PHOENIX — Tears and sniffles filled multiple courtrooms at the Durango Juvenile Court Center Saturday morning. It wasn’t for any bad situation, but rather the opposite.
“Congratulations, the adoption is final,” said one judge in front of a group of emotional parents, kids and the rest of their families.
More than 80 Arizona foster kids were legally adopted Saturday as part of National Adoption Day.
Nine-year-old Michelle was one of them. Michelle, whose last name is now McClure, was a student of Tiffany McClure’s at the Children’s Center for Neurodevelopmental Studies. The 9-year-old has severe autism and was in the foster care system when Tiffany met her.
More than a year later, Tiffany ended up being her adoptive mother.
“We just all fell in love. And now we get to keep her forever,” Tiffany said to ABC15 alongside her husband, Brandon, Michelle and their two boys, William and Rylan.
She, among many other adoptive parents and their families, cried in the courtroom as the judges made the adoption legal.
For Commissioner Nicole Hartley, with the Maricopa County Superior Court, these are the days she looks forward to.
“Being a judicial officer, the contact that we have with the community that we serve is usually at really tough or challenging times for those individual’s lives,” Hartley said. “Adoptions are always a joyous, happy celebration. It is one of my favorite parts of my job because it is a day where, a hearing where I’ll always know it’s going to end up with a happy ending and people are crying tears of joy and not with struggles.”
On Saturday, Michelle and a dozen other kids in foster care, finally and officially, got a place to call home and a family to call their own.
“It’s a fit. She fits our family perfectly. She makes us whole,” Brandon McClure said.
