Southland Family Opens Hearts, Home to 4 Orphaned Mexican Sisters : Earthquake Victims’ Adoption Fulfills Dying Father’s Wish

In November of 1985, two months after the Mexico City earthquake, Constance Towers Gavin, tipped off by a social worker, visited Jorge Torres Mendoza at the family’s one-room apartment at the end of a narrow, rubble-strewn alley.

He begged her--would she use her influence as the American ambassador’s wife to help his four young daughters? Their mother had been killed in the quake and soon he would lose his battle with leukemia.

A Father’s Wish

“He took my hand,” she said, “and I’ll never forget his penetrating look. There were tears in his eyes and he said, ‘I am going to die, too.’ He said his one wish was that his daughters never be separated and, with luck, would go to a family in the United States. He felt this was the land of promise, where they would have the best opportunities.”

Early this month, the Torres Mendoza girls--Claudia, 13, Sandra, 10, Yvonne, 7, and Jennifer, 3--arrived at LAX on a flight from Mexico City with Towers and their new “mama” and “papa,” Chris and Sharon Bisgaard of La Canada Flintridge.

As they passed through customs, Towers turned to Chris and Sharon Bisgaard and said, “You did it. I know he’s up there, smiling down. . . .”

Then the new family Bisgaard piled into a newly purchased van and headed home, with a stop at the downtown law offices of Lewis, D’Amato, Brisbois & Bisgaard, where secretaries had strung pink balloons and streamers. On Bisgaard’s desk they’d placed a basket of “It’s a Girl” lollipops.

At home, in a 70-year-old, two-story white house with a pillared veranda, a wide sweep of lawn, a swimming pool and guest house, Christopher Bisgaard, 14, and Lara Bisgaard, 13, awaited their new sisters.

The morning of March 13, 1986, Chris Bisgaard recalled, he read a Times story about Project Connie, the grass-roots effort by Towers, wife of then-Ambassador John Gavin, to bring youngsters grievously injured in the quake that killed 7,000 people to the United States for treatment and to find adoptive homes for some of the orphaned.

Towers had related the double tragedy of the Torres Mendoza family, and her promise to Jorge Torres Mendoza, a 35-year-old driver for a metal factory, who had died the month before. She vowed to “do everything I could to be sure his dream comes true.”

Bisgaard read the story and thought, “Interesting.” He laughed and said, “I did not think to myself, ‘Let’s adopt these kids.’ ”

Then his telephone had rung; it was his wife. She, too, had read the article. And, she said, “The bells kind of went off.” Well, he said, “There’s no harm in writing. . . . I was doing it as a purely informational matter, of course.”

A query letter was sent and, in response, came a telephone call from Towers, asking to meet with them. Although other families in other parts of the country had expressed interest in the girls, none had had the right combination of means and motivation. Now, Towers knew, it was her prayers that had been answered--”The Bisgaards were everything, if not more, that I had dreamed of finding.”

Year’s Worth of Obstacles

It was a match made in heaven, but also one that was to be beset by obstacles, delays and frustrations that would stretch over a year. For starters, the Bisgaards received a dismaying form letter from Project Connie thanking them for their interest, regretting that the girls were no longer available. It was, Towers later explained, a clerical error.

There would be forms to fill out to reassure Mexican government officials, who are generally reluctant to have children adopted out of the country, that the Bisgaards had no penal records, had sufficient income, good morals--and a realistic rather than romantic view of this adoption.

“Have you thought of the prejudice angle?” asked an independent social worker who made two home studies. She pointed out to Sharon, a blue-eyed blonde, that strangers seeing her with these girls “might think you were married to a Mexican man.”

“If I thought about that,” Sharon Bisgaard replied, “I wouldn’t be getting these children.”

When told that the Bisgaards planned to adopt four girls 13 and younger, friends, business associates and neighbors made the appropriate noises--”Isn’t that wonderful!” Behind her back, Sharon is convinced, they were saying, “This woman is obviously demented.”

“There’s no logical way to explain,” she said. “If you make one of those lists, with pros and cons, it doesn’t balance out. But there are things you can’t put down on paper.”

True, their natural children would soon be leaving the nest, and they would have the freedom to travel. After both of the children finished high school, Sharon had planned to get her master’s in social work and resume her career. She has a degree from Brigham Young University and, as a Santa Monica policewoman, helped put her husband through UCLA law school.

But she said, “This is every bit as important, and probably more so, than anything I would do.”

As she talked, Yvonne appeared in the living room, with its gleaming crystal, Chinese porcelain and Oriental rugs, and landed with a thump. “Yvonne crashes into things,” Sharon explained with a laugh.

Three-year-old Jennifer, who has been outside playing, discovered the joys of a doorbell. “No mas, “ Sharon admonished her calmly in her best school Spanish.

Sharon Walker and Chris Bisgaard, both 39, grew up in Holtville in the Imperial Valley and were high school sweethearts who married in 1969. Devout Mormons, they wanted a large family, but she had difficulty becoming pregnant and after “spending thousands (of dollars) on fertility doctors,” she said, they consoled themselves to being a family of four.

Lara from time to time had urged her parents to look into adoption, but it was an alternative that her father said he simply found “inconceivable.”

The years passed, his law practice prospered, they enjoyed life’s material rewards--the big house, expensive automobiles, vacations at fine hotels and private schools for Lara and Christopher.

But when they read about the Mexican girls who had been orphaned, something clicked. Both knew this was what they had been looking for, an opportunity to say thank you. “There aren’t many people who could do this,” he said. “We’ve been blessed materially, and it’s not because I’m a better person, or smarter.”

“We are an extremely religious family,” she said, “and we feel we have been extremely blessed--monetarily, with health, everything. This was an opportunity to do something for people who needed it.”

Praises From Friends

Chris Bisgaard said, “People are continually saying, ‘You’re so wonderful.’ But in some ways, I feel kind of selfish. I know the joys are going to outweigh the heartaches.” He hopes Lara and Christopher are thinking, “This is not too bad of Mom and Dad” and will themselves want to help others someday.

When the girls came to them they had one pair of shoes each and the clothes on their backs. They had never bathed in a real tub (the family’s apartment had no running water)--”Now, four or five a day is not enough,” Sharon said.

And their penchant for bathing has necessitated the installation of an additional water heater.

The girls had never been to a movie, never had dolls. Swimsuits purchased during a family weekend in San Diego were a novelty to the girls, who had to be persuaded that it was all right to wear them without their camisoles. Wrapping paper from gifts is carefully smoothed and folded and recycled as drawer liner.

Where in Mexico all four had slept in a double bed with their parents, Jennifer, Claudia and Sandra now share a large bedroom, pink and flowery, that once was Lara’s. She moved into the guest room and an ironing room has been converted into a cozy blue-and-white bedroom for Yvonne. Pretty dresses hang in their closets.

The girls have never asked questions about their newfound opulence but, Sharon Bisgaard said, laughing, “They must think they’ve gone to the King and Queen of England.”

They have her husband wrapped around their little fingers, she said--”Call him papacita and they can have anything.

“They’re extremely affectionate, very loving, very appreciative. It’s so delightful that there are innocent, sweet little people left in the world who are thrilled with anything you give them.”

“I suspect they’re going to get spoiled,” he said. “And they’re bound to lose some things, (such as) the closeness they’ve had to maintain to get through these times.”

But the Bisgaards are a close-knit family and one with high expectations for their children--all of them. That does not mean everyone has to be a Rhodes scholar, but it means fulfilling one’s potential and in this country, he said, “The girls will have options they never would have had down there.”

Sharon and Chris are adamant that the girls retain their ties to their culture, and to the relatives in Mexico who, economically unable to take them in, relinquished them so they might have a chance. “I don’t want them to close that door on their lives,” she said.

Claudia, Sandra, Yvonne and Jennifer have been through great trauma; now, they are strangers in a strange land. Their adoptive parents know there are going to be bumps along the road.

Said Chris Bisgaard, “We didn’t go into this Pollyanna-ish, thinking it was going to be ‘Sound of Music’ and we were going to go off into the sunlight together singing. They have to have come with some heavy emotional baggage.

“I just have this peace of mind that this was meant to be. They’re my children, just as Christopher and Lara are my children. I don’t have any reservations about that. I love my kids so much. Now I’ve got 15 more years with kids at home.”

After months of frustrating delays, Chris and Sharon Bisgaard, accompanied by Towers, boarded a plane March 29 for Mexico City, where they would sign the final adoption papers. For a year, the girls had been boarders at a convent school, their tuition paid by Project Connie so they would not be split up and placed in orphanages.

At the Mexico City airport, there was a tearful reunion with the girls, whom they had seen just once, in December, long after they had made the commitment to adopt. The process had taken so long, Sharon said, that “Yvonne had given up,” believing they were not coming for them after all.

The first news was bad: The convent doctor had diagnosed Jennifer as having typhoid fever. But a pediatrician summoned by the Bisgaards to their El Presidente Hotel suite set their minds at rest--it was only tonsillitis.

With the girls in tow, and Gavin opening the doors to officialdom, the Bisgaards were to spend the next three days taking care of the legalities. There were passports, visas and medical exams. And long lines. As they waited for immigration documents at the U.S. Embassy, bells and whistles started going off. They had landed in the middle of an evacuation drill, necessitated by a recent car bomb scare.

At the Mexican government social service agency, where they met two attorneys who were to be the liaison between the Bisgaards and the family law judge who would approve the final adoption, an official waited with poised pen to be told the girls’ middle names. Neither Jennifer nor Claudia had one, so they instantly became Jennifer Louise (for Sharon’s mother and sister) and Claudia Lynne (Sharon’s middle name).

Finally, it was official. On their new birth certificates, the Torres Mendoza girls became the Bisgaard-Walker girls, in keeping with the Mexican custom of adding the mother’s maiden name. In La Canada Flintridge, they’ll be just plain Bisgaards.

Just for insurance, a California adoption is planned. The girls, who entered the country on green cards, will also become naturalized citizens, which is only a formality.

The most emotional moments in the three days were the final signing--Chris said he will “remember forever” reading the girls’ names with Bisgaard-- the visit to the girls’ old neighborhood, where their quake-damaged apartment stands boarded and condemned, and to the elderly grandmother’s place, to say goodby.

The girls’ paternal grandmother, Angelita, has one room in a temporary corrugated-tin structure erected by the government to house those who lost their homes in the earthquake. There, the two families met for the first time.

“It was a little bit awkward initially,” Chris Bisgaard said, “walking in and saying, ‘We’re now taking your grandchildren away forever.’ ” They explained to the grandmother, the legal guardian, that they loved the girls, and would always take care of them.

“She was extremely relieved,” Sharon said, “to see that they liked us and we loved them. I think she was happy for them.”

Check and a Letter

When they learned that she has no income, and is being aided by another son, Alfonso, a baker who supports a family on $124 a month, they decided to help. Each month, they plan to send a check for $27 to cover her housing. And each check will be accompanied by a letter from her granddaughters.

Chris Bisgaard will never forget Yvonne at the grandmother’s house, picking up a photograph of her own father, then a photograph of Bisgaard, and saying matter-of-factly, “My new papa and my dead papa.”

“It just blew me away emotionally,” he said.

After visiting the neighborhood, Sharon said, “Neither of us slept all night.” They could not erase from their minds the haunting eyes of the dozens of other youngsters who followed the Norte Americanos and their four girls. “They knew something wonderful was happening to these children,” she said.

Finally, there was a visit to the convent school. Admittedly, the Bisgaards were a bit nervous. They knew the sisters were “not thrilled to death” at having the girls adopted outside the Roman Catholic faith. They sent them off with their pajamas, their toothbrushes--and their rosaries.

Although the Bisgaards are Mormon, the girls will make their own decisions about religion. “They no longer have their country,” Sharon said, “and they no longer have their family. They no longer have their culture. To take away their religion, too, that would be too much.”

The nuns had prepared for the girls two scrapbooks, one of their few tangible links to their past. There are family snapshots and mementoes, prayers and, carefully pasted in, 91 pesos (about 10 cents), all the money the father had left.

Last Monday, the girls started a crash course in English at Berlitz to prepare them for public school in September. Their English, learned in school, is pretty much limited to “Good morning, miss,” “Good afternoon, miss,” “Thank you, miss” and “Sit down, please.”

Because they missed school in Mexico while staying home to take care of their father after their mother was killed, they may have to enter a year beneath their age level. But the early assessment from Berlitz was that all four are very intelligent. Jennifer has picked up English quickly and already translates for her oldest sister. She also tells all, leading the others to dub her policia.

Sharon has been limping along in Spanish but, she said, “These little girls are starting to correct my grammar.” When one of the girls is naughty, their brother Christopher summons up his best Spanish I and chastises her, “Nina!”

As the Bisgaards’ Spanish improves, and the girls learn English, Sharon hopes some of the emotional issues will surface and be aired. For now, she said, just “getting through the day” understanding one another is challenge enough.

Finding a Niche

It’s a bit chaotic, she said, somewhat like “bringing home four babies all at the same time. Everybody’s trying to make a little niche for themselves.”

Claudia, who spends hours playing a popular Mexican tape on her new pink Walkman, watches Lara and Christopher closely, eager to learn more about American teen-agers and their likes and dislikes. Sandra is the most serious, slow to smile, introspective. It was she who took care of her grandmother in the weeks following her father’s death. Although Yvonne is a sweet, happy-appearing child, Sharon believes “she probably feels the loss the most,” as she was at such a vulnerable age.

Sharon will encourage them to talk about their past, about the loss of their parents, about the conflicts and confusion they feel between their two worlds. Already, she said, Claudia has begun opening up, has described going with her father to find the body of her mother, Arcelia, 31, a cleaning woman who died in the collapse of the telephone company building.

She has talked about what she saw at the scene during the 30 days before the rubble yielded her mother’s remains, about other bodies, rats gnawing at corpses, a victim with a spike through the head.

‘The Big Pout’

There have been moments, as in any family. Jennifer, who had never slept alone, at first woke up screaming for Madre Cecelia, one of the nuns. All of the girls are very quick to cry, Sharon said, and they tended to clam up when upset. That stopped the night of “the big pout,” when the Bisgaards, armed with a Spanish-English dictionary, gathered all four together and spelled out parameters and punishments.

There will be inevitable adjustments. “I’m not used to having six children,” she said, “and they’re not used to having a mother and father.” At first awkwardly, now comfortably, they call her “Mama.”

The social worker who conducted the pre-adoption home study warned the Bisgaards that there would be hurdles--the prejudice issue, the inevitable resentment on the part of their older children.

Lara and Christopher, both of whom were brought into the decision, were asked by their parents to put themselves in the girls’ place: “Suppose you were orphaned and a nice family in Japan decided to take you. These children were in no way responsible for what happened to them. Give it half a chance and you’ll love them.”

They were told, too, that it would mean some changes in life style. “There’s no way,” Sharon said, “that we can do all the things we used to do and add four more children.”

From the start, Lara said, she thought, “This is really neat.” Her only concern, she said, was that she wanted to still be the oldest girl. (She is, by a few months.) Christopher concurs, “I think it’s great.”

The Bisgaards know the girls may encounter racial prejudice. “I don’t know of any Mexicans who live here” in La Canada Flintridge, Sharon said. “Lots of them work here.” But she and her husband believe that, if the girls are comfortable and secure in their home environment, they will be comfortable and secure in the bigger world.

They are prepared, too, for other crises. “At some point,” he said, “they’re going to say, ‘We want to go back to Mexico,’ and mean it. We’ll work our way through that. I will never say, ‘I wish you would go back to Mexico.’

“They’re our kids and, through thick and thin, they’ll be our kids.”