Choosing adoption

Despite challenges, Baton Rouge couple embraces option

Even while exploring infertility treatments in order to have children, husband and wife Charlie Cusimano and Vicki Crochet said adoption was always on the table as an option.

“It was something we hoped we would be able to do,” Crochet said of adopting. “Lots of people wait a long time and don’t find a child to adopt.”

The couple was able to adopt two children — Daniel, now 22, and Kate, 16.

Daniel was adopted as an infant — he came into their home when he was only 3 days old. When Daniel was about 6 years old, Cusimano said he started to think he would like Daniel to have a sibling.

While their son Daniel’s adoption was handled privately with an attorney, the adoption of daughter Kate was handled through the agency now known as Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Baton Rouge, Cusimano said. At the time of the adoption, Kate was 18 months old.

The couple had been approached about adopting Kate when she was an infant, Crochet said. Crochet said she planned to continue working, and knew Kate would need extra attention because she was hearing impaired, so they passed on the opportunity. Kate is also biracial, and the couple worried that she might encounter prejudice or racism.

“Those factors said to us she may need more attention,” Crochet said. “We didn’t know if we were the right match for a child with those needs.”

However, signs over the next few months kept reminding them of that little girl, the couple said.

Crochet’s sister is a sign-language interpreter, so they had a connection to the deaf community. Cusimano said he was also able to admire Kate every Sunday at Mass, since she was being cared for by another family that attends his church.

Then, Cusimano said, he saw a black friend whom he hadn’t seen in a while, and was able to talk out his concerns about his daughter not being accepted by others.

Cusimano said he took these as “little signs from God tapping me on the shoulder saying this is what you should do.”

At a meeting at Catholic Charities concerning the possible adoption, Kate stood in front of Cusimano and looked into his eyes, he said.

“At that point, I don’t think there was much doubt we were going to do it,” Crochet said of adopting Kate. “We just had to figure out how.”

Kate Cusimano said she has become accustomed to other people’s reactions to her family.

“When people see my parents, it’s pretty clear,” she said, adding that her brother Daniel is blond with blue eyes and tall — also the complete opposite of their parents.

The 11th-grader at Redemptorist High School said she also gets a lot of questions from friends about whether she would like to meet her birth mother one day.

“I never really have an answer for that because I don’t really know yet,” she said.

People also talk about her mom, meaning her birth mother. She said she always corrects them.

“My mom is my mom,” she said, pointing to Crochet.

Crochet said both of her children knew from an early age they were adopted — “that it was a loving choice made by their birth mother,” she said.

Cusimano and Crochet were honored recently as Angels in Adoption in a ceremony in Washington, D.C. The program, operated by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute, recognizes constituents who have enriched the lives of foster children and orphans throughout the United States and abroad.

Besides being an adoptive parent, Cusimano, the attorney for the Diocese of Baton Rouge, has donated his time, legal experience and assistance to the Maternity and Adoption Department of Catholic Charities since 1994. He has also served on the Louisiana Adoption Advisory Board and has spent hundreds of hours advising birth parents and couples who wish to adopt.

Crochet, also an attorney, has served on the boards of the Battered Women’s Shelter and the Baton Rouge Speech & Hearing Foundation.

Cusimano and Crochet were nominated by U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. Landrieu, who has two adopted children of her own and who founded the institute to promote the cause among policy makers.

Crochet said she’s overheard people in restaurants describe her family as “interesting,” as in “look at that interesting family over there.’”

“Our family is a family like any other,” she said.

People sometimes say our children are so lucky to have us, Crochet added.

“Of course, we say we are the lucky ones,” she said.