There’s a scrapbook of her criminal justice training at the Puget Sound Skills Center, a medal and T-shirt from the Steps to Success employment skills program she completed, and a cap and tassel from her graduation from Evergreen High School in Burien.
Eighteen years ago, this proud young woman was a 2-year-old “handful”, a failure-to-thrive child diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome who would bite, scratch and throw herself on the floor in fits of kicking and screaming.
“She was a red-headed storm in motion… either really happy or really mad,” recalls Evie Howerton, who adopted Angela and four other Childhaven children between 1990 and 1994.
Angela has only scattered memories of those days at Eli Creekmore Branch. She remembers punching buttons in the elevator and learning how to ride a bicycle. Some of the friends she made there are friends still.
“Childhaven helped me be a better person,” she says. “I was wild.”
Evie was working as a cook at the Creekmore Branch, when she met Angela and the other children. After lunch, she’d play with the non-napping youngsters and take joy in their progress.
In the stable, loving environment of the center, children who started out withdrawn and unable to communicate “blossomed” into verbal, sociable children in a matter of weeks, she said.
Evie felt so strongly about the transformative power of Childhaven that she fostered or adopted a total of 13 children just to keep them in the neighborhood. Had they been placed in foster homes outside of the area, they likely would have lost what Evie calls their “lifeline.”
So, after raising two of her own children and serving as a temporary foster parent to six more, Evie adopted David in 1990, Angela in 1991, Delante in 1993, and sisters Sarah and Dessiree in 1994.
David, her first adopted child, weighed only 16 pounds at 16 months and suffered repeated ear and eye infections because of birth defects. Non-verbal at an age when most children are talking, he had significant developmental delays.
Now he, too, is proud Evergreen High School graduate. During the summers, he works for the City of Burien doing parks maintenance and is a volunteer at his church and the local food bank.
The middle child, 17-year-old Delante, was a busy, curious toddler frequently on the brink of disaster (he figured out how to unlatch the front door at 15 months). He now has his GED (General Equivalency Diploma), which he got a year early, and has plans to go to culinary school and work as a chef.
Sarah, 15, and Dessiree, 16, two sisters from a family of seven, are students at Highline High School. Sarah is in a college preparatory program, while outgoing Dessiree dreams of becoming a pediatric surgeon.
From the greater Childhaven family, the five came together as a nuclear family, Evie says. David helped potty-train Delante, and Angela taught everybody how to ride on two wheels. The occasional sibling squabbles aside, they help and support each other.
For all that and more, Evie thanks Childhaven. “There were times, especially when the kids were young, when Childhaven put me in the right direction and gave me what I needed as a parent,” she says.
Evie feels blessed when she considers how far her children have come: “They’re remarkable. They really are.”