Saturday, December 24, 2005
Page: 1A
By WILL VASH
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Dateline: BOYNTON BEACH

In the cool grip of a December evening, Maudira Delhomme and his wife, Zelima, waited
at a bus stop on Boynton Beach Boulevard with a bag of fried chicken in tow.

Franche, 8, and Michael, 7, will enjoy the meal, they said. In any case, it’s all the couple had to give this night.

They had been making the bus trip to West Palm Beach about three times a week for more than a month to see their sons, who were placed in foster care after Hurricane
Wilma heavily damaged the family’s Boynton Beach home.

“We got someplace to go,” Maudira Delhomme said then of the hotel rooms paid for by the Federal Emergency Management Agency that included an empty room for their boys. “They said it would be fine.”

But it wasn’t.

The state Department of Children and Families had the children in foster care and the Delhommes faced the prospect of a Christmas without them.

This is a tale of how the family finally was reunited the week before Christmas, but also about good intentions gone awry, red tape and simple misunderstandings.

After the winds of Hurricane Wilma subsided, Boynton Beach building officials declared the family’s two-bedroom yellow-and-pink home unsafe. For the next several days, the family lived either with friends or quietly in their water-soaked, powerless home.

On Nov. 10, DCF took the children away and placed them in a foster home. The Delhommes were told they needed to have a stable environment for their children.
DCF spokeswoman Marilyn Munoz would not speak directly about the case, but said Friday that caseworkers have to do what’s best for the child, even if it means separation.

“That is absolutely the last resort,” Munoz said of removing children. “Even before that,
we look at help from friends and neighbors. You have to look at the whole picture.”

Reeling from the loss, the Delhommes continued to work in Delray Beach. Maudira Delhomme is a detailer during the day at Sunshine Golf Car and spends many nights as a
part-time cook at the Seagate Hotel. Zelima is a housekeeper at the Colony Hotel.

Without a car, the couple walk, ride the bus or sometimes hitch a ride from a friend.

At work, Pat Joines and Jim Maddox, the siblings who run Sunshine Golf Car, remember how much effort Maudira Delhomme put into repairing the golf car store following the hurricane – even as his personal life, which he kept quiet, was in tatters.

“He was there for us while he was going through all this,” Maddox said. “We just felt we
needed to help.”

Things were looking up earlier this month when FEMA paid for the placement of a two-bedroom trailer in the front yard of the Delhomme home. Crews had just hooked up the sewer lines when city inspectors notified the contractors that city codes wouldn’t allow the trailer.

As the darkness and despair began to set in, Joines, 60, stepped in with her customary stubborn determination.

Joines worked the phones daily, calling city hall, DCF and the state. She felt frustrated and sometimes overwhelmed by the slow response.

“They were trying to do everything they could,” Joines said of the Delhommes. “They kept running into a wall.”

After the trailer debacle, FEMA provided a check to pay for hotel rooms, where they waited for word on their children’s return.

Two single beds neatly tucked and smoothed in
an adjoining room went unmussed and unused for more than a week.

But just in time for the holidays, Joines’ efforts caught the city’s attention.

Boynton Beach agreed to pay to temporarily house the Delhommes for three or four days in an apartment
on Federal Highway.

Development Director Quintus Greene said the city also intervened by calling DCF. The children finally were returned to the family Tuesday.

“Our concern was the safety of the family,” Greene said Thursday. “The children are back
and we’re just going to try to take care of it.”

It seemed like a happy ending.

Thursday afternoon, Maddox picked up a check from the city to pay the motel owner. But the room was an efficiency with two double beds. The family’s DCF worker told him by phone what he already knew – the small room wouldn’t do.

The family had only one more night at the Colony Hotel and both men realized time was running out.

Piling back into Maddox’s SUV, they went to about a half-dozen places looking to find rooms that would meet DCF requirements.

“Do you know of any rooms that connect together, that have a door between them?” was
Maddox’s common inquiry.

Finally, with the whole Delhomme family on board, Maddox found a room with a pullout sofa and a separate bedroom in a hotel on Federal Highway, south of Woolbright Road. It wasn’t fancy, but it was the best they had seen.

Maddox bought fruit drinks for the children as they all waited for the DCF worker, who
agreed to come check out the apartment.

What felt like hours of nervous waiting was
merely minutes.

The DCF worker found it suitable for the moment. The tension in Maudira Delhomme’s face eased with her words and he smiled for the first time that evening.

By then, city hall was closed. Maddox paid for the Delhommes’ four-night stay out of his
own pocket with a promise from the city to pay him back.

The city has found a nicer two-bedroom apartment nearby and plans to have it ready for the family by Tuesday. They may be able to live there until their home is rebuilt.

On Friday, Maddox and Maudira Delhomme had a spring in their step as they carried up a small Christmas tree given to the family by a city employee and food to stock the empty refrigerator in their temporary holiday home.

The two fiddled with the tree lights and prepared to fill drab decor with Christmas cheer.

Maddox bought the Delhomme children what will likely be their only Christmas present this year – an Xbox.

But wrapped presents are the least of this family’s worries.

They will finally be able to celebrate being together.

“This is a lot better than it would have been,” Maudira Delhomme said as he prepared to go back to work. “I feel so much better. We have someplace to live.”