Adoption Day at Riverhead aquarium unites 11 kids with their new families, while sea creatures swim nearby

On Adoption Day in Suffolk County, 11 children and their soon-to-be parents visited Riverhead’s Long Island Aquarium, where officials turned a conference room into a temporary courtroom.

"Is everybody ready?" asked Judge Andrea Schiavoni. "We are so ready," said Lauren Guillem, who, with her wife Jillian Guillem and extended family came to celebrate, juggling daughter Vivian, 1½, and the two girls they’d already raised for most of their young lives: Lylah, 2 and Malani, 7. The mothers and the girls wore matching dresses for the occasion.

There were formal questions from the judge about birth certificates, financial and medical disclosures. The judge looked at the girls and said: "If you all are ready to be a family forever, to love each other through all that comes your way and to be strong for each other, and to hug when it’s necessary, and to understand and give good advice when it’s necessary, then I’ll go ahead and sign this paper. Are you guys ready for that?"

"Yes," said the girls, solemnly. "Y’all are officially adopted," said the judge.

Suffolk judges and court officials conduct adoptions year-round, but for more than 20 years, they have celebrated Adoption Day to share the joy of new families and draw attention to children waiting for adoption. They scheduled their event to coincide with National Adoption Day, observed the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

The judges of Suffolk’s Family Court chose the aquarium partly because it is nothing like the windowless courtrooms at Central Islip’s Cohalan Court Complex and in Riverhead where normal court business is conducted.

Normal business is neglect and abuse, juvenile delinquency, domestic violence, foster care, and adoptions in cases where parental rights have been terminated. Termination may occur when the county’s Department of Social Services brings an action in court after a child has been in foster care for 15 of the most recent 22 months. If the action is granted, the child is considered "freed" for adoption, said Caren Loguercio, Supervising Judge of the Family Court, in an interview. All of the children on Friday had been freed.

Adoption Day, Loguercio said, is a day to recognize that "we make a difference and help these children, as we say, find their forever family, somebody they know they can call at 2 in the morning if they have a flat tire even if they’re 25 years old. It is the best day of the year for us. We see a lot of bad stuff." 

Last year in Suffolk, 44 children were adopted out of foster care (104 were adopted in private adoptions, which are handled by a different court). Currently there are 552 children in foster care with 72 freed for adoption. In Nassau, according to the state’s Office of Children and Family Services, last year 9 children were adopted out of foster care, with 125 children in foster care and 14 freed for adoption. Statewide, there were 1,058 children adopted, with 13,253 children in foster care and 1,058 freed for adoption.

On Friday, the judges moved fast through the formalities, because there was more to do. The families got free aquarium passes, the children got small presents and backpacks embroidered with their initials and everyone got a buffet breakfast.

"Motherhood was very important for us, but it didn’t need to be biological," said Lauren Guillem, 36, an engineer from Ronkonkoma. She and Jillian, 34, a lawyer, "just wanted to be mothers. It’s been a roller-coaster of a journey, but ultimately everything worked out."

It had been a roller-coaster too for Quintel Steward, 42, a direct support professional from Selden, who adopted her brother Carl Steward, 15.

The father they share is "no longer part of his life," Quintel Steward said, and it had pained her to see Carl move from foster home to foster home because she’d grown up in foster care herself.

"I can do this, I want to do it," she said. "I want him to be with family."

Carl said he looked up to his sister, a woman who could help him with his homework and kept a house that was quieter and safer than the one in which he’d grown up. "I can start brand-new," he said.

Near noon, the parties of the last case of the day emerged from the temporary courtroom: Drake, Shea and Keirn Clasen, ages 10, 7 and 5, respectively, with their biological grandparents Debra Clasen, 66, a retired cook from Selden, and Charles Clasen, 68, retired from Suffolk County Transit.

"They’re my grandchildren, my babies. I love them. They’re my kids," said Debra Clasen.

The ceremony Friday formalized a custodial relationship that had been in place since the children were young and the Clasen’s biological son and their children’s mother lost custody, Clasen said. "I raised four of my own and I'm raising another four."