After a distinguished, thirty-year career in municipal city planning, Maureen Carson began searching for volunteer work in retirement. She wanted to do something different from her career and honed in on children’s causes. “My late father was severely neglected as a child, and I wanted to make an impact in an area where I wish more were available to children like him decades ago… kind of a full-circle thing.”
Continue Reading
Payton Hensley
On May 4, 2011 Payton’s life changed forever. “That was the day CPS was called and I was taken into foster care,” states Payton. “I didn’t know it then, but I would never go ‘home’ again.”
Continue Reading
Maggie Sanger
Maggie Sanger says a lot can be learned about life through flying a kite, like how much we take for granted. “I had a kite in my car from when my younger CASA child had played with it and Payton, the older CASA child that I had been representing for several years at that point asked if she could play with it. I looked over and as she was flying it high in the sky. She told me she had never flown a kite before. She was 16 at the time, mature beyond her years, yet she’d never had the childhood experience of flying a kite. I still remember the joy in her eyes.”
Continue Reading
Mathew Leland
When he was six years old, Mathew Leland was woken up by police officers scooping him out of his bed to be taken to his first foster home. “I tell people that when children are taken into foster care, it feels like a state-sanctioned kidnapping to the child. You’re being taken away by people you don’t know, all while you watch your parents begging them not to.”
Continue Reading
Monique Straws
Will you help us?
We have a very special mission, LIFE-SAVING that we need your help with. Monique Straws, a former foster youth, who had a CASA in Yolo County for many years is rapidly deteriorating from kidney failure. Her story is below. If you’d like to see if you are a possible live-donor kidney match, please apply at this link (https://ld.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/donor/pages/donor.faces). You will need to know Monique’s date of birth, which is 11/28/1988.
Bonnie Berman
After losing her mother at a young age, Bonnie Berman has always lived life in the present. “Whatever I am doing with my time, I want it to be meaningful. I believe that being present and making the most of every moment is extremely important.” In 2015, when Bonnie was going back to work, she looked for a position that would make a difference in the world.
Continue Reading
