When Larissa met Ian at college in 2005, she never dreamed she'd one day be his wife ... and his caretaker. After a tragic accident left Ian without the ability to speak, walk or care for himself, she did what any woman in love would do: she married him.
"There will always be the older white woman in Walmart who stared at us with sheer disgust, or the African-American mother who looked at us and just shook her head.”
"I felt the tug on my sleeve and looked down to find him standing motionless. His mouth was moving but I couldn’t make out his words. His quiet body in the noisy room caught me off guard. I bent down to find his voice."
At just 3 pounds, the baby who is now named Samuel Tyler was so small he fit in a shoebox. And that's the where his birth mother put him as a makeshift cradle when she left him at a local firehouse with a note explaining she couldn't care for him.
Jenna and Tim Riccio, two teachers at a Connecticut elementary school welcomed one of their students into their forever family through adoption late last year.