One runner's plea to motorists: Please stop angry honking at us so much
One runner's plea to motorists: Please stop angry honking at us so much | Opinion There is a sense of anger I see when I'm on my daily run. We should remember to be kind to each other.
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Study says older drivers more likely to be distracted
Older drivers are more likely to be distracted by in-vehicle technology than their younger counterparts, according to an AAA study.
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"Good morning," we said.
A neighbor walking his dog and I exchanged the simple pleasantry as we passed each other before I started my run. A few steps later, someone actually running nodded in my direction. Then another dog walker smiled as we passed.
A beautiful blue sky overhead. Birds chirping. It was so idyllic. Undoubtedly, a bunch of flying monkeys were preparing to attack. Or maybe a car would roll up and transform into a Decepticon.
No attacks, but I also knew something ugly was likely waiting for me at the top of the hill.
I've followed several well-worn routes around a Washington, DC, suburb for more than two decades. The biggest questions have been: Will I turn right at the high school or go straight and add a couple of miles? Maybe I'll cut it a little short and take the hilly road behind the school?
Regardless of the path, I inevitably end up waiting for a red light at one or more intersections. I've generally embraced those few seconds to catch my breath mentally and physically.
Not anymore.
Now I just wait for the honk from an irritated driver. Whatever moments of zen I might be enjoying quickly turn to "why."
I have to wonder, when did we get so angry?
Why does someone honk when it's obvious they'll easily cross the intersection? Why did that person in front of them need to look at their phone? Why are we so angry? Why do I get so angry when I hear yet another HONK!
It hasn't always been this way around here.
As comedian Bill Maher might say, "I don't know it for a fact. I just know it's true," that honking wasn't this quick or prevalent before the COVID-19 pandemic. (Note: If you have access to street sound data before and after the pandemic, I would love to prove or disprove my theory.)
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We've been driving around in these glass-enclosed pods for years. But a quick-tempered anger seems to be trapped inside with us now. These aren't just little excuse-me taps. They're full-on blasts formerly reserved for truly egregious action or inaction.
Blame it on the pandemic for breaking some social norms. Blame it on social media. Blame it on President Donald Trump or President Joe Biden. Whatever it is, it seems like it might be here to stay.
Are we too distracted while driving?
Just the other day, I happened to glance up at a stoplight as it changed. Not even a second passed before ... HONK. It was as if the honker were practicing his game-show buzzer skills. What is unnecessary, Alex?
It's not to say some of us don't need to be reminded to get our noses out of our phones.
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Cambridge Mobile Telematics has been tracking our cellphone use in our cars for years. Its data shows that in 2024, we drivers interacted with our phones more than half of the time when our cars were moving faster than 10 miles per hour. Just how many more of us used our phones while waiting at a stoplight?
Of course, it's better to do whatever we need to do when our cars are stopped. But when we're on the road, we're also part of a community. And we're all trying to get somewhere. All that we ask of one another is that we're present and aware of what's going on.
Wouldn't it make our world a little better if we took a beat or two? Could we wait just a bit to decide if someone isn't doing their part before we lay on the horn?
As I make the penultimate right turn, the road is a long downhill and not a light in sight. A dog walker stares at me for a moment to get my attention. "Good morning," she says enthusiastically. I reply with a smile.
It's amazing how a bit of kindness expressed in those two words helped to reset my morning.
Jim Sergent is a graphics editor for USA TODAY.
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Against the odds, one teen rescues her sisters from foster care
Chapter 2 | Against the odds, one teen rescues her sisters from foster care Family members who take in a relative's kids face unique challenges. Often, they do so without financial, educational and medical support. Marlena remembers the moment she decided to rescue her four sisters from foster care. The sixteen-year-old was back at a Mississippi children's shelter after caseworkers removed her from her mom's care a second time. Maybe we'll all come home, Marlena told a staff member. We'll be home together. No, baby. It don't work like that, the staffer said. By the time you get out of school, y'all be across the United States somewhere. You'll probably never see them again. The girls, aged 5 to 16, rarely saw each other after the state removed them. Social workers had decided their mom could not provide for their basic needs and, after her sister Amy was raped, had not done enough to keep them safe. To protect the privacy of sensitive health and social information of minors too young to consent to having it appear online, USA TODAY used first names for adults and middle names for kids. USA TODAY does not name survivors of sexual assault. They were among millions of other children removed from their homes in the 1990s. In the same decade, Congress cut public benefit programs, creating a formula that reduced the money paid for kids. Federal officials reiterated a commitment to reunite foster children with their parents or, at least, find relatives to take them while in state custody. Most child welfare agencies didn't do that. And still don't. Kids the government takes away usually live with strangers in foster homes or group facilities. Only a third live with relatives under state supervision. The family members who do take in kids face unique challenges of unplanned caregiving. Often, they do so without the financial, educational and medical support provided to other foster and adoptive parents. To bring her sisters home, Marlena would have to defy the odds. She was still a kid herself. Could a teenager really raise her four sisters? As a caseworker drove her to yet another home, Marlena knew what she had to do. She opened the door of the moving car. And jumped out. Freedom Marlena was a runaway, one of tens of thousands of kids who flee foster care each year. About 1-in-8 teens who enter state custody will leave it this way. She hid at a friend's house. After a few days, she covertly moved back home with her mom. She sought emancipation – freeing her from anyone's custody – and achieved it at 17. Marlena passed the GED exam on the first try. She took a two-week, hands-on certified nursing assistant course, earning a license and a job. The teen worked to support herself and her mom, whose only income was a monthly disability check that she received because of paranoid schizophrenia. Mom and daughter, without a car, walked across town to take a parenting class mandated by child welfare workers. Somehow, their attendance wasn't recorded. Marlena sat next to her mom in court as state child welfare workers asked a judge to terminate the woman's parental rights. They said she hadn't even tried to bring her daughters home. Marlena raised her hand, waving it. The judge asked, Can I help you? Can I speak, please? Go ahead. Marlena disputed the caseworkers' list of failures. Her mom had been committed for a mental health breakdown but had stabilized. She had gone to the mandated classes with her mother. The legal aid office had turned her mom away, saying they didn't represent people in cases like hers. When I'm old enough, I am willing to bring my sisters home, Marlena told the judge. You know, I can be there. An attorney in the room from the legal aid office said, on the spot, that she would help the family bring the girls home. A 2004 lawsuit against Mississippi, with a still-running settlement agreement, argued that the state's child welfare system reunited kids with parents sooner than was safe. Other times, caseworkers placed kids with relatives who had not been thoroughly vetted or granted any kind of legal custody before closing the case – if they'd opened a case at all. Between 2000 and 2002, Mississippi cut the number of kids in foster care by 18% even though the number of abuse and neglect reports was largely unchanged. Those children often fell into a frayed American safety net, which Congress weakened when it restructured cash benefits in the 1990s. Mississippi had the lowest payments – a maximum of $120 per month for a family of three – before the changes. The new policies fell heavily on the poorest parents, including relatives caring for nieces, nephews, siblings and grandchildren. Work requirements meant that a retired grandma had to go get a job to qualify for support beyond the meager child-only benefit. Each kid in the household received less money than the last. Limits on how many years a family could receive aid disqualified an aunt from the larger family benefit because she had already gotten help for her own children before taking in a brother's kids. Just after the nation's leaders redefined who deserved help, Marlena, 19, brought her sisters home. Rebuilding a family In an old house with high ceilings, the four younger girls shared bunk beds in one bedroom. Marlena had her own room. A coworker at the nursing home donated their furniture. By 2001, Marlena had been approved for a low-income housing voucher, enabling the sisters – and their mom – to move into a five-bedroom home. With her meager wages as a nursing assistant, Marlena paid bills and bought school uniforms. She didn't let her sisters spend too much time with relatives she considered a bad influence or dangerous, such as the uncle who molested her and aunts who drank more than they worked. She was doing it. She was rebuilding their family. Yet, their home lacked a familiar comfort. Her younger sisters returned from foster care reading 'humongous books' and without the same Black accent. Amy, in particular, was quiet, never telling Marlena about her life or asking for help. 'I don't think we ever got that sisterly connection back,' she said. Amy, who was 12 when she came home, agreed. 'You're alone in foster care. Alone all the time. So, it doesn't really bother you to not have connections,' Amy said. Back home with her sisters, she thought, I remember you from when I was younger, but I don't really know who you are. Amy recalls another divide. The teenagers spent time together and had, mostly, stayed in their hometown throughout foster care, letting them keep close with friends and cousins. She and Kay K, the youngest, had lived in other cities and states, sometimes switching foster homes or shelters every few months. 'You learn there's no need to get feelings at all because I'm not going to be here long.' Amy was closest to Kay K because she spent the most time with her in foster care. The duo would 'run up and down the street' together. Sometimes they would sit on a corner, huddled under a blanket and beg for change, acting as if they needed it. They played Mortal Kombat together on the Xbox. Kay K would select Kitana, a princess who fought with steel fans and had run away from the villain who falsely claimed to be her father. Amy always chose Raiden, the god of thunder who led and mentored Earth's defenders. Growing family After years imagining a 'fairy tale' return home, Amy's life wasn't what she expected. Marlena worked all the time. Cousins and aunts always visited or stayed for a while, which meant Amy could never find quiet. Her mom rarely left bed because the medication that tamed her schizophrenia made her lethargic. Amy envied the families she saw on TV and the other kids' moms she met in high school. Why can't my mom be normal? Amy wondered. Why can't you have a normal conversation? Why can't you do normal things? Like, we can't go get our nails done. We can't just go out and eat at a restaurant. School became her safe haven. A place with structure and predictability that was comfortable after so many years in shelters. And then Marlena had a baby. She remembers Amy tying a jump rope to her son's stroller and sprinting around the house with a laughing toddler swinging behind her. 'They had a special bond,' she said. As a teenager, Amy got her nephew dressed for school before going herself. Sometimes she missed activities like swimming, track, cheer and ROTC to come home and care for the boy. Marlena said she never asked Amy to care for her son, who she took to daycare or left with her mom or boyfriend. After watching him on her sixteenth birthday, Amy left with the permission of her mom. No one had ever planned a celebration for her, so she had to do it herself. Marlena came home and didn't know where she was. She reported her missing to police. 'She put her child on another child. I couldn't go anywhere,' Amy said. 'It wasn't like rebellion or anything, but I finally got some freedom. I went to a friend's house. My friend's mom and dad, they took care of me. It was kind of just a weekend getaway.' They got their nails done, played at the arcade and went to the movies. Amy isn't surprised her sister's memory sometimes differed. Her main reflection of the time remains the same. 'It wasn't fair Marlena had to grow up so fast to take care of us,' Amy said. 'We were kids taking care of kids taking care of kids. Because our mom couldn't.' On her own Within the next year, Marlena moved out to her own apartment and enrolled in college to become a registered nurse, pursuing a dream she had paused for years. She left her sisters with their mom. The matriarch, again, was caring for strangers and relatives by giving them a bed in their home. Amy did not have a bedroom. 'I slept on the couch. Or floor,' Amy said. So, she chose to live on her own at 17. She sometimes stayed at an old foster mom's house. She lived with Marlena for a while. She came back to her mom's house. She felt like she was constantly leaving, in search of a calm she couldn't find. She didn't feel stable and struggled to 'find footing as a teenager.' By the time they're 21, former foster youth are less likely than peers to have graduated high school or earned a GED, half as likely to be in college or job training and have lower levels of employment. They're more likely to experience homelessness, become parents or be incarcerated. The risks are highest for youth who 'age out' of the system and are emancipated, like Marlena, and lowest when kids are placed with relatives while in foster care or upon exiting the system. Staying with family helps kids maintain community, cultural and familial bonds – the same social networks that support teens as they transition into adulthood. When the high school told Amy she'd have to repeat a year because they would not accept transfer credits from a previous campus, she decided to get her GED early. At 17, she gave birth several weeks premature. Amy moved in with a 20-something friend who had twin infants. She started college with plans to become a nurse like her sisters. She earned an associate's degree in 2013 and became a certified nursing assistant. Amy met the man who would become her husband. She attended therapy for the first time and began healing old wounds. But while Amy continued college, her health deteriorated. She'd had seizures for years. This was different: fatigue, fevers and joint pain. She was diagnosed with lupus, an autoimmune disease, and left college one semester shy of completing coursework to become a registered nurse. For a while, Amy kept working as a peer-support specialist. She mostly helped women like herself, her sisters and her mother overcome poverty, addiction and trauma. She was accomplishing more than the generation before her and helping others do the same. Yet, Amy had kept distance from family during her 20s. She didn't feel any need to talk with them. So, she didn't know how much trouble her youngest sister was having. Sister mom Marlena considers herself 'old school.' She never argued with her mom – even when it came to parenting disagreements. 'I just found another way,' she said. Kay K had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age 10. When Kay K started having new symptoms, Marlena convinced her mom to take her 17-year-old sister to the doctor even though she didn't want to go. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia, like mom. It was another battle to get Kay K to take the prescribed medications and go to therapy, especially since their mom had stopped taking her own medications. Kay K had been skipping school to hang out with an older cousin, doing so more often as she got older. Marlena was called into truancy court by a letter that threatened jail or a $10,000 fine. She told the judge that she couldn't control Kay K. That her sister now lived with their mom, who wasn't making her get help. Child welfare workers removed Kay K from home. Soon, she ran away. No one knew where she was for almost a year. She had gone to Louisiana. In a phone call to Marlena that didn't include enough information to find her, Kay K described being held in a man's basement, in a room full of children's games. She suspects the man had been a pedophile, but Kay K would not talk about it. Teens who've spent time in foster care experience higher rates of human trafficking and sexual abuse. Often, they're targeted because of weak social connections and unmet basic needs. Offering care, food and shelter can entice vulnerable young people into dangerous situations. One day, somebody bought Kay K a bus ticket home. She was pregnant. Kinship caregivers keep family together but don't get help they need A Mississippi couple took in a relative's kids to keep them out of the foster care system. They say parents like them deserve more support. A sister's love Kay K graduated high school, worked at Waffle House and began college but never finished. A cycle had started. Sober, Kay K was a witty comedian who liked to have fun. She was kind-hearted and generous, willing to give up her possessions if she thought others needed them more. But young Kay K started spending more time with cousins who crashed at a party house. Some used drugs and had criminal records. Kay K slipped deeper and deeper into life on the fringe, her sisters said. Amy believes a violent partner shielded Kay K from even worse people. The couple would beat each other in drunken outbursts, but the man also protected Kay K from traffickers and dealers. He controlled her life, where she went, and who she saw. When he was imprisoned for robbery, she was freed to spend time with anyone. By the time she was 30, Kay K was selling sex for cash and drugs. At times, she was held against her will. She jumped out a second story window to escape one man. Whenever the family tried to get her help, she'd skip town. Sometimes the sisters had court papers in hand ordering an involuntary commitment, but they couldn't find her. When the sisters did manage to get her into a psych ward or hospital, doctors would discharge her after a week or two with no support for continued treatment. Marlena said Kay K could not qualify for Medicaid, and no one would treat her without insurance. 'The system failed her,' Amy said. Kay K returned to her hometown and got sober when she was pregnant. Usually, hospital testing showed she was clean. Once, doctors found alcohol, meth and cocaine in her blood. Kay K, at times, fought to raise her nine kids, including in court. Most ended up in the care of her sisters. Even that stress didn't end the sisters' relationship. The women had worked too hard for too long to stay connected. Kay K was the only sister Amy had felt close to. 'No matter how angry I am at you, I'll still be there when you need me,' Amy said. 'We're sisters.' Almost every day, Kay K would talk to one of them. She'd borrow a phone and log into Facebook Messenger to call or type a short note. I love you! Love you! How the kids doin? Silence One day, the notes stopped coming. A friend of the extended family told Marlena, You should check on your sister. He said she was being held at an abandoned house. He said a man was selling sex with her to pay for his drug supply. Sisters reported it to police in November but heard nothing back. They took turns staking out the house to catch a glimpse of Kay K or her captor. In January, Marlena told a local news reporter about her missing 31-year-old sister. She got a call from a police officer that day. Why do I have to find out about this from Facebook? he asked. He didn't know they had filed a missing-person report months ago. When he looked, he told Marlena he couldn't find it. The officer drove to the abandoned house with Marlena but nobody answered the door. Neighbors told them that, yes, they'd seen the man and Kay K in the home. Without a warrant, the cop couldn't enter. Weeks later, police asked the family for DNA swabs, calling it standard procedure for a missing person case. Marlena and Amy, however, were suspicious. What they didn't know is that a man told police he found a rug-wrapped body halfway down the hill from an abandoned motel. An autopsy showed the woman had been pregnant, but no baby was found. One night, Amy had a dream. She was caught in a loop as someone else. Someone who was trapped in a dark hotel room and scared. Someone who was choking. Someone who died again and again. 'No matter which way I escaped, I appeared back in that room.' Amy woke up crying, turned to her husband and spoke. My sister's not here anymore. She just died. She's gone. Chapter 3: Rebuilding | A tragedy means Amy must take in her nieces and nephews. She and her sisters fight to give them a better childhood than they had. This article was produced as a project for the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism's 2025 Child Welfare Impact Reporting Fund. Jayme Fraser is an investigative data reporter at USA TODAY. She can be reached on Signal or WhatsApp at (541) 362-1393 or by emailing jfraser@
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Foster care split 5 sisters. Their journey speaks for millions of others.
Chapter 1 | Foster care split 5 sisters. Their journey speaks for millions of others. Torn apart in foster care, the consequences of family separation rippled through the lives of Amy and her sisters – and then their children. Amy can point out 19 houses where she grew up in her Mississippi hometown. That tally doesn't include the places in other cities and states where child welfare workers took her to live. Driving around a corner on a residential street dusted in green pollen, Amy noted the patch of wild spearmint she once plucked for tea with her mother and sisters. She remembered climbing pecan trees in the yard of a foster mom who taught Amy to cook but beat her own daughter. She pointed up a hill to the children's shelter. It was the only place Amy and her four sisters were together after being taken from their family. Torn apart, the sisters could no longer care for one another. Or play. Or bicker, as sisters do. In the decades that followed, the consequences of family separation rippled through the lives of Amy and her sisters – and then their children. The family's story parallels major changes in child welfare policy that has taken millions of young Americans out of their homes. And the sisters' experiences highlight the importance of family bonds to healthy childhoods – whether in the care of parents or other kin. 'Whatever affects you as a child is going to affect you as an adult,' Amy, 37, said. 'There's things that I still have to deal with.' To tell this story, USA TODAY visited Amy's family and social workers who know them. Reporters reviewed family photos and documents as well as recording more than 20 hours of interviews. Amy's experience was compared with thousands of pages of court records, state reports and federal statistics about kids removed from their homes by the government over the last three decades, particularly in Mississippi. To protect the privacy of sensitive health and social information of minors too young to consent to having it appear online, USA TODAY used first names for adults and middle names for kids. USA TODAY does not name survivors of sexual assault. State and county child welfare agencies take about 200,000 kids from their parents each year. Decades-old federal mandates say children should be placed in 'family-like' foster homes or, even better, with actual family members. Yet, most kids will live in group shelters or with strangers. Most remain in state custody for almost two years each time they are removed. A fifth spend more than four years in foster care before finding a permanent home. 'The foster care system has forgotten its main goal,' Amy said. 'It's reunification.' The results of extended separation are well documented in research. Foster kids who are not reunited with their families are more likely to become homeless, have unplanned pregnancies, be trafficked, use drugs and go to prison, among other poor outcomes. In short: Government systems designed to save children often harm them, too. That was true for Amy. She saw violence. She stopped trusting people. She lost critical opportunities to build lifelong bonds. She learned to mute her feelings to survive in a chaotic world but not how to sink roots for her future. Because the sisters grew up in so many different homes, they did not have a common story to bind them as family. 'So it was really hard to even have a connection.' Amy agreed to share her story so foster youth and relatives who care for kids would feel less alone. She wants the people who are funding federal programs, writing state laws and reviewing child welfare files to understand the impact of their choices – especially when all the options have downsides. Amy believes kids removed from their parents should live with relatives as often as possible. She wants policy reforms to make that a realistic choice for more children. 'We really couldn't find anybody in the family that would actually keep us, ' she said. 'So me and my sisters, we got split up. And we got sent to different homes.' Neglected Amy's oldest sister Marlena, 14, heard a car pull up and walked to the bottom of the hill to see if her mom was returning from errands. She wasn't. A cop and a social worker arrived, apparently to follow up on a tip about child neglect. When they entered the house on Spring Street, five-year-old Amy hid under the bed that was buried in thrift clothes. The officer and social worker found the girls alone in a home crowded with boxes of clothes and stacks of magazines. Because they had found Marlena outside, they said they had no proof she'd been watching her sisters. They took the girls. This is why most kids are removed from their homes. It starts with a tip from a mandatory reporter. Professionals – like cops, teachers or doctors – are required by law to report child abuse and neglect. Research has found disparate mandatory reporting to be one reason that Black families, like Amy's, are investigated and their kids removed more often. Once a child welfare worker decides to take kids into state custody, they list neglect as the reason in about two-thirds of cases. Fewer kids are removed because of physical abuse or sexual violence. In most states, the definition of child neglect closely mirrors poverty: a failure to provide basic needs, such as food, clothing, shelter and medical care. Amid national welfare reform in the 1990s, when Amy was was a child, the number of people in Mississippi who received cash benefits for their kids dropped 73% over a decade even though poverty did not decline. Those who could not work, like Amy's mom, found it nearly impossible to secure aid. Amy called their first removal 'crazy.' Yes, she said, her family was poor. But they made do. Her stepdad was not active in child-rearing but filled the traditional role of a provider. The garbage truck driver salvaged furniture for their home. When he left an 18-speed bike on the porch, Amy taught herself to ride it in the church parking lot even though it was taller than she was. A photo shows Amy's mom beaming in a red woven shirt framed with white lace. She stands, hands on hips, in front of a closet door hanging crooked on its hinge. To her right teeters a shoulder-high pile of cardboard boxes. To her left, the drawers of an armoire are too full to close. Kay K, the youngest sister, sits on the floor in a diaper, looking up at the camera between thick braids. Although the sisters don't know why – no one ever told them – their first stay in foster care was short, suggesting state social workers decided they were, in fact, safe at home. For good A couple years later, Amy's mom and stepdad had separated. Amy, her mom and sisters lived in a different rental in the same aging neighborhood. Strangers, many down on their luck, were often invited to live there. Amy's mom introduced them as cousins or aunties even though most weren't. The woman, known for her big heart, wanted to help everyone. One night, Amy, then 8, was asleep in her mom's bed. An acquaintance entered the room and, without waking anyone else, raped her. When Shanaaka, 13, discovered Amy was bleeding down there, their mom took her to the hospital. She was put into some big machine. Dr. Smith sewed her up. Maybe a sexual assault kit was collected. She's not sure because the memories are fragmented, as is common among trauma survivors. Her mom 'did nothing about it.' A few nights later, while their mom was at a night class, Shanaaka pressed the button on a tape recorder and told Amy to describe what happened. I'm gonna take this to my teacher at the school, the older sister told the younger. She had hoped police would arrest the man. Instead, Amy said child welfare workers 'came and got us for good.' As a child, Amy felt 'a sad release' when she was taken from a mom who did not protect her. As an adult, her feelings are complicated. Just because she wasn't safe with her mom doesn't mean she wanted to be isolated from her sisters, taken out of her hometown and bounced between foster placements. Today, Amy says her mother denies she ever was attacked and, if pushed to talk about it, says the government lied to steal her kids. 'It doesn't bother me anymore,' Amy said. 'But it's like, you never will get it out of her that this was her I forgive her.' Amy believes her mom's inconsistent parenting resulted from both willful disregard and paranoid schizophrenia. The woman was unavailable for an interview with USA TODAY because she was hospitalized. Untreated, Amy said the mental health condition's fantastical conspiracies tainted her mom's decisions. Treated, the medications locked her in a sleepy daze. She did not drink or use drugs, which would have made mental health challenges worse. When the girls were removed the second time, Amy's mom had a breakdown that sent her to the state hospital. The aunt Mississippi officials tried to keep the sisters together. On paper, it was a victory when Amy's aunt, her stepfather's sister, brought them to her home shortly after the first removal. Research has consistently found that kids do better living with relatives. Despite the challenges of being separated from parents, they report being happier and are less likely to be moved because of behavior problems than when they are placed with strangers. Their culture and community is maintained. Kids are less often separated from siblings or forced to change schools. For decades policy makers questioned whether placing kids with relatives is best – and still do in some places today. They often have a 'rotten tree' belief: If the parents are not suitable caregivers, the whole family must be the same. Supporters of kinship care argue that a tree can have many branches. Other times, relatives want to help but just don't have the means. Amy's aunt and uncle lived in a brick home in a new subdivision with spacious yards. The three-bedroom house was crowded before Amy and her sisters arrived. State case workers had placed another relative's children with her, too.'There were 10 or 11 of us kids,' she said. Amy remembers 'being hungry all the time.' 'She used to bring us moon pies. And I cannot stand chocolate moon pies to this day because that's all she used to bring us to eat.' One day, Amy overheard her aunt arguing with the caseworker about money. 'They were supposed to give her payments, and they didn't.' The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1979 that states had to pay the same amount for relatives providing care as it did for strangers – if they had a foster care license. Nothing, however, required states to license relatives. By 2001, one research team found that kinship families in at least 26 states could be denied financial support. A 2004 lawsuit against the state of Mississippi documented that caseworkers steered relatives away from licensing options and would even deny financial assistance to those who were licensed. Caregiving: His sick wife asked him to kill her. Now that she's gone, he says the loneliness is worse. To care for Amy and her four sisters, Mississippi would have paid a foster home of strangers about $3,000 each month and a group home $14,000. Double that to include the other nieces and nephews. Amy's aunt was paid nothing. Even if she sought a foster care license, she likely could not have qualified. The aunt would have had to comply with rules such as limits on how many people could sleep in each room. She would have needed to buy a much bigger house without any help to do so. Kinship families can disintegrate under unique pressures like these. Amy doesn't know why they didn't stay longer than a month. She guesses, because of that overheard conversation, money was a factor. The cynical side of Amy wonders if her aunt feared their presence could damage a future run for city alderwoman. Or, that their connection through her stepdad was not close enough to matter. In the end, the aunt returned all but two of her nieces and nephews to foster care. Amy and her sisters were sent to live with strangers. Sheltered The girls, ages 5 to 16, arrived at a Mississippi children's shelter again. Amy was 8. An adult showed them to a room, pointing out two twin beds for the five sisters. Kay K, the youngest, had always clung to her mom, wailed and kicked. She didn't understand. In a single day in 2023, almost 1-in-10 foster kids nationwide were living in group homes or institutions, about half the rate in 2003. While Amy was in state custody, Mississippi's rate was 1-in-5. Amy remembers all the shelters she lived in as 'impersonal.' Staff rotated in and out. Night shift, day shift. Checking boxes on forms. No one tries to get to know you. The staffers and their bosses, she said, were just there for the money. 'And the more children you have, the more money you have.' Sometimes one person went out of their way to remember Amy's name and ask about her day. But usually not. 'They're just there to watch you,' she said. 'Children need some type of embracing, guiding, you know? But you don't get that in a bigger setting. There's no love.' To grow healthy brains, kids need to feel safe. They require a stable relationship with a caregiver. Someone who always shows up when they cry for food or help or hugs. That is secure attachment, in psychological terms. When the world is unpredictable and people in it are all strangers – as is the experience of foster children – brains spend more time in survival mode. Kids become wired to expect danger, reacting moment to moment. Sometimes, they disconnect, finding safety in numbness. Attachment wounds are, in essence, damage to the way people connect with each other. The damage must be repaired through healthy, meaningful relationships that retrain the brain. Since 1980, Congress has required states to prioritize 'family-like' care over group facilities. The thinking was a temporary parent has to be better than no parent. Amy, at least, had her sisters at the shelter. They looked out for each other, especially when adults didn' K's tantrums continued beyond the first night. Away from home, she burst into screams, blurred fists and bites every day. The caretakers called for Amy, the tallest, or Marlena, the oldest. The adults relied on the girls to restrain Kay K. To pin her arms down in a hug until she tired out and quieted. One day, a few weeks after arriving, Amy and her sisters were told they were leaving. And they would not be living together. Jackson Amy wasn't at the foster home in Jackson very long, but she still thinks about the night she left. Sometimes, she has nightmares. She imagines different endings. 'What could I have done?' she wonders. 'But then it's like, if I had jumped in, what would they have done to me?' The two biological children always ate first and as much as they wanted. The foster kids received strict portions. The bio kids hit and teased the others without punishment. If the fosters talked back to the bios, the parents brought out a whooping belt. The baby, maybe 2 or 3 years old, never seemed to leave his metal crib. He cried most nights. Amy and the older fosters would calm him, quiet him, so the foster parents wouldn't become upset. One night, the young boy took a piece of chicken from the foster parents' school-age son. The man grabbed the toddler by an arm and a leg. He swung him into the metal bars of the crib. He and his wife punched him. Again and again. The other fosters watched from their beds, silent. 'It went on and on forever,' Amy said. 'We were trying to tune it out.' While child welfare agencies report maltreatment is rare in state care, many foster kids say that doesn't reflect the real level of abuse they experience. One typical study found that a third of former foster youth from Oregon and Washington described being abused while in state care. That figure doesn't include child-on-child violence, which can be more common. In Mississippi, it was unlikely for abuse in foster homes to be documented. In a 2004 federal class action lawsuit covering the years Amy was in the system, more than 8,000 foster youth sued the state. It detailed routine failures to provide adequate care and poor monitoring of foster parents, among other complaints. Many of the issues stemmed from inadequate staffing: Caseworkers routinely handled more than 10 times the recommended number of cases. In the county where Amy watched the attack on a little boy, each caseworker handled an average of 114 cases. Decades later, after lurches forward and backward, the state still hasn't met all the terms of a court-monitored agreement to improve the system. That night in Jackson, a few years before the lawsuit, Amy is not sure who called 911. She was asleep by the time police arrived and woke her. Come on. Get your stuff. It's time to go. Amy didn't think much of it. She had to go wherever they told her to go, whenever they wished. Even if it was a cold night and she was just wearing shorts underneath the officer's jacket. After being questioned, Amy joined the other sleepy kids in a waiting room at the child welfare office. She could hear a caseworker crying as she choked out questions to the foster parents. 'I heard them say they had broken the baby's ribs,' Amy remembered. 'But I never knew what happened after that. 'Did he pass away? 'Or did he recover?' Pecans In the absence of biological family, Amy was shaped by the people she met in foster care. An elderly Black woman who lived in the country raised pigs and had fingernails several feet long. The multicultural family in Tennessee taught Amy to appreciate Asian cuisine but didn't know how to care for her Black hair. 'They all had their faults,' she said. Still, Amy is grateful that she saw new ways to live and learned independence in foster care. She wouldn't be who she is without those experiences. Some of her good memories come from Second Street North in her hometown. The two-story white house sat on a corner tucked behind a white picket fence. Pecan trees shaded the trimmed lawn. At times, her sisters Angelia and Kay K lived there, too. The girls would walk two houses down the street to spend the weekend at their mom's house. They would call their foster mom once they got there so she knew they were safe. Each Sunday, they returned to the foster home to start dinner before going to church. Amy learned to pick greens from the garden and bake cornbread. She continues the tradition of cooking with her own kids today. 'My just-get-up-and-do-it attitude, I kind of get from there,' Amy said. 'She always had us fixing up things.' A screen door. Rotting porch stairs. A microwave stand. The house was down the hill from her elementary school, so she jumped rope with classmates on the street. Her best friend lived next door. One time, the girls knocked over a ceramic Black angel from a collectibles shelf. They swept the broken pieces and hid them, hoping their foster mom wouldn't notice it was missing. She did. The smaller girls ran upstairs to hide under their bed. Amy took the blame. She was favored, for some reason. She would be scolded and wanted to protect her sister. 'Had it been them, she might've whooped them.' It wasn't a theoretical fear. Their foster mom's adult daughter lived in the house, too. They saw how she berated and beat her. The woman was always crying. When the daughter tripped on a raised floorboard and dropped food, Amy watched as her foster mom shoved the woman's face down to the ground, telling her to eat. She ate it all. At some point, the woman's teenage son told a teacher about it. 'It wasn't bad for me. She always would treat me like a grandmother would treat their grandchild,' she said. 'She always did for us. And that's kind of what you hope for in a foster home.' Amy was moved again. Her sisters were taken somewhere else. Returned A caseworker told Amy, now 12, that she would be going home. 'I didn't realize she meant home home.' Similar promises over the years had never materialized. She never thought about why she didn't live with her parents and sisters. She tried to live in the moment, the now. No one could predict her future with any accuracy. Why should she try when she had no control? 'I learned really young, I couldn't trust anything.' What Amy didn't know is that Marlena had spoken up at the court hearing to terminate their mother's parental rights. The 17-year-old girl told the judge she would help raise her sisters. And, despite the long odds, the judge eventually agreed to send the girls home so long as Marlena helped her mother raise them. Amy remembers a social worker driving her from Jackson to her hometown. She recognized the big strip mall as they passed. Seeing the landmark, she thought, I'm home. She doesn't remember the rest of that day. Did mom greet them with a hug? Had Marlena prepared a special meal? Were her other sisters already there? For Amy, it was another home full of strangers. Chapter 2: Surviving | Against all odds, Amy's teen sister brings the family back together. Can they reestablish their bonds? This article was produced as a project for the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism's 2025 Child Welfare Impact Reporting Fund. Jayme Fraser is an investigative data reporter at USA TODAY. She can be reached on Signal or WhatsApp at (541) 362-1393 or by emailing jfraser@
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Oregon Lottery Powerball, Pick 4 results for June 14
The Oregon Lottery offers several draw games for those aiming to win big. Here's a look at June 14, 2025, results for each game: 04-06-09-23-59, Powerball: 25, Power Play: 3 Check Powerball payouts and previous drawings here. 1PM: 0-5-0-7 4PM: 3-7-9-4 7PM: 3-0-9-3 10PM: 8-9-9-6 Check Pick 4 payouts and previous drawings here. 11-43-67-74 Check Win for Life payouts and previous drawings here. 01-05-10-17-37-45 Check Megabucks payouts and previous drawings here. Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results Powerball: 7:59 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. Mega Millions: 7:59 p.m. on Tuesday and Friday. Pick 4: 1 p.m., 4 p.m., 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. daily. Win for Life: 7:30 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. Megabucks: 7:29 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. Winning lottery numbers are sponsored by Jackpocket, the official digital lottery courier of the USA TODAY Network. Tickets can be purchased in person at gas stations, convenience stores and grocery stores. Some airport terminals may also sell lottery tickets. You can also order tickets online through Jackpocket, the official digital lottery courier of the USA TODAY Network, in these U.S. states and territories: Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Washington D.C., and West Virginia. The Jackpocket app allows you to pick your lottery game and numbers, place your order, see your ticket and collect your winnings all using your phone or home computer. Jackpocket is the official digital lottery courier of the USA TODAY Network. Gannett may earn revenue for audience referrals to Jackpocket services. GAMBLING PROBLEM? CALL 1-800-GAMBLER, Call 877-8-HOPENY/text HOPENY (467369) (NY). 18+ (19+ in NE, 21+ in AZ). Physically present where Jackpocket operates. Jackpocket is not affiliated with any State Lottery. Eligibility Restrictions apply. Void where prohibited. Terms: This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by an Oregon editor. You can send feedback using this form. This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: Oregon Lottery Powerball, Pick 4 results for June 14
