Armstrong’s face lit up when he saw me. My heart melted as he lunged forward, wrapping his little arms and legs around me.
“He must remember you,” Armstong’s adoptive father, Scott Dice, said as I held the one year-old. Armstrong and I hadn’t seen one another since January, when the baby boy was living in the back of a box truck at an earthquake-damaged orphanage, La Maison des Enfants de Dieu (The House of God’s Children) in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Armstrong and other babies lived in the back of a truck after the earthquake in Haiti
That was just days the quake. Now here Armstrong was, at his new home in Denver… smiling and happy… taking my face in his hands and pulling me toward him until we were forehead to forehead… looking each other in the eyes.
After the earthquake, Cherie and Scott Dice didn't know if baby Armstrong had survived.
When the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti on January 12th, 2010 Armstrong’s soon-to-be-parents Cherie and Scott Dice had no idea if the child they’d spent their life savings adopting was now living… or dead.
For them, and many other hopeful moms and dads still working to transfer their adopted kids to the states, media reports were their only lifeline to orphanages across Haiti where more helpless parents were abandoning their children every day. There were more than 300,000 children living in Haitian orphanages before the earthquake struck. After the quake, that number tripled to nearly a million as now homeless and jobless parents dropped their kids off, hoping they will find new homes.
Fox News Correspondent Jonathan Hunt and I were doing a series of reports about La Maison des Enfants de Dieu which was hit hard by the earthquake, leaving some 130 children without adequate food and water. Babies, like Armstrong, were in danger of dying from dehydration. The orphanage was out of formula, so caretakers were forced to feed the babies real milk which was giving them diarrhea.
The Dices had been reading my articles online and contacted me, asking if I could find baby Armstrong and post a photo of him if I could. I didn’t realize at the time that this photo was the Dices’ only proof that Armstong was alive.
Armstrong at the orphanage in Haiti
During one of Jonathan Hunt’s live reports on Studio B, I received an email from another frantic parent. Lisa Harris of Littleton, Colorado was concerned the two children she was adopting would get lost in the shuffle as Haiti started allowing the kids to travel to the states. She asked me to find Guimara and Davinson and write their names on their arms.
Guimara checks out the writing on her arm
Davinson slept while I wrote his name on his arm
Guimara and Davinson Harris made it safely to their new home in Colorado. I visited the kids this weekend to find them living worlds away from the crowded cribs and dirty mattresses at the orphanage. Two-year-old Guimara’s favorite color is purple and she loves playing dress up with beads and feather boas. Eighteen-month-old Davinson enjoys playing with his plastic power tools, but appeared to like following his older siblings around more.
In addition to Guimara and Davinson, Lisa and Rich Harris have two biological children: Zach, 10, and Rachel, 9, as well as two children adopted from China, Josh, 6, and Olivia, 4.
Lisa and Rich Harris with their children. Zach, 10, Rachel, 9, Josh, 6, Olivia, 4, Guimara, 2 and Davinson 18 months
Despite the fact that Mr and Mrs Harris have four adopted kids, they believe adoption should be a last resort for desperate families in Haiti, not their only option. The couple has created The Road To Hope, a non-profit organization, that’s raising money to help orphaned and abandoned Haitian as well as Haitian parents who are struggling to keep their children in their own care. The group’s board has agreed to personally cover all of the organization’s expenses, which means 100% of the donations will go directly to projects in Haiti.
For their first project, The Road To Hope is teaming up with Haitian Orphan Rescue to build a new facility for orphans and families called “Nouvo Vilaj” (New Village) in Arcahaie, Haiti. Haitian Orphan Rescue is run by two sisters from Pittsburgh, Jamie and Ali McMurtrie. The sisters have spent the past eight years living in Haiti, working at orphanages. They lost their home in the earthquake.
Ali & Jamie McMurtrie are building a new facility in Haiti to care for abondoned kids and help keep struggling families together
The sisters have plans to build a new $5 million dollar facility that would not only house as many as 70 orphaned and abandoned children, but would give work to Haitians during the building’s construction, and once completed offer instruction in things like farming and breastfeeding. The sisters say the future of Haiti depends on its people becoming self-sustaining.
They tell the story of a man who lives near the land where the new facility will be built. He has eight children, all of which he has offered to give up for adoption because he is struggling to feed them. Instead, the sisters plan to hire him, so he can afford to raise his children himself.
For more on the McMurtries’ and Harris family’s partnership, check out their websites www.TheRoadToHope.org and www.HaitianOrphanRescue.org.