After fostering over 50 kids in six years a single mother adopted 4 siblings.
“I think about where they would’ve been if I didn’t save them,” Melissa Servetz, a 45-year-old former elementary teacher from Florida, told PEOPLE.
“It breaks my heart, but at the same time, it makes my heart overflow because I know they have a great life now.”
Servetz has fostered over 50 kids in her lifetime and her big heart still had room for more.
“So I originally started volunteering at one of the children’s homes and that led to me inquiring about adopting and actually fostering first,” she explained to Good Morning America.
In 2015 she became a foster mom and has fostered 56 children under her roof and under her care.
The adoption part of her story started back in May of 2016, she fostered a child named Jade and then 16-month-old Destiny. The following December the siblings were adopted.
“Jade is super smart, funny, outgoing,” Servetz said of her adopted daughters. “Destiny [is] very silly, lighthearted, loves to joke around, adores her baby brother.”
“It was like a waterfall,” she recalled. “Everybody in the room was crying. My attorney was crying. The judge was crying.”
Two years later in 2018, Servetz received a call that the sisters’ biological mother had given birth to a “happy” baby boy named Matthew. He joined the family shortly after in 2019.
Finally, a baby boy named Emerson joined the family in 2021.
“Matthew is the happiest kid you’ll ever meet. He was born happy. I’ve had him since he was 3 days old and he rarely is upset. He loves dinosaurs and trucks and Paw Patrol … then Emerson is right behind him. Happy. ticklish. They’re all super fun and super active and just a lot of fun to be around.” She said.
Servetz has had miscarriages in the past and now says that motherhood has been life changing.
“You don’t realize how much you can love another human, times four — it’s unconditional, really,” Servetz said. “No matter how rough of a day…I’m going to love them no matter what. I’m going to be there to support them.”
She mainly decided to adopt to keep the siblings together and will always have a place in her family for any other children their biological mother has.
“I can’t in my heart let them go somewhere else,” she explained.
“If I find out that there’s another baby in another place, in another home, I mean, there’s no doubt that I will try to get that baby. At the end of the day, if it’s too much for me, my sister is open to adopting that baby, because she’s always wanted to adopt, too. There’s a place for that baby to go to stay in the family.”
She hopes that others look into opening their homes up to foster kids, and Servetz wants to teach the siblings to “pay it forward” when they grow up.
