Foster Kids, Personal Mentors Honored at Event

For Tanya Cooper, growing up in the foster care system meant changing residencies and abuse. While she could have ended up as a statistic pointing to hardships, she overcame her difficulties thanks to support from people who cared.

At a Wednesday event at the Mount Kisco Public Library, Cooper raised awareness of being a foster kid, gave recognition to those who helped her growing up and arranged for a new scholarship fund to help teens who are "aging out" of the foster system and heading to college.

For Cooper, who spoke emotionally about his background, her childhood and teen years did not come easy, as she grew up without a permanent household.

At just 5, she and her three siblings were taken away from their mother in Brooklyn, who was sick and had a heroin addiction; she passed away when Cooper was 17. They were left alone for periods of time and with no food. However, being pulled apart as a family created its own problems for Cooper, as she passed through group homes and foster care, hardship that included sexual abuse. Since then she was tried to reconcile with her sister, whom he declined to name, and is trying to locate her other brother, Mark. Growing up, she was still with her other brother, Robert, whose life was cut short in 2009 when he died of heart disease at 41.

Even being pulled away by her mother, in a process intended to help children, felt alienating to a child who did not know the circumstances.

"They treat you like you're a rare animal meant for the zoo," Cooper said in reading from her book, which lookde at the matter from a child's perspective.

Yet, despite getting a torrent of hardships and obstacles in her way, Cooper persevered, graduating from Fox Lane High School - she lived then, and lives now in Bedford Hills - and then New York University. She also did a stint as a model in Paris, and got involved in substance abuse counseling for teens. She now has a family of her own with two daughters, Arielle and Tatiana.

Recently, Cooper has taken on a new, informal career as a motivational speaker, and is even self publishing a book about her experiences, titled Surviving Foster Care & Making it Work for You, which she reads parts of at the event.

This interest, combined with Robert's death, spurred her to action to speak out about foster care issues.

In organizing Wednesday's event, in recognition of National Foster Kids Month, Cooper got together with Megan Castellano of the Mental Health Association in Putnam. Castellano, who is originally from Mount Kisco and was a high school friend of Robert Cooper, got together with Tanya Cooper after discovering a 2010 profile of her in The Journal News. She spoke emotionally about the loss of Robert Cooper and passionately spoke about about the issues of foster kids, noting that mental health is tied in as an issue. She also noted that Robert Cooper got her interested in her career based on how he felt positively of a social worker who helped him.

It was Robert Cooper's memory that helped spur the creation of the event. A $250 scholarship was presented in his honor. The first winner this year was Ramusa Alejandro, who is a Fox Lane student and lived in a Bedford group home. For college, he will be heading to St. John's University.

“While I was too young then to understand what was happening, I was not going to end up just another statistic," Alejandro wrote in an essay that was read aloud. In accepting the scholarship, he said that “a smile does go a long way," and noted how seeing smiles would cheer him up.

Three honorable receipients of extra amount of $100 were also honored: Amanda Ocasio, Reggie Silva and Crystal Abad.

In her acceptance, Ocasio, who is a student at the Dr. Kenneth B. Clark Academy in Dobbs Ferry and will go to the Fashion Institute of Technology next fall, thanked St. Christopher's, which works with Clark, for its support. Silva, who also attends Clark, will attend LaGuardia Community College and study accounting.

In recognition of adults who helped Cooper, two Citizen of Change Awards were presented. They went to Mary Ellen McKee, who was a physical education teacher at Fox Lane when Cooper was a student there, and Gamilah Lamumba Shabazz, a counselor who supported her when she was in a group home as a teen.

“She did everything, but she just had so much bottled up inside and didn’t know how to release it," said Shabazz. "Once she was able to vent everything she just flowered.”

McKee also received recognition from Mayor J. Michael Cindrich, who issued a local proclaimation for May 20 to be a day in her honor. Locally, her ties to Mount Kisco include being a congregant of St. Mark's Episcopal Church, and having served on the boards of Mount Kisco Child Care Center and the Boys & Girls Club. This proclaimation was made along with a general one for foster care, with is May 19.

Cindrich recounted his own family history with helping parentless children, noting that he had a great-grandfather who lived in Brooklyn a century ago who adopted two children, in addition to his six biological children. They went on to become New York City police officers, he said, while the biological children turned to careers that included clergy and teaching.

Ultimately, the occasion was one to bring people together and to spread awareness of foster kids, as well as to encourage those aging out of the system to keep grow into productive adults.

Editor's Note: Some references to Tanya Cooper's brother, Robert, had him identified as "Richard Cooper," in addition to the correct references. The story has been updated and fixed.