It all began with Francisco, a three-week-old baby whose fragile life was threatened at birth by heart, liver and respiratory problems.

Hilda Navarro, left, a foster parent herself, has founded an association for Latino foster parents. Her family includes, from left: Francisco Jr., 10; Matthew, 4, a foster child for whom she is guardian; husband Francisco, holding a 23-month-old boy, a foster child still under court guardianship; Marlene, 12; and Ada, 21. Cathy Joyce/Herald photo

But to Hilda Navarro, Francisco was the boy she had always wanted — a miracle baby, beautiful in every way.

He would be the first of a steady stream of infants typically moved from broken, abusive, or drug-infected parents to the unconditional love at Navarro’s Sacramento home.

Over the past 10 years, Hilda and Francisco Navarro have been foster parents to more than 65 children who frequently arrive in the middle of the night and stay for a few days, or as long as it takes to find them a safe home.

“When children come into her home, she views them as family,” said Helen Quintana, a foster care recruiter with the Sacramento County Department of Health and Human Services. “They’re all her children.”

Until 1992, foster care was something Navarro, who grew up as one of eight children in Zacatecas, Mexico, had never heard discussed. She and her husband Francisco had just moved from Palo Alto to Sacramento. The couple had three daughters of their own when they met some friends who were foster parents.

“We noticed how much love the babies needed. We saw they needed a lot of care…and I began thinking, maybe I could help,” Hilda Navarro said.

When she was going through the application process to become a foster parent, Navarro met up with Quintana.

“We’d never met before, but Helen was a friend to us from the start,” Navarro said. “We knew these were children who were often sick or very fragile. She told us we could do it.”

Navarro will never forget the day in April 1992 when she went to the hospital and saw her very first foster baby.

“When I saw him, I was kind of afraid at first. There were tubes all over,” she said. “We knew we had to give all we had for him, a lot of love and care.”

But the baby, Francisco, who for a time was in and out of the hospital every week and cried constantly, captured the hearts of the Navarro clan and friends who took turns holding him day and night.

In time his body healed and the crying went away.

“It’s like somebody filled the hole that was there,” Navarro said of Francisco Jr., who the Navarros decided to adopt. “Our friends call him the miracle baby.”

But Francisco was just the beginning for Hilda Navarro. Just a week after taking her first foster child, she received word that a second baby needed her care. The flow of children hasn’t stopped since.

Licensed for emergency placement of children ranging in age from newborn to age 5, Navarro has put to use skills she learned as a nursing student in Mexico and extensive training to care for children with special needs. But nothing could prepare her for some of the children who are fortunate enough to find their way into her home.

“Some have bruises or burns all over, and you think, my God, how can these things happen?” she said.

Members of St. Rose Parish in Sacramento, the Navarros make time for conversations with God in prayer every morning and night a part of daily life.

“Every day I ask God to help me with these kids,” she said. “It’s too difficult. By myself I couldn’t do it, but with God and my family, I know I can.”

Navarro credits her husband Francisco with generously stepping in to help out with chores like cooking dinner and having incredible patience with each child and their special needs.

Along the way Navarro has become an activist working on behalf of other foster parents, especially Latinos. While she was just starting out as a foster parent herself, she began gathering together friends and neighbors interested in foster parenting for coffee every Friday. The members became foster parents themselves, and meetings grew to include people from other areas of Sacramento.

The informal coffee club evolved into an association for Latino foster parents, founded by Navarro, which now includes about 70 families.

As an advocate for foster families, Navarro has worked with Quintana to develop a series of foster parenting classes in Spanish at American River College in Sacramento.

“Hilda looks for families she thinks would be good foster parents,” Quintana said. “She’s part of the foster care team, and she does her job very well.”

In May, Hilda and Francisco Navarro were named Foster Parents of the Year by Sacramento County Child Protective Services.

It’s an honor that gave her joy, but one Hilda Navarro insists on sharing with all foster parents who believe as she does that no child should go unloved.

Copyright © 2001 Diocese of Sacramento - All Rights Reserved

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