NOTE: This article was adapted from a story that ran in the July 31, 2008 edition of the St. Petersburg Times

Friday, August 14, 2009

When Jerry Whitfield retired from the PEBA after the 2007 season at the ripe age of 38, he never imagined what life had in store.  Envisioning a quiet retirement back to his ranch on Montana with Nina, his wife of 12 years, Jerry figured on a simple life, tending to his ranch and living off of his millions made as a professional ballplayer.  Little did he know that he would be raising more than cattle.

Nina and Jerry had a whirlwind romance, meeting while she was a waitress and he was a minor leaguer.  Drafted out of high school as a starting pitcher, Jerry had already spent 4 years in the low minors, dealing with various arm injuries that led to his transition to the bullpen.  Stuck at Knoxville, the AA farm club of the Toronto Blue Jays, for 3 seasons, Jerry wondered if he would ever stay healthy enough to pitch a full season.  But a fateful stop at the Charlie Peppers restaurant two weeks into the season changed his priorities at the time.  For it was there that he met young Nina Erskine, a 20-year-old waitress and hostess, and from that day forward the two were inseparable when the Blue Jays were at home.  By the end of the summer, Jerry had proposed.

That fall, they married in a seaside ceremony just a few long tosses away from the ballpark.  And by the next season, Jerry had felt healthier than he had in years.  He finally lived up to his potential, even though it was now as a closer instead of the dominant starter scouts had originally envisioned.  After moving to AAA Syracuse, he found himself as a September call up to the big club in Toronto and finally got to throw his first major league pitch.  Which, by all accounts, may still not have landed, as his first pitch was blasted for a home run by Chili Davis, somewhere deep into the night.

Nevertheless, former Toronto GM Pat Gillick stuck with Whitfield, and by the end of the following Spring Training he was awarded the closer’s role.  For the next 10 years, MLB hitters were subject to his blazing fastball, his devilish curveball and his nasty circle change.  And with the folding of Major League Baseball and the birth of the PEBA in 2007, he was drafted by New Jersey and immediately traded to San Antonio.  The Calzones moved Jerry into their starting rotation, and while he performed admirably his heart was in the bullpen.  Still dominant at 38, he decided to retire.

Fifteen months later and unsuccessful in their attempts to conceive, the couple quickly decided on adoption.  As they investigated their options they learned of the need for adoptions of older children, and both agreed that while they loved the idea of a newborn, they could do more good by adopting someone older.  As they worked with local agencies to find suitable matches, they came upon one of the most horrific and gut-wrenching stories of a foster child they had ever heard.

Jill Saberhagen was a nobody, a nothing, a ghost.  At seven years old, her neighbors didn’t even realize she existed.  A dilapidated house in Butte had been home for the past three years to a middle aged woman, Marie Saberhagen, and her boyfriend, Han Nguyen, but no one had ever seen a child enter or leave, never seen the little girl playing in the yard or going off to school.  Marie and Han kept to themselves, as did their neighbors.

But one autumn day, a neighbor noticed a little girl’s face in an upstairs window.  She quickly disappeared from view, but two months later the same neighbor saw the same face again for a fleeting moment.  John Ryan went to the house in order to ask Marie and Han about the face he was seeing, but before he even neared the front door he was overwhelmed by the stench emanating from the home.  Quickly retreating, he talked it over with his wife and they decided to call the police to make sure everything was okay.

At 4:15 that fateful afternoon, the police showed up along with an investigator for the Department of Social Services.  After receiving no response to their knocking they entered the home, but Investigator Sydney MacPherson quickly exited and began retching in the front yard.  Detective Mike Holmes would later describe the scene:

The living room was covered in trash and cockroaches scurried everywhere.  The odor was unbelievable, a mixture of cigarette smoke, rotting food, as well as urine and feces from dogs, cats and humans.  Everything was stained and dirty.  I’ve been in houses where bodies have been decomposing for weeks, and the stench in this house rivaled any murder scene.

The lack of sanitation and the odor were the least of the problems police discovered.  After going upstairs, police found what they believed to be a linen closet.  As they opened the door, however, they discovered a bedroom, covered in the same grime that permeated the house.  A torn mattress was on the floor, and upon that mattress was a young female form.  Emaciated and covered in sores and lice, she was naked save for an overloaded diaper.  The room had no evidence of a little girl’s bedroom; no toys, no decorations, no real bed.  Besides a pile of used diapers, the infested mattress and a few dirty clothes, the room was empty.

Quietly picking up the girl, Holmes could get no response to his questions.  While she was alive, the girl appeared to not understand how to communicate.  As Holmes prepared to take the girl to the hospital for examination, Marie and Han returned.  Screaming and distraught, Marie fought to retain control of her daughter, but after getting her name, Holmes quickly strapped the girl into his cruiser and sped for the emergency room.

Jill weighed only 43 pounds, nearly 16 percent below her ideal weight at seven years old.  The hospital staff tried to feed her, but Jill did not know how to chew and swallow solid food so they hooked up IVs and let her drink from a baby bottle.  They bathed her, treated her sores and had to shave her head because her hair was so tangled and matted they could not comb out the lice.

Besides the physical problems, it was immediately apparent that the girl had emotional and psychological deficiencies as well.  A case worker later determined she had never seen a doctor, never been to school, and never interacted with anyone outside of her home, and had only limited dealings with her mother at that.  She had no language skills, limited mobility, no reaction to heat or cold or pain.  There was no eye contact, no idea of human interaction and no understanding of how to engage with people.

Doctors tell us that within the first five years children develop about 85 percent of their brain, relying on early relationships, interaction and education to wire the brain to trust and communicate later in life.  Without these relationships, they feared that Jill was a rare example of a feral child, a human that would never learn to interact with society.

It took over two years to reintegrate Jill back into society.  At nine she was introduced to a formal education, but her inability to interact caused problems and she was removed from the school.  While her hygiene and nutrition had improved, her incapacity to learn social skills led authorities to believe that she would need permanent care in a group home.

About the time that the social workers had given up hope, Jerry and Nina were making their efforts to find a child.  They saw Jill’s picture on the Department’s website, and began to ask questions.  The more they found out, the less they wanted to know.  But when they finally met Jill, they fell in love.  And Jill, unable to communicate or interact with anyone, met their gaze and reached out for Jerry’s hand.

Instantly touched, Jerry and Nina began the process to foster Jill in their home.  It was not an easy task.  Jill had no idea how to play with toys, how to sit still, how to brush her own hair or teeth, or how to get dressed.  It took months of patience and love for Jerry and Nina to slowly teach Jill how to behave and take care of her own basic needs.

Today, Jill is educated in a school for severely disabled children.  She still cannot speak, and doesn’t act as if she knows right from wrong.  But Jerry and Nina remain encouraged at the progress Jill has made.  “She is diagnosed as environmentally autistic because she never had the environment to teach her social interaction,” explains Nina.  “But she is learning to communicate with us through a sound board, and can tell us when she is tired or when she wants to eat.  She may steal food off our plates at dinner, but at least she is feeding herself.  She may need to have one of us in the bathroom with her because she is scared to be alone, but at least she is out of diapers.”

“They don’t know if she will ever be able to learn to write or to talk or to ride a bike,” continues Jerry, “but none of that matters to us.  She is more than we could ever hope for, and for all the ‘pain’ people think we go through to deal with her, they don’t understand that we get it back a hundredfold in the purity of her love.  I would do it again in a heartbeat.”