When I dropped Lucas back at his foster home, we both cried. “I’ll see you next week,” I promised. “And I’m going to start the paperwork to become your foster dad.”
“You promise?”
The system didn’t make it easy. Nothing about fostering is easy, especially for a single man. Especially for a biker. But I jumped through every hoop. Took every class. Passed every inspection.
Six weeks after our beach trip, I became Lucas’s official foster father.
Six weeks after that, Lucas went into remission.
The doctors called it a miracle. Said they’d never seen leukemia respond like that after stage four. Said sometimes the will to live makes all the difference.
Lucas is twelve now. Four years cancer-free. He’s not dying anymore. He’s living. Really living.
He rides on the back of my motorcycle now. We go to the beach every summer. He’s taught three other foster kids how to build sandcastles. He wants to be a social worker when he grows up, help kids like him find families.
I’m not just his foster dad anymore. The adoption was finalized last year. He’s my son. Legally, officially, forever.
And it all started because I stopped at a gas station and saw a bald little boy with a cardboard sign asking if someone would take him to see the ocean.
But Lucas saw something different. Lucas saw someone who might actually stop. Who might actually care. Who might actually help.
He was right.
We go back to that gas station sometimes. Lucas likes to sit in the same spot where I found him, holding a sign that says something different now: “I found my dad because a biker stopped.”
Most people smile when they see it. A few have cried. One woman took a picture and it went viral.Continue reading…
