Anastasia Pedersen never had much stability in her home life.
Not with biological parents who were drug users and alcoholics.
Not with stays in 14 foster homes between the ages of 9-13.
And certainly not in an abusive household, one she first thought was heaven but ended up the opposite.
The only permanency was her younger sister, Sierra. The two were never separated as they bounced from home to home in the foster care system.
Their journey started in St. Augustine and took them to New Mexico, Kansas and South Carolina. That was before a relative was able to finally provide a safe, stable home — a setting many children have but often take for granted.
School, Anastasia said, was hard but “the only thing I could control.”
When the life around her stabilized, she excelled. Her senior year at Fletcher High School included being part of an award-winning mock trial team and graduating with a weighted 4.3 GPA.
Law school is in her future, but that’s down the road. For now, she’s a smiling, confident 19-year old freshman at the University of North Florida whose perseverance has earned her the “Youth Advocate of the Year” award from Florida’s Children First.
Along the way there was heartbreak, anger and fear.
But, ultimately, she believes it all was meant to work out this way.
“Everything happens for a reason,” she said.
Early trouble
The lifestyle growing up with her biological parents in St. Augustine wasn’t ideal.
There was no white picket fence. No home life that portrayed the ideal slice of Americana.
Instead, it was having two parents who were alcoholics. A mother who used drugs, a father who beat his wife.
One night when she was 9, the scenario became a little more extreme. She was the one who called the police. Her mother was taken in under the Baker Act. Her father went to jail.
She and Sierra went to her aunt’s house, but that lasted all of two weeks. The relative received threatening calls from the girls’ father from jail. The aunt couldn’t handle the situation, so the girls went to live with another aunt. More calls followed with the same result.
That’s when the state of Florida came into the picture. Another move, this time to an emergency home for two weeks.
Their uncle, Kris Pedersen, intervened and wanted to take them in. But with a new daughter, his wife’s job and the housing situation, the timing just wasn’t right, Anastasia said.
Their case was extended and the girls bounced from home to home. She had contact with them in the beginning but that faded over time. Finally, three years in their parental rights were terminated.
Hope came with their first pre-adoptive family. But, it didn’t turn out the way she expected.
Last-minute heartbreak
After bouncing from home to home, the girls were taken in by a family with whom they lived for about a year and a half.
“I was sure it was it,” Anastasia said.
She describes the father, mother and their daughter as a “very, very Christian family” who opened her up to God and religion. The girls called them Mom and Dad. Everything was on track for a storybook ending — until the last chapter.
The day the family went to the courts to adopt the girls, something happened. The mother backed out.
“I never saw it coming,” Anastasia said.
The only explanation the mother gave her was that “God told her she was not supposed to adopt us.”
Immediately, it was time to again pack up and leave. In situations like that, she said, there is no time for goodbyes.
It was time to be placed back into the system to try and find a permanent home.
Familiar face, new place
Anastasia calls the events at the end of her first pre-adoptive family one of the most traumatic experiences of her life.
She admits feeling resentment, feeling heartbroken. Not just toward the mother.
“If this supposed God told her not to adopt me and put me through this pain with all these families, there’s no way he can be real,” she said. “It was definitely a rough time.”
That was the beginning of her eighth-grade year.
She and her sister were then placed into the care of a familiar face: Her history teacher from the sixth-grade.
The teacher had known about the situation and, although she wasn’t licensed, wanted to adopt the girls.
They stayed with her, her husband and their son for about six months. Then the mother became pregnant and that was it. A familiar situation, it was time to move on.
Anastasia said that one wasn’t too hard to leave — they weren’t there long enough and she doesn’t have many memories of the stay.
When she was a freshman in high school, the big break happened. Or at least it appeared that way.
Fall from ‘heaven’
The first time she and her sister actually were adopted, it was to another family in St. Johns County.
A “very wealthy” family with the cookie-cutter home and lifestyle.
“It was the biggest house I had ever seen in my life,” she said.
The father was in the military. The mother was at home and a son already was in college.
During the requisite 90 days until the adoption could be finalized, “I thought I was in heaven,” she said.
Her uncle always stayed in contact with the families and the girls, taking them for a weekend here and there and maintaining a relationship. When he talked to the adopting father, he was told to provide some space — 10 months or so.
He recalls the “eerie feeling” he had when the family wanted to sever all ties with him once the proceedings were finalized.
Within their new home, the heavenly façade crumbled.
Parental abuse came in several forms.
The father was deployed to Afghanistan but ended up coming back for a two-week stint, only to pack the girls up in the middle of the night to send to relatives in New Mexico.
When the allegations of abuse started, Kris was contacted.
The girls were supposed to come back to St. Johns County, but they never made it. Kris hired a private investigator.
Five months or so later, he remembers receiving a Facebook message from an account with a name of someone he didn’t know.
It was Anastasia.
Under an alias, she was reaching out to him from Kansas. The girls had been sent there to live with their adoptive grandmother.
Kris said he befriended a schoolmate of Anastasia’s. She’d be the conduit for communication and gifts.
“I tried to stay in touch,” Kris said. “Then out of the blue, they were gone.”
This time it was South Carolina with a friend of the adoptive family.
That only lasted a few weeks, though. Once they were told the stories of abuse, Kris was contacted and picked the girls up.
Finally home
The girls were back in Florida, living in Neptune Beach with Kris’ family. But technically, they were still adopted.
Kris and his family were in a much different place now. He had two girls of his own. But, it was time to bring home his nieces and adopt them.
He remembers the meeting, a five-hour session at a Starbucks on the Southside.
He would take the girls and each side would go their own way.
Stability had finally arrived.
Anastasia spent her final year of high school at Fletcher, focusing on school and the mock trial team.
Attorney Jay Howell for more than 20 years worked with the mock trial program and its teacher, Ed Lange, to help the teenagers prepare for the annual competition. For about a decade, Howell also has worked with Florida’s Children First, an organization that represents children and youth in Florida’s child-serving systems.
Preparation for the competition is where he first met Anastasia.
“None of us knew her history,” he said.
It was only after the mock-trial season had ended, possibly May, when Howell said media reports highlighting extraordinary area seniors offered a glimpse at her life.
“I’m sitting there hours and hours with her and not having any clue,” Howell said.
When he sat down with her about his work with the organization, she said she wanted to become involved, to advocate for children in the system she was a part of for so long.
Florida Youth SHINE was the perfect opportunity. The statewide program empowers current and former foster children to advocate for those in the system.
It was Howell who nominated Anastasia for the “Youth Advocate of the Year” award she’ll receive Thursday evening during Florida’s Children First fundraiser and awards event. She’ll be honored “for her perseverance to succeed in spite of her inauspicious circumstances that has resulted in a very bright future.”
That future is one that will mean changing the foster care system for the better, hopefully as a family law attorney, she said.
At 19, she’s a freshman living on campus at UNF. She’s independent for the first time, but enjoying the responsibilities and freedom that come with entering adulthood.
She first wanted to go to the University of Florida. That didn’t happen as she had hoped, but it’s worked out quite well.
She’s balancing the work life with school. She loves the campus.
It also makes it easier to see family and go home on the weekends.
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