Back when she was ten years old, Michelle Quarles announced to her family that she would have twelve children when she grew up. But she never thought about acquiring them through adoption. Fast forward to 1990. Quarles was working as a hair stylist and became friendly with one of her clients, a social worker for the Philadelphia Department of Public Welfare. During one of their many chats about life and love, her friend asked her if she wanted children. When Quarles confided her childhood dream, the social worker urged her to consider adoption. Quarles was stunned. She thought, she says, that adoption was limited to wealthy, married women.

At her friend's insistence, Quarles attended a workshop where she was shocked to learn about the thousands of children in foster care waiting for permanent families. "I didn't need to hear anymore," she remembers. "If they would have me, I'd love to be all of their mommies.

After her training, Quarles visited the offices of the National Adoption Center every day, leafing through books crammed with pictures and descriptions of waiting children. One sunny July afternoon, she found herself staring at the picture of a little boy with whom she fell in love. Five minutes later, that same little boy dashed through the Adoption Center offices. He was there to participate in a television show on adoption and had become restless. "I think he knew his mother was there," Quarles says. "I scribbled across the photo, "I want him."

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