Foster care success story Casey McNamara came out of a chaotic past swirling with drugs, sex and poor hygiene. Her life turned into a Cinderella romance with husband Max.
“You'll never hurt again,” high schooler Max McNamara, in love, promised her. “How right he was!” said Casey, whose poise and grace belies her nightmarish background of “Lucky Charms for breakfast and dinner,” optional school attendance, and baby-sitting her younger siblings as a 7-year-old.
After authorities took her away from her parents, Casey hopscotched from home to home in the foster care system – five times in total – until she landed at Carmen and Robert Mendelson's, where she found an idyllic life of a white picket fence, a golden retriever and loads of love. Eventually, she was adopted by the Mendelsons.
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The turnaround in living circumstances, however, didn't eradicate the demons of her past. The turbulent teen years re-conjured her hell. She even contemplated suicide.
“I felt very alone, very empty,” she said. “I was confused and angry.”
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The one day, she heard an other-worldly voice: “Teach!” Somehow, this voice gave her a direction and impetus to stay the course and avoid self-harm.
A couple years later, Casey met Max on Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade. As soon as Max saw her, he was smitten. “Do you see that girl over there?” he told his buddies. “That's the girl I'm going to marry.”
Max and his group of friends began chatting to Casey and her group of friends, and Max tried to make eyes with her.
A few days later, Max driving his car passed on her street by chance and saw her raking leaves in the front yard. Soon afterward, this young Romeo – taking his buddies along so as to not spook her – talked to her outside her window. He threw a pebble against the pane to get her attention.
“That's when I first laid eyes on Max,” Casey said. “The second I saw him I couldn't turn away. He was different, different from any other boy I had met. There was a gentle spirit about him. From that night on, we were inseparable. We started talking on the phone, and he eventually met my parents. One thing I will never forget him telling me was that I would always be safe with him.”
Max, a born-again Christian, invited her Lighthouse Church services, but she was resistant. On one occasion, she was concocting an excuse to not go to church when she happened to see across the street her brother, drugged up, beaten up and looking like a homeless man.
“Right then I resolved I was going to break the family curse,” she said. “I was going to be someone different. I was going to change my life – if not for myself, for my siblings.”
That night, she went to church, accepted Jesus in her heart and was flooded with unspeakable peace.
Casey enrolled at the Lighthouse Christian Academy, where she blossomed in a loving and structured environment. She also made peace in her heart with those who had wronged her.
“The most important thing that Lighthouse taught me was forgiveness,” she said.
She had been bullied throughout middle school for being overly skinny. She had spent most of her time hiding in the teacher's room to avoid the kids' cruelty. Once, she was taken to the Emergency Room because she got smacked on the head.
All that changed at Lighthouse.
“For once, I was accepted for who I was, and I was liked for being me,” Casey explained in an email. “The other students loved me and cared about me. The teachers cared about my learning. And boy did I learn! Above all else, I learned to love myself and others.”
Encouraged by a supportive network of friends and staff, Casey and Max maintained a formal and serious courtship through high school.
She graduated LCA in 2010 with high honors and studied at Santa Monica College – coming two courses shy of an AA in Early Childhood Development. She worked at the Lighthouse Christian Preschool.
In January 2012, she married her sweetheart and now raises a baby girl, Audrey Belle. She's being the mom she always dreamed of.
“Right now, I'm enjoying raising my beautiful girl and planning a family,” she wrote.
