Erica Baxter was nervous when she showed up at the low-income apartment complex in Oracle. Barely 18 and a high-school dropout, she’d spent her childhood bouncing between group home placements and various relatives scattered across Arizona. She felt alone and desperate for a place of her own.
The woman at the desk at Oracle Apartments noticed the girl’s uncertainty.
“Her head was down,” recalled Cheryl Primero-Predgo, project manager at the complex. “You could just tell she’d been kicked one too many times.”
On that day, six years ago, Primero-Predgo, 55, helped Baxter fill out her housing application. But the story doesn’t end there.
Primero-Predgo and her husband Bill Predgo, 57, took Baxter under their wing, like scores of children and young adults they’ve helped over the past decade. The couple has adopted five kids through the foster-care system, and has cared for more than 100 children in their home since 2001.
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Primero-Predgo taught Baxter how to write a check and took care of her when she was sick. When Baxter had a baby at age 20, Primero-Predgo and her husband baby-sat so the single mother could go work on her GED and hold down her job at McDonald’s.
Most importantly, the couple became the only anchors in Baxter life.
“There were times where I didn’t have money for the electric, and all the sudden it would end up paid,” Baxter said. “I’ve never had anybody there for me like that for my entire life. They have never left me alone in anything.”
Baxter watched the couple bring home child after child, both foster children and local kids in need or young single mothers. She saw them nurse drug-addicted babies back to health, and give a second chance to a teenage foster son who stole from them.
Witnessing their openness changed Baxter, now 24, who says she had become bitter after a lifetime of feeling unwanted.
“I had never met people like that,” she says. “It’s changed me completely. I help now, instead of being mean and angry and selfish. I always tell them, ‘I want to be just like you guys.’”
The couple met later in life in Tucson. Bill Predgo — who already had two children — was recently widowed, and Primero-Predgo had just lost her only daughter, Michelle Cherie, who was 17 when she died of cancer in 1996. The couple was unable to have more biological children, so they decided to adopt.
They knew from the start they wanted to adopt children from the child welfare system, where the need is enormous, Primero-Predgo said. There are more than 15,300 children in out-of-home care in Arizona.
The couple’s days are packed and their house is full: This Christmas they have four foster children, plus their two youngest kids, Michael, 12, and Nicole, 17. A couple dozen more friends and neighbors will celebrate the holidays with them.
Neighbor Christine Rawson, 48, is blown away by their energy.
“They never have less than five kids in their house,” said Rawson, who has known the couple for 10 years. She recalls Bill loading the car full of toddlers and still offering a ride to apartment residents who needed to get to Tucson.
“They have a million things going on, and they’re always willing to help somebody,” she said. “They don’t ask for anything back. They really are angels.”
Primero-Predgo is not only a manager for Oracle Apartments, but also a firefighter and EMS trainer. When needed, she fills in as an ambulance EMT and 911 dispatcher for the Kearny Police Department. Predgo, a retired firefighter, is maintenance supervisor at Oracle Apartments, and he coaches football and basketball. But their schedules are flexible enough that one or the other is always home with the kids.
They never force religion on their foster children, but each is encouraged to be spiritual and attend whatever church they want, Predgo says.
“We don’t tell them what religion to be, but we start them somewhere. I believe it doesn’t matter where you are — you can pray,” he said.
The couple both fiercely believe everyone deserves a chance, and they’re not discouraged when their outreach is rejected.
“We’ve had over 100 children in our home in the last 10 years. You can treat each one of them exactly the same, and they either accept your hand or they don’t,” Primero-Predgo said.
When she met Baxter, “I put my hand out and said, ‘Well, if she slaps it, she does.’ But she grabbed on tight.”
Baxter is now married to Corey Baxter, a landscaper, and her son Isaiah is 4. She hopes to finish her GED this year and then look into nursing school.
“She is such a devoted mom,” Primero-Predgo said. “She is one of those kids that has blossomed — and all she needed was a hand up.”
Predgo thinks he and his wife were meant to be together because “we’ve done a lot of good things together,” he said. “We do this because we enjoy doing what we do, and it keeps us young.”
In the process, they’ve also learned that people are more alike than different, Primero-Predgo says.
“No matter where we come from, where our background is, we all need the same thing. We need love. We need somebody who cares about us,” she says.
Baxter is committed to passing on that love. Even more, she wants the hopeless children of the world to believe that it exists.
“Sometimes when you grow up,” she says, “it may seem like there ain’t good people in this world. But if you keep hope, you might run into people like them.”
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