For Diana Mazza, a difficult childhood and marriage did not diminish the goodness in her but instead nurtured a heart to help those stuck in similar situations.
Over the past decade or so, Ms. Mazza has fostered more than 40 children who had fallen into the foster care system in Orange County and adopted two of them as her own.
At 72 years old, she is determined to keep at it for as long as possible.
“I think a lot of that stemmed from my own childhood,” Ms. Mazza told The Epoch Times at her home in the town of Deerpark. “I always felt that I wanted to make life better for people that didn’t have anybody.”
Since she could remember, Ms. Mazza’s family moved three or four times yearly between Orange and Rockland counties, dodging disgruntled landlords and hunting for cheap rent.
“My folks were not the best people, let’s put it like that, and it was just hard growing up,” she said. “I was afraid to get close to anybody because every time I made a friend, I lost a friend.”
As dim as life was, it was not without bright spots, such as when she tagged along with her housekeeper mother on some workdays to a big house with a private library.
“I still can see that library in my mind, and on the bottom shelf, there were kid books,” she said. “I read about Dr. Jonas Salk, Water Reed, and all these good things.”
Seeing marriage as a ticket to a stable life, Ms. Mazza dropped out of high school and got married at 18, only to find her life turned worse with an alcoholic husband.
A mother of three, Ms. Mazza said she managed to get a high school diploma, get a job at the former Letchworth Village in Rockland County, and legally separate from her husband in her early 30s, when life finally started to get better for her and her young sons.
Becoming a Foster Parent
After Ms. Mazza retired, she learned more about the ins and outs of foster care from people she knew, including the fact that the taxpayers cover basic childrearing expenses and that additional money is available for unique mental or physical needs.In 2012, she took classes and became a certified foster parent in Orange County.
During one training session, the attendees were asked to form a circle, and each was asked to hold on to one end of a piece of string. A person in the middle held all the opposite ends of the pieces and then dropped one string after another, each move representing the loss of a key relationship in a child’s life.
“They were showing that a kid was taken from his family, his friends ... and then all the strings dropped,” Ms. Mazza said. “What do you think is going to happen with this kid?”
She hoped to do her part to help children repair their life connections.
Ms. Mazza said she strived to provide a safe and caring home environment for the children in her care, keep them in school and educational programs, and regularly take them to social activities, such as foster group gatherings, festival parades, and church events.
Much of the job is also about reestablishing discipline in some children’s lives, such as when she wouldn’t budge as a foster child lay on the ground pleading for a desired object on the day of the interview.
“I’ve learned over the years that you have to be consistent—if you say something, you have to do it—you have to have a structure, and you have to have a routine,” she said.
“The kids flourish on that because they feel safe.”
A few children she helped had been severely abused, including a troubled boy whose back was covered with burn scars, a rare case that made her come to terms with the limit of a foster mother.
“One day, he wouldn’t take his medication and was banging his head on the cement,” she said. “I had to ask to remove him from my house.
“I love kids, and I hate to disrupt like that, but I was not doing him any good.”
Over the past 12 years, Ms. Mazza has fostered more than 40 children, most of whom ended up in foster care because of neglect and would return to their parents after certain state requirements were satisfied, such as successful completion of drug tests or parenting classes.
‘Momma D’
About two years ago, River and Shania were dropped off by their father at a youth shelter in Middletown after a landlord kicked out the entire family.By then, the siblings had stayed inside the bug-infested apartment with masks on since the pandemic, and their daily activities consisted almost solely of playing on their phones and cleaning.
When they came to Ms. Mazza’s, then-9-year-old River couldn’t help crying, which he said he soon stopped after he fell in love with the bug-free house.
As for his older sister, Shania, she came to call Ms. Mazza “Momma D.”
“I have a lot that I love about Momma D,” Shania told The Epoch Times with tears in her eyes. “I love how she is always trying to do the best for all the kids that come in here and make everything seem like an actual home to live in and feel safe and protected here.”
According to the siblings, their parents would visit them often, and after witnessing the new home environment and new opportunities under Ms. Mazza, their father pushed for their adoption.
Even Ms. Mazza’s sons, who had been supportive of her getting into foster care on the condition that she stayed away from adoptions, encouraged her to take the children as her own.
“I was never in it to adopt—I always felt I was too old,” Ms. Mazza said. “But they are good kids. They are grateful for whatever you give them.”
River saved his allowances to buy gifts and food for other children at the house, and all Shania wanted for her birthday was to chill out with the family over plain pizza, she added.
Both siblings now bear the same last name, Mazza, and 16-year-old Shania told The Epoch Times that she wants to be a child therapist when she grows up.
Any Orange County resident interested in becoming a foster parent can visit FosterAdoptOrangeNY.org or call 877-297-3303 for more information.
In 2022, nearly 250 Orange County children were placed in foster care, according to data published by the county’s Department of Social Services.
