Thirty kids rushed to the side of the field at Petco Park.
They wore Padres gear on their small frames and big smiles on their faces.
A large hand reached down to grab a ball one of the kids held and autographed it.
Jason Adam.
It was this past September and he just moved to Coronado a couple months ago with his family and signed with the Padres as a pitcher.
He recalls that he was surrounded by these excited children, all of whom were placed in host or foster families through an organization called Olive Crest.
Olive Crest has two programs with foster children. One program is for short term, immediate assistance in which the parents are called host parents.
The other program is a true foster program where families foster the child until they are able to find their permanent home. These parents are called foster parents.
Adam found out about Olive Crest through his church, Park Hill in San Diego, and decided to see if he could do something a little more special for the kids when he heard that Northgate Market had donated Padres tickets to them.
He invited the children and families to come earlier and come down to the field before the game and watch batting and pitching practice.
“It was not anything special that I did on my part, they made it very easy for me,” Adam said. “It was fun. I got to meet them a little more, talk to them a little more.”
Adam laughs as he says he has four daughters under the age of six and is trying to catch his breath, so he’s not sure he can participate as a host dad, but wants to see how to be as involved as he can with Olive Crest.
He is also looking to further the connection between the Padres and Olive Crest.
“You hear about these kids who should be given a chance at life, and Olive Crest is stepping in and giving them a chance, and doing it holistically,” Adam says. “Once I had kids, I became so soft, especially daughters. So hearing about kids whose needs aren’t being met just breaks my heart.”
There are just under 370,000 children in foster care in the United States as of Sept. 2022 according to the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System’s report published in March of this year.
In California, there were 41,224 children in the Child Welfare Services system as of July 1, according to the University of California at Berkeley California Child Welfare Indicators Project.
About a quarter of all children in foster care in the United States stay in the system for 3-4 years before successfully being adopted, and just under half of them experience three or more placements if in the foster care system for more than two years.
Olive Crest has provided short-term care for children in the foster care system and those who need immediate care for the past 50 years. The organization also helps families with single mothers or fathers.
“What ends up happening a lot of times is that it’s typically single parents facing domestic violence, homelessness (or) medical crises, like an emergency surgery,” says Jamie Olson, the director of development for Olive Crest in San Diego. “If a mom … has nowhere to put her child – no one to take care of them – they’ll be put into the foster care system and it can take 18-24 months to get your child back after that.”
Olive Crest has a foster prevention program that provides care for these children for up to 90 days by placing them with host parents or host families.
“So we’ll have people care for the kids while the parents get their feet under them,” Olson explains. “Sometimes it’s parents taking a courageous step to get into drug and alcohol rehab programming and we’ll provide care for the kids during that.”
The organization operates in Washington, Southern California and Nevada.
From July 2023 to 2024, through their short term program, Olive Crest was able to provide 75 children with safe homes for a total of 1,048 nights. They had 57 families open their homes.
The Coronado Veterinary Hospital
The Coronado Veterinary Hospital has also found a way to help out the organization. Practice Manager Carol Chavez says hospital owner Dr. Elizabeth Stone is always looking for ways to give back to the community and, every year, finds a family in need during the holiday season.
Last year, Chavez got in contact with Olive Crest to see how they could help and the organization placed them with a single mother and her children to give a gift basket of everything they needed to move into their new apartment together.
Chavez said it was pretty much the essentials to have a household. “It was really just a lot of cleaning supplies, pillows, a couple of things the kids wanted … Olive Crest put the list together and forwarded it to us, and then we just went down the line and got all the items on the list.”
It totaled over $600, Chavez estimates.
“We just wanted to really connect with someone that really was in the most need,” Chavez says. “We also do outreach to the community, starting with our own staff, asking if they know of anyone within their community that needs help.”
This year, they’ve received another wish list from a mother with four children ranging from 7 months-old to 11 years old.
“The little extra (stuff) that, you know, would mean a lot to us day to day, but that people in a great need don’t really think about asking because they just want to get their real urgent needs met,” Chavez explains as she mentions a pair of headphones that they gifted one of the children with last year.
She said each of the staff at the Coronado Veterinary Hospital gets involved with the gift basket and picking out which one to get.
Chavez says they want to continue working with Olive Crest in hopefully a higher capacity than once a year during the holidays.
