Amy's Choice

Four young siblings. No parent at home. And just one teenager

- Rena Dictor LeBlanc

SEPTEMBER 2000

It was nearly midnight by the time 19-year-old Amy Waldroop returned to her cramped Los Angeles apartment, and she was exhausted. After a full day's work at a florist shop, she had put in another six hours waiting tables before heading home.

Pushing the key into the lock, she quietly opened the door so as not to wake her younger siblings. She stepped into the front room and froze. The apartment was a shambles: plates of half-eaten food were scattered in front of the TV; toys littered the floor; clothes, shoes and homework were strewn everywhere.

Amy's eyes welled with tears.

This is just way too much for me, she thought. Her worst fears began to race through her mind. Soon she was sobbing. Would the court tell her she couldn't care for her family anymore? Would the kids go through the torture once more of being split up and sent away? She was so young, almost a child herself, and yet Amy knew everything depended on her. Everything. At that moment, she wondered if she would ever find the strength to see it through.

AMY WALDROOP HAD been born dead. Physicians fought and Asaved this smaller twin of a drug-addicted mother, and she'd had to fight for everything in life ever since.

From earliest childhood, Amy took care of her younger siblings. First it was her sister Amanda, four years younger. Then, when Amy was 10, along came Adam, followed by Joseph and finally Anthony. With a mother so often high-if not gone altogether it frequently fell to Amy to feed and change the babies, lull them to sleep when they cried and care for them when they were sick.