Dad Must Pay Despite County’s Lapse

ORANGE — Carl Dick had been prepared for the worst, but his eyes still watered when he heard the news Friday: Though his ex-wife had hidden their three girls from him for years, he still was ordered to reimburse the county $17,000 for welfare the children received in his absence.

On Friday, he stood with his new wife, Holly, the girls--Jennifer, 14, and twins Christina and Carla, 13--and son Keith, 10, and tried to take comfort from his lawyer, who promised they would appeal.

But the ruling from Orange County Superior Court Commissioner Richard G. Vogl was another blow in what had been more than a decade of hard luck.

In 1983, Dick’s ex-wife Denise ran off with their daughters. He searched for them with no success, asking law enforcement agencies to help, scouring phone books, pleading with utility companies and various departments of motor vehicles for help and calling his ex-wife’s family.

In the meantime, the girls had been put into foster care by the Orange County Social Services Agency after Denise Dick was arrested in a burglary case. No one, however, attempted to locate Dick, as is the agency’s usual policy.

He learned of his children’s whereabouts only when he received a letter from the Orange County district attorney’s office in July 1995, saying his children were in foster care and that he owed the county money for their support.

After wrangling with Social Services, he brought the girls home in December 1995, but he had hoped to put the entire case behind him Friday. The county is not seeking the years of accrued child support that ordinarily would have gone to Denise Dick while the girls were in her custody. Instead, the $17,000 is the amount spent by the county during one year when Denise Dick and the girls received welfare plus part of the bill for their foster care.

Why the county is not pursuing Denise Dick, who has since moved to Arizona, is baffling to her ex-husband.

“All they care about is money; they don’t care who they hurt or who they bring down,” Dick said after Friday’s decision. “But tell me this, how will it help my children, who I have custody of, to have $17,000 taken out of my pocket? That’s taking food out of their mouths.”

Dick’s attorney, David Elder, had argued that Dick should not owe the money on three grounds: The district attorney could not prove it would be in the best interest of the children for him to pay; the county incurred a bill needlessly by not searching for Dick as it should have, in effect prolonging their separation from him; and the county never notified Dick that it was aiding his children.

“When you take his four dependents, for whom he’s the sole provider, and he is just marginally above the poverty level, to take money from them, well how is that in the best interest of the children?” Elder said.

“Hey Carl,” he added, “don’t be upset about it, it’s not the end of the road. We’ll just take it to the appellate level.”

The decision becomes final Feb. 21, when both parties return to court and the order is signed. At that time, the $17,000 becomes official and begins to draw 10% interest if it is not paid. Dick, who makes about $20,000 a year as an exterminator, will be allowed to pay in installments.

Neither the district attorney’s office nor Dick disagreed about the facts of the case. Rather, once the girls were in foster care, the case just moved through the system and the child support bills piled up.

Once the children were sent to foster care, the district attorney’s office was obligated to recoup the taxpayer money spent on them. By state law, reimbursement for foster care is always sought from the absent parent and, legally, Dick was the absent parent.

The $17,000 is less than the cost of the children’s foster care bill. The judgment does not require him to pay during a time when Dick himself was unemployed and received no income.

“The foster care was paid for the children [by the county] and it exceeds what he has to pay back by far and away,” Assistant Deputy Dist. Atty. Walter Germond said.

Friday was not a complete defeat for Dick. Before his case was presented to Vogl, Dick went to Juvenile Court to argue for legal custody of the girls and won. Although they have lived with him since December 1995, the girls were legal wards of the court until Friday.

“We’d been living in Social Services foster homes, and now we get to have a family and be with people we know love us and who we love,” Carla said. “It’s so much better.”

To celebrate, Dick and his wife said they would take the children to Disneyland, and in their joy, the girls started thinking about Mickey Mouse.

But for their parents, the joy was muted. Fighting the ruling, first at the appellate level and, if necessary, before the state Supreme Court, would take possibly five years, Elder warned them.

“Well, we’ll just have to tighten our belts, because it’s going to be a long, rough road,” Dick said. “But maybe, hopefully some laws will be changed as regards to absent parents and searches for them.”