San Diego, California (CNN) -- A boyhood wish finally came
true. But Maurice Griffin had to wait until he was a man for it to happen.
At age 32, the California man was adopted Friday.
"It was the best day in my life," Griffin said
after the proceeding in San Diego Juvenile Court. "I fought for 10 years
and finally the day came."
Adopting the burly, muscular, mohawk-sporting man is Lisa
Godbold, his one-time foster mother.
"I was just overwhelmed with emotion," Godbold
added.
With a few pen strokes by Griffin, Godbold and Judge Richard
Monroy, the adoption became official.
"This is going to be quite quick," the judge told
mom and son, all seated at a table. "If you blink, you miss it."
Then son hugged mom. Mom cried.
"Congratulations to you both," the judge declared.
Then a deputy took a photograph of three of them, a
tradition that the judge noted is always done with small children and their
adoptive parents.
Good time
The story dates to the early 1980s, when Godbold and her
husband saw Griffin at an orphanage near their Sacramento home.
The smiling child seemed to fit perfectly with their family:
Godbold is white. Her late previous husband was black, and the couple had two
children who were, like Griffin, biracial.
The couple took Griffin in as a foster child. He quickly
bonded with their sons, Gideon and Spencer.
"We were best friends," Griffin said. "We'd
run around, we did mischievous things and fun things. It was a good time."
He lived with the family as a foster child for four years,
until he was 13. Then, just two months shy of being adopted by them, it all
fell apart.
Griffin said wanted to be treated like a "real"
son: He wanted to be disciplined like the couple's other sons. He wanted to be
spanked, he said.
So he innocently told a social worker that was what was
going to happen.
The social worker then told her superiors, and soon Griffin
was about to be removed from the household, he said.
Family ripped apart
One day, foster care officials took Griffin away, saying he
could not live with Godbold's family anymore.
"You can't spank foster children. Maurice very much
wanted that," Godbold said. "We wanted him to feel like the rest of
our kids. And there was a difference of opinion with some of the (child
welfare) supervisors."
Godbold said she fought to keep Griffin and was told she
could lose her biological children, too.
CNN contacted the state agency responsible for the case, but
its officials would not comment because it's still considered a juvenile
matter.
So Godbold had to let go. And as time moved on, Griffin
says, he lost touch with what he felt was his only family.
"It was just an emptiness," he said. "I
couldn't talk to anybody about it because nobody was there. I couldn't call
somebody; there was just a void in me."
Griffin said that he acted out every chance he got in hopes
the state would reunite him with the people he considered to be family.
He bounced from one foster home to another, never finding
what he lost.
"I didn't let anybody get close to me again,"
Griffin said, holding back tears. "I hurt a lot of people. It was a rough
road."
Searching for each other
Despite several obstacles, Griffin and Godbold never stopped
searching for one another.
Godbold's husband died in 1998. She remarried and changed
her last name, and moved.
But six years ago, Godbold found Griffin on social media.
They communicated online and then one day she called him.
"She said, 'hey baby,' and I said I got to call you
back," Griffin said, trying to explain how overwhelmed he was by the
reunion.
As she entered the courtroom Friday, Godbold harbored fear
that a surprise would halt the proceeding.
"I was actually really nervous before walking in, even
though signing on the line was a formality," Godbold said. "I thought
something might happen to keep it from becoming official today."
Griffin is an example of triumph in foster care.
"I'm a living example of it, that I have been through
it," Griffin said. "I just never stopped. It will all work out."
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