Legal Guardianships: A Santa Rosa woman’s path to motherhood

Something must have intervened that Sunday three years ago when Nikigiovonie Rogers sat in the pews at Community Baptist Church in Santa Rosa, her heart and mind focused on her “healing moment.”

Maybe it was the Holy Spirit, Rogers said, that made her turn around to find the curly-haired blond girl who had called her “Momma” from the moment they’d first met more than a year earlier.

But it had been nearly three weeks since Rogers had seen Demetria, time spent wondering where she and her troubled mother had gone, and if they were safe. Rogers had cared for nearly 3-year-old Demetria a number of times, and now here she was again, wearing Mary Jane shoes and an ivory white dress decorated with lace roses, sitting there with a woman who wasn’t her mother. The little girl squirmed and wiggled free from the woman’s lap and went over to Rogers and her family.

When she hugged the little girl, Rogers thought to herself maybe Demitria had finally found a stable home and family.

“I said to myself, ‘God found a mom for Demitria,’ ?” Rogers said.

But the woman was simply another stranger watching over Demitria, just as Rogers had done many times.

She remembered her first day with Demitria, in August 2013. Rogers was manager of the Burbank Housing complex where Demitria lived with her mother, a struggling former foster youth who wished to remain anonymous. Rogers, in her ?late 30s at the time, was leaving for a family reunion when the mother walked up to her with Demitria, then not quite 2.

“She asked if I could keep her for a day,” Rogers said.

“I have a video clip of that one day. I was singing to her. I was singing to her, ‘Your mom is going to come and get her baby.’ This little girl never stopped calling me Momma. “She never called me Niki.”

Soon after, Rogers believes she was entered into Demitria’s file at Sonoma County Child Protective Services, or CPS, as a community resource the mother used to help care for her child.

At one point for about a month, Demitria and her mother moved in with Rogers and her husband, Alfonso, before one morning disappearing without a trace. Rogers and her husband had grown extremely fond of the little girl and empathized with her mother’s troubles and the instability of Demetria’s life.

“When she was a baby you could see on her face she wanted to be saved from whatever she was going through,” Rogers said.

And then Rogers saw Demitria in church.

Afterward, the woman with Demitria said she’d met the child and her mother on the bus and was asked to watch the girl for a brief period that turned into weeks.

The woman now asked Rogers if she could watch Demetria the following day. Rogers and Alfonso said yes.

The couple agreed they would do whatever it took to keep Demitria safe.

But how? Adoption was expensive and Demitria already had a mother and father who loved her enough to find safe places for her when needed.

Demitria feared deeper CPS involvement, which could mean having the child legally removed from her home and placed in the foster care system. Rogers did have a handwritten signed note from the girl’s mother that read, “I give Niki Rogers permission to care for Demitria” dated Sept. 17, 2014. The woman who had been caring for Demitria had a similar note.

Rogers took it to CPS the Monday after church and asked for help, but all CPS could offer was foster care. So a week later, Rogers found herself at Legal Aid of Sonoma County on an unrelated issue where she saw a brochure that gave her hope.

“I looked at this banner that said, ‘Legal Guardianships,’ and I said, ‘Well, how much is it?’ They said legal guardianships are free,” said Rogers. “Legal guardianship never crossed my mind ... you only hear about foster and adoption. That’s all you hear about or kinship, you never hear about this kind of story.”

Rogers and her husband were awarded legal guardianship five months later. Once in a while the mother calls to see how Demitria is doing. If the mother is doing well, she’ll let the ?two talk.

“When she calls I let them talk but I won’t hand her over to her,” she said. “Legal guardianship, that’s what it is. It means they can’t just come and take her. She won’t be bouncing around ... It was like God saying, ‘I got her in my hands.’ Even though he’s using the court system, he has her in his hands.”

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213. On Twitter @renofish.