At 17, I was babysitting for the Mercers\u2019 kids when midnight came and went \u2014 and they never came home.<\/p>\n
By 4 a.m., I turned on the news and froze.<\/p>\n
Their faces were on TV, caught trying to flee the country with fake passports. Embezzlement. Fraud. And I was still in their house, with Elise and Ezra asleep upstairs.<\/p>\n
At dawn, my mom and I contacted Child Protective Services. The kids were taken into foster care \u2014 Elise crying, Ezra clutching his dinosaur book.<\/p>\n
Three months later, I received a letter from their mother: \u201cThank you for taking care of them. Don\u2019t forget them.\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
I visited whenever I could, and when I learned they were about to be separated into different homes, I petitioned for guardianship at 20 \u2014 and won.<\/p>\n
We lived in a tiny apartment. I worked, studied, and struggled, but slowly, the kids began to smile again.<\/p>\n
Two years later, a $40,000 cashier\u2019s check arrived from a Swiss law firm \u2014 part of a trust their mother had set up for them.<\/p>\n
We never heard from their parents again.<\/p>\n
Now, Ezra\u2019s a coding whiz, Elise dreams of becoming an art therapist, and I\u2019m no longer just the babysitter \u2014 I\u2019m their guardian.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, you don\u2019t choose the story.<\/p>\n
But you still choose who you become in it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At 17, I was babysitting for the Mercers\u2019 kids when midnight came and went \u2014 and they never came home. By 4 a.m., I turned on the news and froze. Their faces were on TV, caught trying to flee the country with fake passports. Embezzlement. Fraud. And I was still in their house, with Elise …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4550,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4549"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4551,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4549\/revisions\/4551"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}