 months; Alfredo Montes, a Winter Haven 2-year-old, beaten to death on July 1, also while under state protection; Kayla Regine Mays, 19 months, fatally beaten in Crestview on July 13, three days after being checked by a state caseworker.
Since those stories last summer, hundreds of people have volunteered to become personal advocates for abused and neglected children under a court-run Guardian Ad Litem program. Schultz was among a group of 30 who volunteered for five weeks of training at the Pinellas County Criminal Justice Center in July and August.
Guardians aren't Big Brothers or Big Sisters, who take poor kids on outings and buy them ice cream. They are unpaid officers of the court, each one assigned by a judge to a child who appears to be in great danger. Their mission isn't necessarily to make children's lives better, or even to love them. It's only to make sure they stay alive and unharmed and to report to the judge on the child's best interests. They don't do outings in the park, they do inspections in the home. When a case is closed, they move on.
Schultz's resume didn't fit the typical guardian profile, if there is such a thing. "Paralegals make great guardians," said Barbra Sessa, assistant director of the program for Pinellas and Pasco counties. "Or journalists who can write great reports. Or retired police officers." But one thing Sessa said she has learned is not to make assumptions.
Schultz? She's a mother of four, a grandmother of six. She worked for 20 years in quality control at a plastic bottle factory in Baltimore. Fourteen years ago, she retired here. For the last 13 years, she had worked as a volunteer for Meals On Wheels, delivering food to shut-ins. A budget crisis shut down her Meals On Wheels site at the same time she began reading in the paper about dying children.
During her training class, Schultz and the other volunteers were warned by Unified Family Court Judge Frank Quesada that they would be assigned the "worst cases" in the family court system, "the bottom 10 percent."
"This is not about children living in dirty houses," he told them. "When you come into a case, a child is in serious crisis."
Was Schultz totally out of her element? Or was she hiding her steel?
"I'm coming in blind," she said. "I don't even know how marijuana smells. I've never even had a policeman at my door."
Yet slowly, or maybe not so slowly, she would reveal elements of her character that would indicate something more. No one reaches 74 without suffering, without being tested, without being toughened. As she set out, Schultz gave a hint of that: "I've got my foot in it," she said gamely. "Once I commit myself, you can't hold me back."
Christopher Ouellette, 28, and Tonya Wiemers, 21, gave birth to a baby girl they named Crystal Jade in April 2001. She was born a healthy 8 pounds 5 ounces, delivered by Caesarian section at Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg. Christopher and Tonya were parents for three weeks before the state took the child away.
What went wrong is not completely clear. All records in the case are confidential, and information could be provided only by the family, not the Guardian Ad Litem program. Christopher and Tonya offered a murky version, and Joyce Ouellette, Christopher's mother, described a different version, but everyone agreed there were problems right from birth.
After leaving the hospital, "Tonya said she was depressed," Joyce Ouellette said. "I took a week off to help her out, but then two weeks later, she said she was severely depressed and wasn't able to cope. So she went back to Bayfront, and they removed the child."
Tonya acknowledged she wasn't feeling well, but she and Christopher said the hospital overreacted. "Bayfront didn't like me to begin with," Tonya said. "They said I told them things I didn't say."
Both parents had histories of violence. Tonya had been charged with aggravated battery in 1998, with adjudication withheld. Christopher had a burglary arrest and a marijuana possession arrest in 1996, and other minor drug arrests in 1997 and 1999, none of which led to jail time. His most serious arrest was in 1997 on a charge of child abuse. He and another man, Robert L. Gettys, 24, had "ambushed" a minor in Pinellas Park and beaten him up on the street, according to police reports. Gettys had knocked the victim to the ground, police said, and Christopher had kicked him in the back. Christopher pleaded no contest and got a year's probation.
When Crystal Jade was born, Christopher was working for an air conditioning company, living with Tonya, who planned to be a stay-at-home mom. Neither had been been in trouble with the law for several years.
Joyce Ouellette said she never believed either would deliberately harm Crystal Jade. "Christopher would be a good dad if he had the chance," she said. "It's not lack of will, it's lack of ability. They would never hurt her. It's obvious they love her. But they don't realize how fragile a small child can be."
The parents still can't understand why the state took away their baby.
"They let us take the baby home, but then they said they weren't supposed to let us go home," Christopher complained. "We had her for three weeks, and then they came in and they took her. We weren't charged with anything. There were no signs of abuse, no signs of neglect, no shaken baby syndrome, nothing."
The state put Crystal Jade in the custody of Christopher's mother, Joyce Ouellette.
"I have to tell you, I thought twice about it," Joyce Ouellette, 62, said. "I had just been told I would be laid off from my job as an annuity specialist (at Franklin Templeton Funds Management). I could think of other things besides raising a child at my age.
"But I think she needed me."
For about a year Christopher and Tonya were not allowed to be alone with Crystal Jade. They could visit her only at his mother's house. "They spent the holidays with her here," Joyce Ouellette said. "She crawled for the first time last Thanksgiving Day."
During that time, Christopher and Tonya began taking a series of court-ordered classes: parenting, drug and alcohol, "life management." After a year of faithful attendance, the court allowed them to take their baby home four days a week -- from Thursdays to Sundays.
About the same time, Joyce Ouellette also was reading newspaper stories about children in danger and about the need for volunteers to the Guardian Ad Litem program. She thought the program sounded "fantastic," but for her own reasons.
"Whenever we went to court, everyone had someone representing them except the baby," she said. "The state had lawyers, the parents had a public defender, and you could say I had my own agenda as well. Crystal needed a guardian to speak for her, to have only her well-being in mind. That's why I asked for one."
Crystal Jade's file was on Barbra Sessa's desk at the Guardian Ad Litem office when Bernadine Schultz came by to get her first case.
"I started out like gangbusters," Schultz said during a phone call on Aug. 13, a few days after getting her assignment. But she wasn't boasting. She sounded discouraged already.
In the training class, the volunteers had been told that they would be operating with the full authority of the court behind them. They would carry identification. They would be able to talk to teachers, doctors, caseworkers, police officers.
One veteran guardian, Sandra Killian, had advised the class to be tough and demanding, telling them a personal war story: "I went to the Largo (police department) to pull a police report. Came with my court order, my guardian identification, but they weren't going to give it to me. 'Excuse me, sir,' I said. We called the judge right there and then."
Schultz tried to be tough and demanding like Killian. She wanted to see all the paperwork on Crystal Jade, especially medical records. But Crystal Jade's caseworker never seemed to be in the office and didn't return calls. Schultz visited the baby's doctor, but was told she needed a release signed by the grandmother to look through files.
"I feel like I've hit a wall already," she said.
Three days later, Schultz made her first contact with Tonya, who said she was welcome to come by. She said Christopher would be home on Saturday. Schultz also had reached the caseworker, who was "very gracious," but not completely forthcoming. She had yet to look at any records. "The caseworkers don't give us access to what they get," she said. "If I find out something, I want the caseworkers to know about it, but they don't share."
She got nowhere asking for records at the doctor's office. "I had my badge and card and it didn't mean a thing."
Schultz had met Crystal Jade at her grandmother's. "She was more than I expected. The way she smiled, and how she came right to me." She turned out to be a blond scamp, a chatterbox, who from the start liked to sit in Schultz's lap and throw her kisses. She worried she was failing the child.
"She is beautiful, and so smart. If I lose my first one . . ."
By the end of August, Schultz felt less discouraged. She had completed a class on drug abuse and now knew what marijuana and cocaine look like. "I'd only seen white powder on TV," she said.
She had also met Tonya, and saw nothing in the home that alarmed her except that the child always seemed to return from weekend parental visits with congested breathing and bug bites. She waited an hour and a half at Crystal Jade's doctor's office before finally meeting the pediatrician.
An appointment with Christopher had fallen through. Tonya called to tell Schultz he was busy working on a car. She skipped a home visit with the caseworker, feeling worn out by the wait at the doctor's and four more hours working the phone.
On Sunday, Sept. 8, Schultz read a newspaper story about the conviction of two Pensacola brothers, ages 12 and 13, for killing their father with a baseball bat, then setting the house on fire (a conviction overturned Oct. 17).
"There's another two kids we've lost because no one paid attention," she said.
It reinforced her determination to protect Crystal Jade.
In mid-September, Schultz made two more attempts to meet Christopher. He would miss the appointments; she would leave another card on his door. She began to work more closely with the caseworker, who often spoke sympathetically of the parents' problems. Once, Christopher and Tonya went without water and electricity because of a problem in their building. They had it so hard, the caseworker said.
Schultz was unmoved. She only wanted the caseworker to pay attention to Crystal Jade's diaper rash. She didn't want to hear how tough the parents had it. She didn't want to hear about their problems. She got so angry she thought about walking out. "I couldn't stand it anymore," she said.
Where was the anger coming from? Were the parents' rough backgrounds and hardships too foreign for her to understand?
Her answer was a surprise: It was just the opposite; their experiences were too much like her own. "I've been down that road," she said.
Bernadine married a craneworker for Bethlehem Steel in 1947 and had four children with him. He had his first heart attack in 1970 at age 47. Then he was totally disabled by a stroke. They had to wait a year and a half before getting the first disability check.
She went to work at the plastic bottle factory, took other menial part-time jobs, and they relied on savings and family to get by.
"Many times I went to work sick as a dog," she said. "That's how I was brought up -- a day's work for a day's pay."
So she considered Christopher and Tonya's struggles irrelevant. "That's where I'm hard-hearted. It's not the home you have; it's how you keep it. Keeping it right costs nothing. There are no excuses."
Schultz was no longer hiding her steel.
By the end of September, Schultz had met Christopher. Tonya had called to tell her Christopher wanted to meet her, and he apologized for his missed appointments. She believed him when he told her he wanted to be a good father. He is a slight, friendly man. When he says he misses his baby, he comes near tears. "He was the nicest, politest thing," she said. "He said I would always be welcome at their home." That impressed Schultz. But she still worried about Crystal Jade's lingering congestion and bug bites.
Judge Quesada had explained in the training class that the most important issue in custody cases is not the cleanliness of a home; it is the potential for violence against the child. Taking a child away from his or her parents is an extreme, last resort, not something the court would do because of a cold or asthma or a bug bite. But Schultz couldn't see the sense of it.
"They insist (Crystal) is well off compared to the others they see," she said. "They've seen all these hard cases."
A court hearing was coming up on Oct. 7. A hearing officer would review the case and decide whether to recommend the return of Crystal Jade to her parents. Then a judge would decide. Christopher and Tonya, having completed their parenting classes, felt confident. Schultz felt conflicted because of the health questions.
But she didn't know what to do except worry. "I don't think I'm doing my job. I need help. I don't know where to turn, I don't know who to talk to. I'm from the old school. Why take on this job if you can't do some good?"
With just a week to go before the hearing, the parents' long-awaited homecoming for their daughter fell apart.
Christopher got in trouble at, of all places, an Ouellette family picnic. Christopher, Tonya and Crystal Jade had attended a Saturday birthday party for one of Christopher's nieces. "I drank like six beers," Christopher said. "My mom later told these people (state caseworkers) that I was drunk. She told them that as soon as I got done drinking the beer, I got in the car and left with the baby."
Christopher contended that he had sobered up before driving. He accused his mother of trying to sabotage the upcoming hearing. "She can say that's not true and they believe her; they don't investigate it."
But Joyce Ouellette said she saw her son drinking, and then she heard about him driving Tonya and Crystal Jade home, and decided his caseworkers needed to know about it. "I had visions of his child lying in the street."
She knew reporting the drinking to the state might estrange her son altogether, but "I'm torn two ways," she said. "If I knew Crystal would be safe and happy, I'd have no problem. But with this kind of behavior, I'm concerned."
The incident meant that caseworkers could no longer recommend the immediate return of Crystal Jade. Schultz was shocked by the news. She saw Christopher that Monday after he had met with the caseworkers. He and Tonya were sobbing.
"I'll never live up to my mother's expectations," Christopher bitterly told Schultz.
She stood face to face with him.
"Christopher, what did I say before?" she told him. "You've got to start owning up to your mistakes. You've got to stand on your own two feet like a man."
Schultz, once more discouraged and wondering whether she would quit the guardian program after this case, began to cry, too.
"So much for being a hard-hearted guardian," she said.
The Oct. 7 hearing went as expected. State lawyers recommended delaying Crystal Jade's homecoming until Christopher could be retested and re-evaluated for alcohol abuse.
Schultz gave her say, too. "I'm in favor of a delay," she told Sarah Rahbert, the hearing officer. "But Christopher could be a very loving father if he gets his problems worked out."
Rahbert agreed with her. "You parents have worked very hard," she told Christopher and Tonya. "Now it's a matter of keeping things stable. I know you can be successful."
Rahbert asked Schultz to keep looking in on Crystal Jade until March, which Schultz happily agreed to because she still worries over the child's breathing problems.
After the hearing, Christopher looked crushed. "I've done everything they want me to do, but it's never good enough," he said. But he said he thought Schultz had spoken honestly and fairly. "She's looking out for Crystal's best interests."
Schultz had already left the courtroom, headed for the elevator. She couldn't stop. Barbra Sessa was waiting for her at the Guardian Ad Litem office. A new case. Must get started. Now. But wasn't she ready to quit a week ago? Nope. Forget it. Schultz has her foot in it. You can't hold her back.
To volunteer or obtain more information about the Guardian Ad Litem program, call (727) 464-6528.