Take a leap of faith. Miracles will happen.

Moncrief 3:52 p.m. PST November 5, 2015

MarioMorales_PhotoInTreeMario Morales playing up in a tree(Photo: Provided)

Mario had been missing for six days when the Capitola police called Lisa and Gilbert Morales’ home in Prunedale to say that he had been found; cold, wet, and dehydrated. They could pick him up at the station.

Gilbert drove north on Highway 1. Lisa sat in the passenger’s seat, emotionally exhausted and apprehensive. She thanked God that her son was alive. An 11-year-old boy on the streets for all that time; anything might have happened.

They had been through it once before — only a week earlier — he had left for four days. But that time, he hadn’t wandered far and he had stayed in touch with his girlfriend. Lisa Morales paid a visit to the girl’s home and the young lady confessed that Mario had been leaving her notes. The girl helped them bring him back.

As the couple drove up to Capitola, Lisa’s mind drifted through the years.

Starting a family

In 1993, she and Gilbert, who had met and married in San Jose, moved to Redding. They tried to start a family but discovered that they were infertile. They decided to adopt a child and applied for the necessary license. An 18-month process of paperwork, interviews and visitations ensued. Finally, they completed the requisite training and were granted the license to take a child into foster care with the intent of adopting. The training, they later realized, was minimal. It did not adequately prepare them for what lay ahead.

Josey, their first child, came to the home when she was three days old. She was a joy to their lives; all they had hoped for.

Gilbert worked as an ambulance driver in Redding. One night, he and his crew were summoned to a fetid apartment. They found two unhinged parents and a home that had run amok in chaos and squalor. They also found a screaming baby boy with burns and scars and — inexplicably — swollen testicles. The scene affected Gilbert profoundly.

A year past. They adopted 21/2year-old Mario. He too appeared to be a beautiful and happy child. Indeed, he was beautiful, but he was not happy.

Within a few weeks, Mario began having problems. He could not contain his anger and emotional outbursts. Although his adoptive parents didn’t realize it at the time, he was showing signs of an infancy traumatized and scarred by abuse and neglect. They coped as best they could, assuming that he would outgrow his daily sulks and tantrums.

Two years later, the family moved back to San Jose where Gilbert had been offered a position in the fire department and Lisa found work as the manager of a medical clinic. In the meantime, Mario started kindergarten.

Behavioral issues

The outbursts grew more virulent. The boy took a knife to school and cut into a seat on the bus. He was suspended for the first of what was to be numerous times. The fighting, the defiance, the anger continued unabated. The suspensions had no impact. The boy seemed to thrive on chaos. His parents began to fear for Josey’s safety although she was a strong child and held her own in the household.

Eventually, Lisa learned that, had she asked, she might have seen Mario’s medical records prior to the adoption. No one had informed her of her rights in this regard. Fortunately, her position at the clinic gave her ready access to these files. As she scanned the pages, the awful truth about Mario’s infancy astonished her: a birth father emotionally unstable, a mother on drugs, sexual abuse, burns and welts, unexplained swollen testicles.

She phoned Gilbert, “Do you remember that emergency call you made back in Redding, when was it, maybe a year before we got Mario? Well, guess what…?” Gilbert listened in silence.

That evening, they sat together. Lisa cried softly. At last, they realized why the years of love and support they had showered on Mario — the hugging, the begging, the bargaining, the cajoling, the punishing, the “timeouts” — why none of it had worked.

Now, it was clear to both parents that they needed professional help. Lisa quit her job. They moved to Prunedale. Gilbert commuted to his station in San Jose.

Then, more problems: Mario threw a pencil at a teacher. He refused to obey instructions; he was disruptive, uncooperative, and manipulative. At times, when it suited him, he could be compliant, even charming. It was all an act to maintain control and get his way.

Therapy begins

Lisa found a family therapist in Aptos. Mario began weekly visits to her office and couch; which was really a sandbox. He and the therapist played with dolls in the sand and conversed. Later the parents listened to her observations and counsel.

She explained that Mario was beset by “Reactive Attachment Disorder.” The dysfunctional environment of his infancy, the chaos, the abuse, the neglect, the horrible behavior of the adults he had known as an infant and 2-year-old had left him incapable of creating normal relationships. Early on, faced with an uncaring and unresponsive world, he had learned to rely only on himself.

Lisa got online to read all she could about the syndrome. Mario fit the patterns: anger, stealing, hording food, bugs, rocks, anything really; pulling out his own hair and eyebrows. She continued to research the boy’s records only to discover that he had been abandoned by his mother at the age of 2 and had bounced from foster parent to foster parent before he had arrived at Lisa and Gilbert’s home.

The school disruptions and expulsions continued. Throughout the fourth and fifth grades, Lisa home-schooled her troubled son. The Aptos therapist suggested interventions designed to repair and restore the psychological damage Mario had suffered from the lack of mothering. Lisa was prompted to bottle feed him, hold him, rock him, sing him to sleep. She went out of her way to show how much she cared for him and to meet his needs in the most loving ways she knew.

Mario’s response to these efforts was minimal. The disruptions and disengagement continued. He could not relax or accept that he was loved. He did not seem capable of concern for anyone’s needs but his own.

In the end, the therapist moved away. The parents thought, perhaps, it was time to take a break from psychologists and counselors.

In 2003, Lisa and Gilbert tried once again to have a child together. They undertook a program of artificial insemination. The effort was abundantly successful: Lisa became pregnant with twins boys.

They enrolled Mario in a charter school for his sixth and seventh grades. During his seventh-grade year, teachers expressed concern about his inappropriate behavior with a younger girl. She was also an adopted child. The two seemed to bond in league against an intrusive world.

Mario’s rule over the family dynamic continued. Lisa employed the services of a new therapist in Salinas; the woman soon realized that she was not equipped to deal with this wily young schemer who seemed to use her sessions only to gather information he wanted to continue his controlling ways.

Lisa told a friend, “Thank God, that woman was a wise and humble person who knew that Mario needed more help than she could give.”

The therapist referred the distraught parents to the Kinship Center, a non-profit organization in Salinas that provides supportive services to adoptive parents and children.

For the past 30 years, the Kinship Center has worked with troubled families. Its strategies have evolved to the point that it now can employ a team of professional therapists dedicated to providing coordinated treatment for an extended period of time.

Retrieving Mario

Back on Highway 1, Lisa and Gilbert could see the lights of the Capitola Police Department in the distance. Lisa turned to Gilbert. “I think he’s figured out that our going to the Kinship Center may be a game-changer. That’s why he’s been running away.”

The couple exited the car and hurried into the office where their son awaited them. It was 2 a.m. Mario, suffering from hypothermia, dehydrated, and semi-conscious had been found on the wharf, near death. Only the attention of a passing stranger saved his life. He greeted them, reaching out an arm to give a weak hug. To Lisa, that simple gesture from their ever sullen and intractable child was the first small signal that something had changed.

The family enrolled in the Kinship Center’s Wrap-Around Process. A psychologist acted as the facilitator of a team of therapists. Each family member had a counselor assigned to him or her. The staff employed techniques that other therapists were not aware of or did not have the resources to offer. The interventions were intense and long-term.

One reality was clear; at first, guardedly but little-by-little with greater confidence, Mario’s attitude slowly began to change. He had decided that Lisa, Gilbert, his older sister and younger brothers — all were important to him, important enough to alter his behavior and learn to get along; perhaps, even learn how to love the people who loved him. Still, nothing came easy.

During Mario’s eighth-grade year, Lisa and Gilbert moved him out of the charter school, sending him to North Monterey County Middle School. Despite the counseling, his behavior soon grew worse. On one particularly tense occasion, he brandished a stick, threatening Lisa. The police were called. When they arrived, he struck their patrol car with the weapon. The police disarmed him and then said, “The next time we come out here, we’re going to arrest you.”

On another occasion, Mario was seen shooting a BB gun and hitting a neighbor’s patio door.

As incidents arose — and that was virtually every day — the therapists were there to help the household work through them, alone or together depending the situation. The counselors intervened personally at the home or by phone or e-mail, or during all-in-the-family group sessions at the Center. Whatever was necessary, the staff was there to support and summon them toward healthier relationships.

Slowly, Mario turned. In middle school, he took up wrestling. Now, the sport became his way to manage his anger. His overall behavior and grades improved, but among his peers, he still had a bad reputation. The other students still saw him as “that weird kid.”

In 2012, the family moved to Hollister. That turned out to be a blessing for Mario. He was not known there. He was able to start over in a new school and find new friends who were completely unaware of his former troubles. He graduated from high school in 2014 with many of his Kinship Center family in attendance, smiling proudly.

Mario’s reflection

“When my parents came to get me at the police station,” Mario recalls, “that was the first time I ever came to terms with the fact that I was going to need someone to help me through the next few years in order to have some sort of life.”

“For the first time,” he continued, “I felt grateful to have a family that would pick me up and care for me. And this, after I had told them so many times that I hated them and didn’t want to be with them. In a strange way, I’ve been very lucky to have survived it all.”

The woman who found Mario on the wharf that night had coincidentally closed her shop an hour early and stumbled upon him.

“In another hour, I’d have been dead,” he said. “And my mom, she’s one of the most phenomenal mothers and most amazing women I’ve ever met. She did a great job raising me — her brat-face son — and my sister and brothers.”

Miracles happen

Today, looking back, Lisa says, “The truth is, Mario is good looking; he actually has a great personality; and now that he’s letting everyone see it, it’s clear that he has a heart of gold. It’s just, early on, that heart was broken; and when you looked into his eyes, you saw pain and suffering.”

Lisa continues, “I read a story once in the paper. A woman was quoted as saying, ‘When you take a leap of faith, miracles happen.’ Well, sometimes healing takes a miracle. That first meeting at the Center, around the conference table, was the beginning of our miracle. Before we started, everyone had said, ‘Give it up. He’s a lost cause. Put him in a group home!’

“The Center’s team worked with us for four years, from the time Mario was 11 until he was 14. The team literally became part of the family. They held us together.

“Unfortunately, there are many kids out there like Mario and many parents like us. We didn’t know about the Kinship Center. We were lucky to have moved to Monterey County and to have found it. Those folks are now our friends, and if we ever need them, we know they will be there for us.”

As for Mario, at age twenty, he’s enrolled in the Columbia College Fire Academy in Sonora. Don’t be surprised if you see him one day giving himself fully to helping others, perhaps even saving someone’s life.

Edward Moncrief is a freelance reporter for The Salinas Californian. Contact him at efmoncrief@gmail.com. Visit his blog at edwardmoncrief.com.