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6:49 p.m. - 2004-09-29
Fostercare Part 2

Foster Care Slave Kids

I have mentioned before that we get some strange people in selling us scrap pallets. Recycling is a very very lucrative way of life to people who can get up real early and hustle. Is is also tax free. Some of our scavengers pull 800.00 a week cash or more out of the pallet company alone and pallets are not all they scavenge. This is actually how pallet companies get their start. Some guy with an old pick up truck will work this way and finally learn enough about scrap and get a good enough supply to start a company in his driveway. That is how my company started 25 years ago and the guy who started it owned our company until last year and a multimillion dollar company in the next county.

In the scavenging business you run into three different types of people. Entrepreneurs who's first asset is the ability to hustle and wheel and deal; Old robust retired men who can't sit still in retirement and have to always be working; and people who really don't want to work a normal 9 to 5 and make their entire living this way. These people are usually a little rough around the edges and shady looking.

We had a young couple of about 25 years old or so who used to bring us a pick up truck stacked 3 times higher than the truck with pallets all strapped together and swaying with every turn. You almost expected to see Granny from the Beverly Hillbillies riding up top in her rocker. Every time they came they had kids with them. Some were the same kids, some were new kids, the mix would change daily. There were anywhere from 3 to 5 children ranging from about 6 to teenage with them at any given time. Their names were Holly and Donny Cantrell. Holly had carrot red hair and Donny was chubby but good looking with an endearing smile and a gift of gab.

After a while Donny felt the need to explain the kids. They were their foster children. They seemed like nice people and when asked further about it, they explained that Holly had been a foster child and wanted to "give back". Every girl they had with them had carrot red hair too. When I commented about how it was funny that all the girls looked like Holly, Donny told me that every time they had a girl join the family, she would want to have red hair like Holly so Holly would dye it for them.

One time they had this young girl of about 16 who looked mature and streetwise. She had a funny look about her and it seemed like she was looking for a way to run away. She tried to slink around the corner, but Donny saw her and told her to get to work unloading the pallets if she wanted her allowance. She tried to smoke a cigarette but Holly snatched it away from her and murmured something to her and the girl started unloading pallets. Holly explained that she was not allowing the kids to smoke and trying to break their habits for their own good.

We didn't think anything of it until the school year started. By then they were down to 2. A teenage girl who seemed to like being with them and whom they said they were going to adopt and a little skittish looking boy of about 6 who wouldn't talk. The girl looked old enough to have dropped out of school if she wanted but the boy looked as if he belonged in school. I started asking questions and Donny kept telling me stories about how the kid needed special schooling and they were having trouble getting the right paperwork filled out to get him started.

He must have sensed that I was getting a little too nosy about the boy because one day, after doing business for 3 months, he just never came back.

I wonder now. Was this some kind of deal where they have the foster kids, get money for taking them in and then put them to work and make money off of them? Was I getting a little to close to finding out some sort of little ring of throw away children being exploited. I'll never know and I hope I'm wrong....I just don't know of any red tape that would cause someone not to get a child into school.

P. I. Yarnsmith

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