Siblings find forever home in Menifee

The Brady Bunch has nothing on the Willis family of Menifee. After raising five biological children, Gary and Pam Willis made the selfless decision to adopt seven siblings who were orphaned in 2018. Now with an even dozen children, the Willises said they are enjoying their second pass at parenting.

"We started fostering children in 2013 through California Family Life Center in the San Jacinto Valley," Pam Willis said. "We have had at least two or three kiddos at a time pretty continuously since then. When we first started fostering, we still had two teenagers at home, a daughter in college and two married sons."

The Willises' biological children, who are now 20, 23, 27, 30 and 32, were always very accepting of the foster children they shared their home with through the years and accepted the newest ones right away.

The seven siblings that eventually became members of the Willis family were involved in a horrific car accident that resulted in the immediate death of their mother and father in San Diego County. All the children suffered some degree of injury but have since recovered.

Pam Willis saw a Facebook post about the children in January 2019 and she and her husband got to meet the children two months later. They had weekly visits to get acquainted and shared overnight visits and hangouts at the Willis home until the school-age children completed classes. The seven siblings went to live in Menifee full time on June 7, 2019. Pam Willis took leave from her work as an attorney for the summer to help them get settled.

"We weren't really searching to adopt, we were just planning to always foster, but when we saw the news story about these kids needing a forever home, it hit us both so hard that we knew we were the ones who were supposed to be their parents," Pam Willis said. "The courts shut down four days before our court date for adoption was scheduled because of COVID-19. We ended up being able to do an adoption through Zoom on Aug. 7."

She said the kids, now ages four through 15, fit right in quickly and beautifully as they were finally able to feel security after such an upheaval in their lives.

After 15 years in the U.S. Navy and another 15 years with the U.S. Post Office, Gary Willis retired in 2020. He is now a full-time dad with a nanny to help during the day while Pam Willis works from her home office.

"I will be working for quite a while to continue supporting this big, lovely family," she said.

The seven children's biological parents were both raised in foster care themselves, so they didn't have much contact with family members in Las Vegas, where the children were raised. They do have an adult half-sister in Las Vegas that they keep in touch with, plus a couple of family friends.

Pam Willis said the biggest challenges have been the ones that come with any child who has been through the foster system: childhood trauma, which manifests differently in every child. The siblings had a rough childhood with parents who sunk deeply into drug addiction. They experienced a time of homelessness and then sustained injuries in the car accident that took their parents' lives. After that, they were living in foster care for a year, not knowing what their futures held.

"These kids went through a lot of hardships before we met them," she said. "Their trauma and grief are something that we've worked hard to help them each navigate through. Luckily, from our years of caring for foster children, we have had lots of practice with kiddos who struggle in these ways. I think we were as prepared as we could have been, but we're still learning all the time."

Willis said the best times are when she and Gary get to take the kids to experience something new. Early last year they took them to Disneyland and took them on their first airplane ride. They have had horseback riding therapy, visited Big Bear when it snowed and love going to the beach.

"The joy of watching new experiences through a child's eyes is definitely the highlight – especially watching it through the older ones' eyes, because they appreciate these new experiences even more," she said.

Pam Willis said that coordinating remote learning for all the children since last March has been challenging.

"Without our amazing nanny we would have never been able to accomplish it so seamlessly," she said. "Thankfully most of the kids were used to three days of homeschooling already through the hybrid model charter school they attended, so the transition for them was not as difficult as it probably was for some other children."

The school also offers programs that they were able to join last year such as sports, art class, STEM workshop, gardening and drama. She said they liked those activities and are looking forward to participating again once the pandemic threat subsides.

"For now, the kids are enjoying being free to play outside in the neighborhood and attend church youth group activities," Pam Willis said. "Three of the littlest ones have learned to ride bikes since they've been here, they've all learned to roller skate and the little ones have learned to swim. Our oldest was in ROTC at his high school before COVID and he really enjoyed that."

She said everyone is just aching for things to open again so that they can get back to doing things they love and having new adventures.

"Some community members have invited the kids to do things at their businesses as a gift and that's been so wonderful to see. We got to go to the Laughing Llama in Fallbrook as their guests and the amazing Dr. Erickson at Erickson Orthodontics in Menifee even gifted braces to the kids," she said. "There are so many giving, loving hearts in this valley and the kids deserve all of the love that anyone wants to share with them."

Pam Willis posts regular updates on her Instagram account at second.chance.7. An adoption day video can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DnenDQ9hWg.