West Virginia couple overcome tragedy to give foster children hope

Foster parents instrumentality successful 4 much kids aft calamity

After daughter's tragic death, parents instrumentality successful 4 much foster kids 03:01

Culloden, West Virginia — It's mostly not socially acceptable to aerial a person's soiled laundry. But successful the lawsuit of foster parent Kari Cox of Culloden, West Virginia, the sheer measurement of her regular load of laundry speaks volumes astir her capableness for love. 

"She's similar Mother Theresa, almost," 1 of her 14 children, astir of whom were adopted, told CBS News. 

"My ma does 99.9% of the work, my dada does 0.1," jokes another.

It's a gross exaggeration for sure. But adjacent Bill Cox, a peculiar acquisition teacher, admits that without his woman Kari, their children, galore with peculiar needs, would autumn to pieces. 

Thirteen years ago, Kari and Bill adopted Maribeth from China.

"Very high-functioning autism," Kari said of Maribeth. "Extremely achromatic and white. The archetypal clip she saw maine she said, 'Oh, I didn't cognize I was getting a abdominous mom!' That was our narration with each other, and it was really phenomenal."

Maribeth was doing great.

"She was valedictorian of her class," beamed Kari. "She'd won tons of mathematics awards."

But then, calamity struck. In 2021, portion a elder astatine Marshal University successful Huntington, Virginia, Maribeth was struck and killed by a car. For Kari, the symptom of losing a child, particularly successful that way, convinced her to ne'er follow again.

"Why enactment yourself done that anymore?...Honestly, radical that don't person children don't person to consciousness this pain," Kari said.

However, Kari past stumbled connected thing that transformed her perspective.

"Maribeth changed us," Kari said of her precocious daughter. "She changed us."

When going done her things, Kari recovered a diary wherever Maribeth, who had ne'er been effusive with her feelings, wrote this to herself: "God gave you what galore whitethorn ne'er person — a loving household that volition ever beryllium present nary substance what."

Since speechmaking that, Kari and Bill person taken successful 4 much children, to springiness them 14 total.

"Their request was greater than my pain," Kari said.

That's the essence of a mother's instinct, that unwavering selflessness that goes beyond the biologic to make thing genuinely divine.

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• Foster Care