Jody Hansen-Walker’s two stepdaughters were going to be placed in foster care. Their mother had abandoned them and their father—her ex-husband— was abusive. So Hansen- Walker had to act quickly. “I went through the legal process and made them my own,” she said. Jamie was then 5, and Tammy was 6. “[My] marriage was short-lived, and the children would have been placed into foster care ... if I had not adopted them.”

That family emergency 20 years ago put Hansen-Walker on the path to adopting eight other youngsters. While finalizing the adoption of the girls, she learned more about the foster care system. And in the late 1990s, she adopted two boys, 10 and 12 years old. She became so passionate about helping foster children find permanent homes that she left her job as a graphic artist to become a social worker.

“I wanted to help other children who were in need of having permanency,” she said. With that goal, she worked with others to open an adoption agency in 1999, and through the agency she adopted a 3-month-old girl, Gabriella. At the request of one of her other children, who wanted a sister, she adopted 11-year-old Christina in 2006. And Hansen-Walker was content with her brood of six, she said.

Then she learned Christina had four sisters who were in foster care systems in other counties upstate.

“I wanted to keep the siblings together at all cost, so my blessing of adding Christina to our family blossomed into a total of five new children over a two-year span,” she said. “I wouldn’t change it for a minute. These girls deserved to live together, to know each other and not be separated.”

Hansen-Walker, a single mother, works full time as program coordinator for pre-through post-adoption services at Hillside Children’s Center, where she recruits and trains families to become adoptive parents.

Her children are now ages 3 to 28, and seven of them still live at home.

“Every one of my children has responsibilities around the home,” she said. “We practice honesty and talk openly about our feelings. We eat together, pray together and enjoy each other’s company. We have great weeks and challenging ones, but at the end of each day, I thank God for entrusting me to be their mom.”

She added: “Many folks say, ‘They are so lucky to have you,’ but I am the lucky one here. My children enrich my life more than words could ever convey. They show me every day they are true heroes, and how to overcome and rise above.”