Gino VanGundy:  

Life After several years living in San Francisco Chris and I decided to move out of the city. Our combined income SHOULD afford us the ability to own our home but as prices in San Francisco continued to rise, our dream of homeownership slipped further and further away. I got new job in Sacramento, but Chris was still working in San Francisco; his field of expertise is bit more challenging to find work in. We looked on the map and Fairfield was exactly in the middle. My new company moved us and we settled into our new life in our rented home. The year prior to our move we spent in training to become foster parents. Our ultimate goal was to take in and adopt a young foster child; by young I mean 2 – 3 years old. Just after we moved into our new house we got a call from our agency ( familybuilders.org ) . They wanted to know if we would consider an older child; specifically a 16 year old girl. I’m sure that it goes without saying that our initial reaction was not to jump up and down with excitement. We had some serious reservations about being able to provide what (in our minds) a 16 year girl would need. Ultimately we agreed to meet with the social worker to hear more; simply because we did not want to be the kind of people that would say no to a child in need and age should have nothing to do with it. From the moment we met Antigone (Tigg) there was something about her that grabbed hold of our hearts and wouldn’t let go. Our first meeting was at Chevy’s and she was so sweet, a bit shy, and we could tell that she was a very special child. Chris and I walked away from our initial meeting with the same sense; this was meant to be. After several visits Tigg moved in on December 8, 2006. On July 13, 2007 the adoptio...Expand for more