ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, May 2, 1996 TAG: 9605020042
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ELIZABETH SIMPSON LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
At first, Judi Louk was only going to keep the baby a day or two.
But a few days turned into weeks and then into months until she found she had fallen in love with the little girl with the curly brown hair.
All this would have been well and good except that baby Lauren had a mother, Lindsey Gordon. And Gordon wasn't interested in giving up custody.
Gordon considered Louk her daughter's baby sitter; Louk considered herself Lauren's mother.
And that is how, at the tender age of 4, Lauren Gordon landed front and center in a custody battle.
Her birth mother is winning.
The Chesapeake woman who took care of Lauren for almost four years is hurting.
``What is a mother?'' asks Louk, a 49-year-old mother of six children. ``A mother is someone who is always there - that's a mother. Lindsey may not have abandoned Lauren, but she abandoned her responsibility.''
Lauren's mother, who is now married with the last name Hewitt, believes Louk overstepped her boundaries. ``She thinks my daughter is hers, and she's not.''
Today, a judge will decide whether to change Hewitt's temporary custody of Lauren to final custody.
It is a day that Louk dreads, and a day that Hewitt believes will end her battle to regain her child.
Although the circumstances of this case may be unique, custody battles over children whose parents have been absent for periods of time are not.
Instead of a baby sitter, the players usually involve aunts and uncles and grandparents who fill in when a parent falls short of the responsibility.
Several factors can bring on those shortcomings: Parents might not be able to afford to care for their children. Teen-agers may not be up to the task of parenting. Parents may move in with their own parents, who end up caring for their grandchildren.
Many times, the biological parents return months or years later to take up where they left off, leaving the surrogate parents feeling hurt or worried or angry. Often, the matter ends there.
Other times, the case lands in court.
Such is the case of Lauren Gordon.
Lauren was born April 24, 1992, to Lindsey Gordon, who was 16 years old at the time.
When Lauren was about 5 weeks old, Gordon moved in with Renee Norman.
Norman said she had met Gordon and her father at a pizza place where she worked. One day, Gordon's father asked if Gordon could move in with her.
``He told me, `Maybe she can learn to take responsibility for her child from you,''' remembers Norman.
Norman agreed. But once Gordon and Lauren moved in, Gordon often left the baby with Norman. ``She would come and go as she pleased,'' Norman said. ``I couldn't take it any more. I have three children of my own and it was hard on me to care for a teen-ager and a baby, too.''
Louk was Norman's mother-in-law at the time, and she offered to take care of the baby to give Norman a break. The baby's tumble of hair and waving arms charmed Louk. ``I fell in love with her,'' Louk said.
Lauren stayed with Louk several days before Gordon returned for her. After Gordon took the child, Louk began to worry because she knew Gordon was living with Gordon's father in a motel room. Louk finally caught up with her a few days later and told her she would keep the child if she needed someone to watch her.
Less than a week later, Gordon took her up on the offer.
``When a baby comes into the world, she should be taken care of,'' Louk said. ``She needed to be taken care of, and I loved her.''
Louk said Gordon would leave the child with her for days and weeks at a time. At the most, Gordon only had her two or three nights in a row a couple of times a month, she said.
But Gordon says the relationship was never anything more than a baby-sitting arrangement. ``She kept her overnight when I had to work or if I was going out,'' Gordon said in a telephone interview from Scottsville, where she's living with her mother until the custody battle is resolved.
She concedes she never paid Louk for her services but said Louk didn't want to be paid.
``It was a stressful time for me,'' Hewitt said. ``I was going to school and trying to take care of a child.''
In May 1993, Gordon went to Washington to work in a carnival for two weeks. She left Lauren with Louk, along with a letter saying that she was giving temporary custody to Louk and that Gordon's mother, father and sister were not to see Lauren without Louk's being there.
While she was gone, Gordon's mother wanted to take Lauren for a visit, but Louk wouldn't let her because of the letter. The grandmother filed for custody in September 1993. To protect her interests, Louk filed for custody the same month.
In a December 1993 hearing, Louk was awarded temporary custody until social workers could study the homes of all of the concerned parties. By that time, the grandmother had dropped her request for custody, but Gordon's older sister, Stacey Gordon, had filed for custody.
Lindsey Gordon, the birth mother, didn't apply for custody until the next year. According to a home study done by a social worker in 1995, Gordon was worried that her ``wild and irresponsible'' past would keep her from getting custody.
But by the time a February 1995 hearing rolled around, Gordon had married, gotten a job, taken parenting classes and was living in a town house with her husband.
Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court Judge William Oast gave Hewitt custody of the child. Louk remembers getting Lauren, then 2, ready to go with her mother. ``She was telling me not to cry,'' Louk said about the girl. ``I was trying to put her coat on. She knew she was going to visit her mother but she thought she was coming back.''
Louk immediately filed an appeal and asked that the judge's order be stopped. She argued that the judge had ordered a ``smooth transition'' and that Hewitt needed more time to get to know her daughter. Louk also was worried Hewitt would leave the area with the child.
Circuit Judge E. Preston Grissom put a stay on the order until the appeal could be heard.
Time passed. Too much time, according to Hewitt.
``The court system sucks,'' she said. ``Judi pulled every string she could to keep my daughter from me.''
Although Hewitt now could legally visit with her daughter to allow for a smoother transition, she moved in October 1995 to Corrigan, Texas, to be with her husband. She moved back to Virginia in December to continue her battle for her daughter.
Louk said she didn't press her attorney to set a date for an appeal. ``My lawyer felt the longer I had her the better it would be,'' she said.
Finally, Hewitt's attorney, Steven Whitaker, asked that a date be set. Judge Grissom gave temporary custody of the child to the birth mother during a March 22 hearing.
Even though it has been more than a month since Lauren has left, Louk still reels from the decision.
``I had her since she was 8 weeks old. First teeth, first steps, the doctors' appointments. I was with her for all of that.''
But Hewitt's new attorney, Moody E. Stallings Jr., said it's time for Louk to stop fighting his client and the court system.
``She needs to step back and look at her role and accept that, while she was a great help to my client, she's not needed anymore. My client has grown up a great deal. We're sorry Louk is being hurt, but the truth of the matter is the child's best interest is better served with the natural mother.''
In fact, where relatives are involved in such custody disputes, the caretaker-relative usually accepts the returning parent. In some cases, the grandparent or aunt or cousin may fight for custody in court, but they usually lose unless the biological parent is found unfit.
``Virginia has a very strong presumption that the natural parent should raise their child,'' said Charles Hoffheimer, a Virginia Beach attorney who handles custody cases.
Today, another hearing in Chesapeake Circuit Court will decide whether Hewitt's temporary custody should be made permanent. If Hewitt receives permanent custody, she plans to take Lauren to the Texas mobile home where she and her husband live.
``It's been fantastic,'' Hewitt said about the past month with her daughter. ``She's adjusting well. She doesn't ask about Judi at all.''
Standing in the bedroom she set up for Lauren, with Snow White sheets and dolls galore, Louk said she will fight till the end to keep Lauren. She can care for Lauren every other weekend but doesn't expect to see her much if she moves to Texas.
She regrets nothing in her care of the girl, whose picture adorns the face of Louk's wristwatch.
``I feel like the judge is mad at me because I took care of her, because I loved her. I wasn't a foster parent; I wasn't a baby sitter,'' Louk said. ``I can't say there's anything I would have done differently, even knowing what the outcome was going to be.''
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