Kursti Adkins sits at the kitchen table at Grandma Carol's little house in the Wasilla woods and tells about the newest big trouble in her life. Her father died six years ago. Her mother has four children by four men and has lost custody of all of them. Kursti is the oldest. She's 12. Going on 30.
She's been around it all: Grown-ups doing drugs; her mom being hit and kicked and choked; gunshots outside the Mush Inn, where they lived for a while.
And now she has lost her little sister, Mary Jaine.
Mary Jaine Pennick, barely 3 years old. The one Kursti used to take care of when all the grown-ups were gone or messed up. Kursti changed Mary Jaine's diapers, fed her, cuddled her. At an age when many kids' worst worry is taking a spelling test, Kursti got up in the middle of the night to comfort a crying infant.
The children are in foster care, the latest twist in their troubled lives.
Lots of kids are born into trouble. But there's a difference between statistics, between knowing that more than 2,000 Alaska children are in foster care on any given day and getting inside the life of one real child.
Kursti said she wanted to talk about her life, about what happens when your father is dead, your mother can't take care of you and the state takes over. Much of what she says was verified through other sources. Some of it is just how events look to her.
This is her story.
A NOMADIC LIFE
Kursti goes to Wasilla Middle School. She is the oldest of her mother's four children. She and her brother, Walkier Dresnek, 10, live with her paternal grandmother, Carol Adkins.
Adkins works as a $10.48-an-hour cook's helper. She is 61 and didn't expect to be raising children again.
Before Kursti and Walkier moved in with her, they rarely stayed in one place long. Sometimes they stayed with their mom, sometimes with a grandma. At times the whole family bunked with friends or other relatives or piled into a motel room.
Kursti reels off 12 schools in the Valley, Anchorage and Michigan that she's attended. She's behind, especially in math. Her grandmother hopes to help her catch up through private tutoring.
The worst thing happening right now is the grown-ups have taken her sister away.
The state sent Mary Jaine more than 3,300 miles away to live with a different grandmother in Maryland.
No one with the state ever asked Kursti where she thought Mary Jaine should live. At a meeting in December, she had a four-page speech all ready to go.
"I wanted to say that I don't want to raise Mary Jaine, but I want to have her in my life. I want to have Mary Jaine with me."
Kursti is a compact fireball of a girl. She's savvy and candid, sweet at some moments, angry at others.
Her mother was 17 when she was born. Amy Pennick is 29 now. She works as a hair stylist and also has been a waitress and a bartender. She admits she used to be a meth addict.
"I've done, made a bunch of stupid decisions when it's come to my children's lives," Amy said. "But I don't feel like I've ever put my children in serious danger."
In the Anchorage apartment where she lives with her current boyfriend, pictures of her children and the newspaper horoscope that ran on her newest baby's birthday are tacked up on the wall. His sonogram is on the wall, too. Her collection of orca figurines and pictures dominates the living room.
She said she is still recovering from her addiction and just getting her life in order. She doesn't talk about trying to get her kids back, though she said she stopped doing meth more than a year ago.
"I'm going to pull for Mary Jaine to be back up here with her sister," Amy said. "I know that I'm not in any place to take care of them. But I don't want to lose them either."
"Think about us," Kursti said. "She's our sister. We are closer than our dad and our mom combined."
In Grandma Carol's home, life for Kursti and her brother has settled down to something like normal. Adkins cooks kid favorites like pork chops, macaroni and spaghetti. Bedtime on school nights is 9 p.m. Kursti wears braces. Her favorite class is choir. She takes figure skating lessons. Walkier plays hockey and basketball.
As everyone remembers it, things also were pretty good when Kursti's dad, David Adkins, was alive. As a high school sophomore in Glennallen, he once scored 11 touchdowns in four games. He studied a few years at the University of Alaska Anchorage. He did seasonal work for the state Department of Transportation. David and Amy were building a house when he died in 2001.
"LITTLE MOMMY"
About a year after David's death, the children's mother, then Amy Dresnek, started seeing a man she eventually married, Spencer Pennick, now 25.
It was a rough relationship. Kursti said she saw him hit and choke her mother.
Spencer has been in and out of jail over the last few years, with convictions for theft, bad checks, possession of methamphetamine, misdemeanor assault and twice for violating a domestic violence protective order obtained by Amy.
A few years ago, they all moved to Michigan, where Amy had lived before. Amy had another baby. "That's Mary Jaine," Kursti said.
But the better life they were searching for eluded them. The family eventually regrouped back in Alaska.
"We said we were going to start over new. But things just got worse," Kursti said.
They crowded into a two-bedroom apartment off Knik-Goose Bay Road. Kursti fed Mary Jaine ready-made toddler meals and changed her diaper "every single hour," she said. "That kid would not stop pooping!"
She was 9, 10 years old.
"Oh, Kursti was her little mommy. Kursti did everything," Amy Pennick said.
Why?
"Cuz I was high," Amy said. And sometimes, when Amy was in bad shape, Kursti took care of her, too, she said.
Kursti made sure Walkier got to school. "I couldn't because I had Mary Jaine," she said. She missed a lot of days.
Kursti worried about leaving her baby sister on weekends when she and Walkier went to Grandma Carol's. "I didn't want her seeing the violence, so I taught her to do one thing," Kursti said. "I taught her to lock the door, turn the stereo on ... sit on my bed and play with my toys until I would come back."
Amy and Spencer Pennick eventually split up. Efforts to reach Spencer were unsuccessful.
Amy's new boyfriend was Nicolas Thomas, 22, who does landscaping in the summer, snow shoveling in the winter and often goes by "Nicc."
Kursti remembers her 11th birthday on July 9, 2005, when her mother and Nicc showed up hours late for a planned family day at Lake Louise. The only good part, Kursti said, was the birthday cake, which she made herself, her name spelled out in M&Ms.
In August 2005, after years of watching Kursti living in chaos, Adkins took her granddaughter into her home along with Walkier, even though he's not her biological grandson. Walkier says he doesn't know his own father or his father's family.
The baby, Mary Jaine, stayed with Amy and Nicc.
DISTURBING INJURIES
In early November 2005, a report came in to the state Office of Children's Services. It wasn't the first time the state had heard about the family. This time, something horrible had happened to Mary Jaine. Just thinking about it upsets Kursti.
The toddler, not yet 2, ended up at Alaska Regional Hospital with a broken leg, a burn on her foot, a black eye and a dent in her head.
Anchorage police are investigating the matter.
"All the injuries are suspicious for child abuse," said Detective Brett Sarber.
Amy and Nicc said they don't know how the little girl was hurt but say they didn't do it. Maybe it happened as she climbed out of her playpen. Or maybe their pit bull hurt her. The dog gave Mary Jaine the black eye when he suddenly jumped up and "clocked her," Amy said.
No one has been charged.
Mary Jaine ended up in a foster home.
It wasn't until July 2006 -- and a lot of pushing by Adkins -- that the state took legal custody of Kursti and Walkier, removing them from their mother's reach, the grandmother said.
As far as Kursti, Walkier and Adkins could tell, Mary Jaine thrived in the home of novice foster parents Shannon and Todd Woodruff. Kursti and Walkier were invited for overnight visits, parties, any big family event. Kursti and Mary Jaine were remarkably close, Shannon Woodruff said.
"At first when Kursti would come over she would be really clingy with her and she would go to Kursti for all of her needs," Woodruff said. After a while, she said, Mary Jaine began to see Kursti as a sister, not a mother, "the way it should be."
By last fall, the Woodruffs had Mary Jaine and two younger foster children including Amy and Nicc's new baby, a boy.
The Woodruffs had never cared for a newborn before. The state didn't provide them any special training. When they took the 8-week-old to the doctor for a cough, the doctor found he had lost a pound and put him in the hospital.
OCS took all the children away from them. Investigators found that the bottles they fed the baby with had slow-flowing nipples. The foster parents should have noticed the baby was losing weight, OCS said. (They've since taken extra training and can still serve as foster parents. )
From Kursti's view, Mary Jaine just disappeared. Kursti said no one from the state would tell her anything.
On Dec. 1, Kursti learned from her mother that the state was going to ship Mary Jaine to Maryland to live with her paternal grandmother.
Kursti was devastated. She left message after message with her caseworker but said she never got a call back. Then-state Sen. Gretchen Guess tried to help just before she left office.
"Most of us who have siblings know that sometimes at the end of the day that's all you have," Guess said.
Guess was appalled that Kursti couldn't get anyone to listen to her. She shot off e-mails to OCS officials.
Adkins volunteered to take Mary Jaine, who also is not her biological grandchild, so the three children could be together.
On Dec. 6, there was a big meeting involving state workers, lawyers and others. Both grandmothers participated by phone. Kursti and her grandma thought the meeting was to discuss what should happen to Mary Jaine. Kursti stayed home from school so she could say her piece by telephone from Wasilla.
She never got to. Nobody asked her opinion.
"This is a cut-and-dried deal. Why are we even having this meeting?" Adkins remembers asking.
Children's views are usually well known by the time a meeting happens, said Travis Erickson, children's services manager for OCS in Anchorage. But the children might not be part of the discussion -- children should be shielded so they don't feel the burden of difficult decisions, he said.
Within the next day or two, just before her birthday, Mary Jaine flew with a state worker to Maryland. Kursti was furious.
"She's only 2 and doesn't need to go through this," Kursti said.
This isn't what legislators had in mind when they changed state law in 2005 to make it easier for brothers and sisters to stay together, even half siblings, Guess said. State Rep. John Coghill, R-North Pole, said he's heard about Kursti and is considering legislation to clarify that siblings should be together whenever possible.
"SHE'S GOING TO FORGET"
OCS officials won't talk specifically about how this fractured family came to be torn even further part.
Asked about Kursti and Mary Jaine, deputy commissioner Tammy Sandoval said in a written statement: "OCS staff use their training and experience; they study the homes of relatives and friends; and they organize meetings where everyone involved in the child's life is invited to share suggestions. But in the end, there is not always a clear-cut choice, it is often a judgment call. Our priority is always the child."
Under the 2005 changes to state law, adult family members should be first on the list to have children placed with them. But situations involving half siblings are especially complicated, Erickson said.
"If the kids are safe at the end of the day, and they are placed with relatives, I would say we've done a pretty good job," Erickson said.
Bonnie Taylor, Mary Jaine's grandmother in Maryland, the one who now has her, wouldn't talk about how the little girl is doing.
Walkier said he is "sad and a little mad" about his sister going away.
The sisters have talked on the phone 18 or so times, but never for long. Kursti is logging it all. Four minutes on Christmas Day. Another time for maybe 10 minutes, the longest so far. Her sister sang her a little song.
Kursti got a computer for Christmas and hopes to get a webcam so she can see Mary Jaine. The state is flying Kursti and Walkier back East to visit over spring break.
None of that is the same as growing up together.
"I wanted to teach her how to ride a bike cuz I taught Walkier how to ride a bike. I wanted to teach her to hang out, learn to be cool, like me," Kursti said. "I just wanted to have her around and teach her the basic things."
"I wanted to hug her -- a ton -- and if she's in Maryland how I am supposed to hug her?"
It seems clear to Kursti that she's lost her sister.
"Most likely she's going to forget about me and everybody that is really important to her."
Daily News reporter Lisa Demer can be reached at ldemer@adn.com and 257-4390.
2,061 ALASKA CHILDREN IN FOSTER CARE
Children should be kept with their brothers and sisters, if at all possible, according to federal standards. A spokeswoman for the state Office of Children's Services says they don't track how often siblings are separated.
A review of 23 Alaska foster care cases in 2002 by the federal government found that 20 of those cases involved children with siblings. In 12 cases, the child was in foster care with at least one sibling but in eight cases, the child was separated from all brothers and sisters. Usually that was because one or more of the children needed special treatment and the feds considered the separation justified. In two cases, they found no good reason for the separation. Overall, the feds determined Alaska workers did the right thing in 90 percent of the cases.
During the 12 months that ended Sept. 30, nearly 7 percent of Alaska children in foster care were placed out of state.
