Sheila’s grandson Jacob came to live with her when he was only 5 months old. He was left in the neonatal intensive care unit at the hospital by his mother when he was only a day old and his father was incarcerated.
“I was finally allowed to visit Jacob when he was 3 days old. I looked at that beautiful baby and he looked just like my son when he was born 37-plus years ago,” Sheila wrote in a letter to the Goodfellow Fund. “I knew right away that I needed to bring Jacob home with me. Through the years his mother and father have been repeatedly incarcerated and have shown little interest in being an active or consistent part of his life.
Around the time that he was 9 months old, Jacob’s grandfather passed away. As Jacob got older, Sheila recalled he would say in his prayers “Thank you God that you gave me to Monnie and Monnie to me because we are so good for ‘our chudders’ (each other).”
Jacob is now an energetic, typical 8-year-old. Sheila boasts about what a great student he is, and how friendly, outgoing and well-behaved he is — most of the time, she jokes, except for the occasional test of wills with his grandma.