Baby Formula

When he looks at pictures of his daughter, Ponciano loses his shyness, and his face lights up as he explains what is happening in each photo. In one, Rosa is wearing a frilly white-lace baptism gown; in another, her godparents (friends of Ponciano's) are holding her; in still another, Ponciano is feeding her from a bottle. In the pictures, Rosa has big cheeks, a shock of dark hair and big brown eyes. She looks a lot like her cousin Diana.

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It was probably those big brown eyes that captured the hearts of Christopher and Dawne Gomez as well. A middle-class couple who until recently lived in a neatly groomed two-bedroom home at the end of a cul-de-sac in Montbello, the Gomezes are first-time foster parents with no children of their own.

In a December 14, 1999, motion to the court, the Gomezes' attorney, Kama McConaughy, argued that the couple should be named as intervenors in the case so that they can participate in Rosa's permanency-planning hearings -- the court proceedings in which placement options for children are discussed. State law allows foster parents who have cared for a child for more than three months to intervene in a dependency-and-neglect case.

"The minor child has been integrated into the home of the Intervenors, has become emotionally bonded to the Intervenors, and relies upon them for not only the necessities of life but basic nurturing fundamental to the best interest of so young a child," McConaughy wrote. "Dawne Gomez left her employment to take care of the minor child on a full-time basis. The Intervenors provide a stable, loving and nurturing home for the infant minor child."

Although they wouldn't comment for this story, public records and court documents show that Christopher and Dawne Gomez are 29 and 30 years old, respectively. They had been living with Rosa in their Montbello home until selling it for $163,500 two weeks ago. Perhaps the Gomezes want to live in a bigger house or a better neighborhood in which to raise Rosa in the event that they get to adopt her someday.

The two-parent household is something of a rarity in Montbello, where almost half of the children are born to unwed mothers, according to numbers compiled by the Piton Foundation, a private education foundation in Denver. The majority of residents in Montbello own their own homes, and while the crime rate isn't low -- there were 25.6 burglaries per 1,000 households in 1998 and five violent crimes for every thousand people that year in the 18,630-person neighborhood -- they are below the Denver metro average.

A couple of blocks away from their old home is Oakland Elementary School, an expansive brick building where only 39 percent of fourth-graders scored in the proficient or advanced level in reading on last year's Colorado Student Assessment Program test. Of course, parents in Denver can now send their children to almost any school in the system -- if they take them there -- in order to give them a chance for a better education.

Court documents also show that the Gomezes and their attorney, as well as David Littman, who was appointed by the court to represent Rosa's interests, all argue that Mexico would not be an appropriate place to raise Rosa.

"[Rosa's] grandfather only earns $210 per month and the rest of the family 'income' is generated from hand-outs from relatives living in the United States," McConaughy says in a court motion. "Avina is requesting that the court place [Rosa] in a family who lives on less than the 1998 GDP per capita of Mexico, $8,300. The [foster parents] assert that it is unimaginable how it could serve the best interests of the child to send her to a family that receives the vast majority of their apparently below-poverty-level income from voluntary hand-outs which could stop at any time.

"Further," she continues, "[Rosa] would be living in a three-bedroom house, which currently only has five beds for eight people, and has only one bathroom. It is hard to believe that [the Denver Department of Human Services] would place her in a similar environment in Denver. [Rosa] currently has her own bed in her own bedroom. She is being raised by a stay-at-home mom and a working father and enjoys a very comfortable, sanitary middle-class lifestyle."

Littman added that any attempt to place Rosa with her grandparents in Mexico "overlooks the benefits to [Rosa] of remaining in her current placement and the drawbacks of being sent to Mexico. [Rosa] was born in a country with higher educational standards and greater educational opportunities."

In March, a home study on Ponciano's family was completed by the Mexican Consulate and filed with the court. (A Mexican home study is a brief document that lists the names of all of the family members who live in the home, the type of appliances they have and the family's monthly income.) The Lazaro-Avinas' monthly household income is equivalent to $505, according to the report; it also says that the Lazaro-Avinas are all healthy.