System Makes Father Pay the Price for System’s Mistake

When I read stories like the one describing what happened to Carl Dick on Friday, I tell myself that it’s all a big put-on. Sure, he lost in court and is supposed to pay $17,000, but I tell myself that afterward he goes into a room and the officers of the court take him aside and say, “Hey, Carl, we had to do that, but don’t worry about paying us. Just go on home.”

I tell myself that, because if I thought the system was so impersonal and inflexible as to make Dick actually pay the $17,000, I’d lament for our great republic.

But if you think I’m in a bad mood over this, imagine being Carl Dick.

On Friday, he learned in an Orange County court that he must reimburse the county for money it spent on foster care for his three daughters while he was an absentee father.

However, there’s one small catch that not even the county disputes: From 1983 until 1995, Dick had no idea where his daughters were. In 1983, his ex-wife left him in North Carolina, took the girls with her and settled in Tucson, where she had no previous connections. In short, she disappeared with Dick’s children.

Not until 1995, when the Orange County district attorney’s office found Dick in Sonoma and sued him for the foster-care payment did Dick know where his daughters were. What makes the case maddening, though, is that the county Social Services Agency made no effort to find Carl Dick in 1993, when it first took the girls into custody.

To recap (and all parties have stipulated to these facts, according to court documents): 1) his ex-wife left with the girls, who were then infants, in 1983 and never contacted Dick again; 2) Los Angeles County first assumed custodial care of the girls in 1990 but said it couldn’t find Carl Dick, who by then was living in California; 3) the Orange County Social Services Agency assumed jurisdiction over the girls in 1993 but conceded in court papers that it made no effort to find Dick.

That is disturbing, according to Dick’s attorney, because in 1993 only two Carl Dicks lived in the state of California, and a DMV check would have easily found him. Which is, in fact, how the district attorney’s office found him in mid-1995 when it informed him he owed them money.

You could stifle your outrage if the only breakdown was the county’s failure to try to find Dick in 1993. But to now turn around and charge him $17,000 for part of that care is to twist the knife in him.

Maybe he’s a lousy guy, you say, and deserves his bad fortune.

Well, the system considers him so lousy that in late 1995 it allowed the girls--now-13-year-old twins Carla and Christina and 14-year-old Jennifer--to live with Dick and his fiancee. Before that, while the girls were in foster care, a social worker noted: “The three Dick minors have all been positively elated to make contact with their father. . . . Mr. Dick, in return, has maintained regular and consistent contact with all the three minors. . . . The father has made the effort to visit each minor and has followed through with promises of telephone contact and correspondence. The minors . . . are each hoping to be eventually placed with Mr. Dick.”

The D.A.’s argument is straightforward: Taxpayers paid for the girls’ social services, and Dick, as one of the parents, should reimburse the county. Actually, the county has cut him some slack. The $17,000 represents less than what the county actually spent for the girls.

As we used to say in Nebraska, that ain’t the point.

The legal system should be more than codes and subsections. It should have a human component in which real people with common sense distinguish between the deadbeat dads of the world and the Carl Dicks. I’d suggest that a county that so far has paid bankruptcy attorneys $42 million could erase a $17,000 “debt” that it incurred because of its own malfunction.

Dick works for a pest-control company in Sonoma and makes about $26,000 a year, according to his attorney, David Elder. “He has no way of paying it,” Elder says of the court order.

The girls’ mother now lives in Arizona, authorities say. It was her jailing on burglary and drug charges, which followed earlier charges of abusing and neglecting the children, that led to them being placed in custody in the first place, according to court documents.

Courts historically point to the “best interest of the child” when deciding social service matters, Elder said Friday night, a few hours after the ruling. “What was ruled today,” he said, “is that the best interest of the child is subservient to the fiscal interest of the county, even if the county was at fault.”

As for the three girls, whose father now has legal custody of them but soon will have about $17,000 less to spend on them, we provide this social worker’s update from last year, after they had been reunited with their father for about six months: “The minors’ emotional health has stabilized. They feel a sense of joy in being together and express happiness, security and permanency in their new life.”

On Friday, the girls’ father got his reward for helping make that happen.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.