PHOENIX — On Saturday, more than 50 kids were adopted in Maricopa County to celebrate National Adoption Day.
12News' cameras were rolling in the courtroom as one Avondale family welcomed a new family member. And it turns out, this is a family where adoption has been a blessing for generations.
Emotions were running high on National Adoption Day for the Lugo family from Avondale.
“My daughter has adopted my sister Angela’s great-granddaughter,” Estella Gomez-Taylor said. “I’m gonna start crying. It makes me feel good.”
“I am mom times 6,” Estella Lugo, Gomez-Taylor's daughter, said. “Oh, I’m going to start crying.”
It was a day like no other for her family, one filled with anticipation and pure joy as she adopted her 5-year-old daughter Estella Angela Lugo at the Superior Court of Arizona.
“(It's) finalization for her,” she said. “Security for her… family... love... forever. It just feels good to know she’s not going any place.”
Lugo says Estella has been part of the family since she was 18 months old.
“She is a third cousin to me,” Lugo said. "And her great-grandma is my mother‘s sister, so I was very close to my aunt and my mother was very close… that’s where the name comes from.”
On Saturday, Lugo felt a sense of happiness and relief.
“(Estella's) going to be with us forever,” Lugo said. “It feels good that when I call her daughter, she’s daughter.”
Adoption, it turns out, runs deep in this family.
“Yes, yes… my mother adopted my brother and my two sisters,” Lugo said. “I was in my teens when that happened.”
That was 25 years ago for Lugo’s mom, the first adoption day in Maricopa County.
“And I eventually started working for child protective services myself,” Lugo said. “So I’ve seen all the ins and outs of fostering, of being a DCS worker, now of adoption.”
“I love them the same as I love my biological kids,” said Gomez-Taylor, who returned once again today, to witness the blessing of adoption all these years later.
“With her mom now, she’s going to have education, which is very important,” Gomez-Taylor said. “She’s going to know about the Lord.”
It was a thrilling day for retired judge Maurice Portley, who made the adoption official.
“Creating family… keeping family… and as you saw, it was a big group, with a lot of love and joy,” Portley said. “And so precious just before Thanksgiving.”
The children being adopted and the families that adopted them came away feeling an overwhelming amount of gratitude.
Surrounded by her siblings and a lot of love, this is just the beginning for 5-year-old Estella.
She’s looking forward to starting kindergarten and shooting for the stars in the future.
“I want to be a doctor… I mean a nurse,” she said.
Her family and so many others were forever touched by the formality of adoption.
Following the court proceedings, there was an awards ceremony for those who participated in the first National Adoption Day right in front of the courthouse.
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