Gladys Flores remembers as a child growing up in El Salvador holding in her arms a baby dropped off on her family’s doorstep, abandoned and alone until her parents unofficially adopted the infant.

Then a few years later, there were the other children who found their way to live in her home, orphans fleeing a civil war that ravaged Honduras during the 1970s.

They were memories that inspired Flores when she married and moved to Sacramento in the early 1980s to become a foster mother to a steady stream of abandoned, broken and abused children sent her way by St. Patrick’s Home for Children in Sacramento.

Since that time she and her husband Oscar have been foster parents for 15 children, an adventure that began while they were raising their son Pavel and their daughter Cholie.

“We want to do what our moms do,” said Flores, remembering her mother’s unconditional love for the four children she gave birth to and several others she took in as her own. “My son needed a brother and my daughter needed a sister.”

A member of St. Joseph Parish in Sacramento, Flores remembers talking with a friend about her desire to be a foster parent and learning that St. Patrick’s Home for Children was a good place to start. There she learned about the agency’s mission to find foster parents for children who are victims of abuse, neglect, abandonment and sexual molestation.

Steve Isbell, director of St. Patrick’s foster care program, said foster parents like Flores make it possible to provide “a continuum of care” for children enrolled at St. Patrick School and day care centers who are victims of abuse, neglect and abandonment. The program also provides a place where children from group homes can go to return to the nurturing environment of a family setting.

All foster parents in the program are carefully screened, receive training for certification, and the supervision and support of a social worker. Isbell said St. Patrick’s 30 foster parents have one thing in common.

“There has to be an enjoyment of falling in love all over again with these kids,” he said. “They need to be loved, nurtured and feel they have an ultimate future.”

Most of the foster children who have had the good fortune to become part of the Flores family have been emergency placement cases, meaning that time with the foster family lasts only until permanent placement is found. For these children, Flores said, her job is offering unconditional love to children who often don’t want to be loved.

“They may seem to reject us because they want to be loyal to their own moms,” she said. “My job is getting them to be more accepting of this love.”

Flores is currently foster parenting a troubled 12-year-old boy whose “very cruel past” includes failed placements in three foster homes. When problems come up with her most recent foster child requiring some friendly advice from St. Patrick’s, she packs up her three children, the 12-year-old and the four and five-year-old boys she has legally adopted, and heads to the foster care office.

“I bring my kids — not the foster kids and my kids — we’re all together,” Flores said. “If there’s anything I can’t handle, St. Patrick’s helps me out.”

She said the hardest part of foster parenting is saying goodbye when a child moves on to permanent placement. Flores is often on the receiving end of telephone calls and Mother’s Day cards from several of her former foster children.

One nine-year old boy who she took into her home as a toddler travels to visit Flores once a year from Florida where he now lives with his mother.

Isbell said there is a huge need for more foster parents for thousands of children in the state, a growing number of whom are teens.

One permanent placement he can count on will be from Flores, who said she is looking to adopt yet another child.

“I couldn’t be happier than I am with my children. It’s a joy for me,” she said. “I wouldn’t change my life for anything.”

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