Monyay and Leah Paskalides on adoption day.Photo: THOMAS BENDER/SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE/USA TODAY NETWORK
In a Florida conference room on April 27, 19-year-old Monyay Randall sat next to her former foster care caseworker, Leah Paskalides, and tried to be patient. Using Zoom, the two listened to a judge a few miles away, awaiting final approval of Monyay’s rare adult adoption.
There was just one question left: What was her chosen last name? When Monyay said “Paskiledes,” Leah tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue, “webothlost it.”
“It was heartbreaking because we both wanted it,” says Leah, 32, who became Monyay’s caseworker in 2015.
“When they announced her new legal name, we both just started crying,” Leah says. “I would have adopted her six years ago, it was held back emotions that just came out.”
THOMAS BENDER/SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE/USA TODAY NETWORK
Born to a mother who was just 13 and became addicted to drugs, Monyay was placed in the custody of a great aunt who sometimes told the little girl she would send her to foster care. One day after Monyay turned 10, “I came home and all my clothes were packed,” Monyay says. “It was scary.”
Placed into a foster children’s group home, Monyay suffered from loneliness for years. But at 14, she met her new adoption caseworker, Leah.
“At first I didn’t want anything to do with her because I didn’t even want to be adopted,” says Monyay, now 20. “But then I began to like her and open up to her, and we became really close. Eventually, when I was about 16, I began to call her mom.”
Leah, who long ago decided not to have biological children due to a history of mental illness in her family, was happy that Monyay trusted her so deeply, but “it broke my heart that I couldn’t adopt her due to my job.”
Still, the pair maintained their deep connection, even when Monyay began pushing Leah away and threatened to run away.
“She’s always been very supportive, even when I was going through a really, really rough time,” says Monyay. “She showed me she truly cared about me.”
For more on the duo’s journey, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, or subscribehere.
Adds Leah: “I’m the first person she calls when something amazing happens or when she messes up.”
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Throughout their time together, Monyay and Leah yearned to become family. In 2020, Leah saw a documentary about adult adoption that offered hope.
“In all my years in the adoption field, I had never heard of it,” Leah says.
After Monyay officially aged out offoster careat 18, she and Leah sat down with a lawyer who helped draw up the legal papers.
Even months since her adoption, Monyay — who lives with a boyfriend six miles from Leah’s Bradenton home and plans to attendcosmetology schoolin January — can’t speak of her “re-birthday” without crying.
“That’s the day I was allowed to close a chapter of my life that was filled with hurt and finally move on,” Monyay says. “The day I finally received my forever mom.”
source: people.com
