With 21 siblings, family keeps busy with long roll call

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Every night at bedtime, Julie Hehn takes a head count.

She tugs at the brightly colored comforters and checks each bunk bed. She looks past the Hilary Duff posters, Bratz dolls and stuffed animals in search of children. Hehn peers into the basement TV room and steps over the schoolbooks to see who is where.

Things can get confusing when you have 21 children.

'It was my childhood dream'

For as long as she can remember, Julie Hehn has wanted to run an orphanage.

"I want to give children homes who didn't have homes like me," said Julie, who was malnourished and sickly when she was adopted at the age of 9 months. "It was my childhood dream."

The 48-year-old schoolteacher and her husband, Rich, are finishing the paperwork to formally adopt what would be her 21st child. The couple, who are both elementary-school teachers in Edmonds, say they have no plans to stop taking in kids. Their 3,400-square-foot home will always be open to needy children.

"I don't do it to be a martyr," Julie said. "It feeds me. It gives me energy, and it gives me excitement in my life."

Julie and her first husband, Dennis Erickson, were living in Modesto, Calif., when the couple adopted their first child in 1982, an 8-year-old girl named Debbie who suffered from behavioral disorders. The couple already had three children of their own.

"My goal was to adopt an older child who was difficult to place. Everybody wants a baby, and I already had babies," Julie said. "It was baptism by fire."

Julie said she didn't want to take a baby away from people who couldn't have babies.

The couple followed up by adopting two more girls, Mandy and Nancis.

Julie said her heart was then set on adopting a child from China, but while attending a workshop on the Chinese adoption process, she and her husband learned that these adoptions were open only to couples who did not have birth children of their own. The couple then set their sights on Ethiopia.

For about three months the Erickson family exchanged photos and letters with three children living with their aunt, uncle and seven cousins in Addis-Ababa. The children, whose birth parents were dead, were put up for adoption in late 1992.

In March 1993, Julie and her son Chuck, then 14, left for a monthlong stay in the Ethiopian capital.

When adoption officials took them to meet the children, Julie said, she nearly burst into tears when Asrat, 9, Amanuel 8, and Tamenech, 6, "ran around the corner saying, 'Mommy, Mommy.' "

"I was just so excited that I had them in my arms," she recalled.

The first few months were wrought with confusion for the Ericksons and the three new family members. Asrat, Amanuel and Tamenech could not speak English; they had never been enrolled in school. Hehn used her experiences teaching kindergarten and special education to help them.

The Erickson family learned a little Amharic, Ethiopia's most common language, and the three children quickly learned broken English. When all else failed, they used a lot of pointing and guessing to communicate, Hehn said.

Because they did not have a record of the three siblings' ages, Julie said they had to make up birth dates. When the three were enrolled in school, they were put in a grade behind where they would normally fall according to their new birth dates.

Tamenech, 16, and a sophomore at Edmonds-Woodway High School, vividly recalls the months following their move to Modesto as "fun and sometimes hectic." They had never eaten at a McDonald's restaurant, been to a movie theater, had ice in their soda or owned a pair of shoes.

"I had never had a little sister before," said Krissy Girardi, the oldest of Julie's three biological children, said, smiling at Tamenech.

Girardi remembers sharing a bedroom with Tamenech and teaching her the importance of not wearing the same clothes to school two days in a row. She said the girl didn't understand that putting on new clothes every day meant changing them, not layering them on top of what she had worn the day before.

Move to Edmonds

In June 1993, only a few months after the three siblings moved to Modesto, the Erickson family moved to Edmonds. Will, 23, and his older sister Krissy, 26, had been accepted into Pacific Northwest Ballet.

Julie got a job teaching school in the Edmonds School District, and Dennis eventually took a job working as a microbiologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

The couple adopted two more children, Clyde, then 11, and Mia, who was only one month old. Clyde, suffered from behavioral disorders, and Mia was diagnosed with neurological disorders, Hehn said.

A few years later, when their family numbered 11 children, Dennis Erickson died of a heart ailment.

Then in summer 1998, Julie met Rich Hehn at math workshop for Edmonds teachers.

Julie recalled thinking Rich was good-looking but was certain that when he heard other teachers talking about her 11 children he would be horrified.

But on the second day of the workshop Rich asked her on a date. The couple were married Aug. 21, 1999, in a family-filled ceremony in Julie's back yard. It was Rich's second marriage but his first time being a father.

"He's just stepped in and been those kids' dad," said Julie's sister Jill Partridge, 41. "She (Julie) has just found someone who cares for kids as much as she does."

Rich, who hails from a family of eight, had never had children of his own but had always wanted a large family.

"It's just really wonderful to have children and have so much love all around you," Rich said. "Before I thought I was living life to the fullest because I didn't have kids and had an income. It was like living in a vacuum back them."

Greg Morales, who has known Rich 20 years, said when he learned that his friend was marrying a woman with 11 children he was "blown away."

"Together they're just dynamic," Morales said about the couple. "I see that family working together, and they get everything done. I think the fact they are both teachers it just fits right in."

In February 2001, the couple adopted 7-year-old Misrak. The girl had been living with another Western Washington family, but things weren't working out.

Misrak told her new parents about Workeneh and his sister, Amelework, who had lived in the same Addis-Ababa orphanage where she grew up. The Hehns flew to Addis-Ababa on Sept. 11, 2001, to get the two children, as well as Theodros, a 5-month-old from the same orphanage, and returned to Edmonds 11 days later.

Julie said that since adding Asrat, Amanuel and Tamenech to her family she not only fell in love with the Ethiopian culture but she realized the importance of adopting in sibling groups. She said she doesn't want children to feel the pain of losing their closest relatives when they are adopted.

"I believe all my heart that if you take a child out of their native land you have a huge responsibility to give them an opportunity to know about their culture and their race," Julie said. "I don't adopt from other countries because I want to have a child from this country and this country. I want my children to have a strength of knowing who they are and where they come from."

While in Ethiopia, the couple met Yemisrach, Abebe and Belaynesh, three siblings who were living at the orphanage. Belaynesh, who was best friends with Amelework, sobbed when she learned that the Hehns were taking Amelework back to the U.S.

"I told Belaynesh that I would find her a family," Julie recalled. "I was really cautious about saying that it would be me. I had to be sure I could come through with my promise."

In June 2002, the Hehns returned to Addis-Ababa for the three siblings. A month later they adopted Rahewa, who like Misrak, had been living with another Western Washington family but things didn't work out.

In January 2003, the Hehns added 2-year-old Tariku to their family. The toddler had been living with a southern Washington family, but the family needed to place him somewhere else. In December, they brought 12-year-old Marta home — she also had been living with a Washington family who needed to have her live elsewhere.

The Hehns are currently working on the paperwork to complete Marta's adoption.

Merrily Ripley, the director of Adoption Advocates in Port Angeles, said the Hehns are a family she has grown to trust with children who need new homes once they come to Washington.

"They always seem very calm with the children. Julie and Rich have a lot of experience," said Ripley, who also is the mother of biological and adopted children.

Next, the Hehns hope to adopt an 8-year-old HIV-positive girl from an Ethiopian orphanage.

Juggling chores

The longevity of the refrigerator door is always a concern at the Hehn house.

With children, grandchildren and neighborhood kids always running in and out of the kitchen, Julie said she realizes that things will break quicker than in most households.

Through her nearly 27 years of motherhood, Julie has learned the best places to store diapers and clothes — in a chest tucked into the corner of the living room. She realizes that the best snack for toddler is a banana and knows that her clothes dryer can handle 17 pairs of jeans at a time.

For two people on teachers' salaries, there's no escaping the financial burden of feeding and clothing so many children. They buy food in bulk, spending about $400 a week on groceries. They rely on hand-me-downs, shop for bargains and never buy new cars.

She said their church, Edmonds Methodist, even donated $2,000 to help them adopt Yemisrach, Abebe and Belaynesh.

"I couldn't do what I do if I didn't take help," Julie said.

Vala Hallgrimson, who has been friends with the Hehns for five years, said the couple do everything possible to help each child feel normal. The kids are enrolled in dance classes, encouraged to participate in high-school sports and given braces.

Julie said they make a point to eat Ethiopian foods regularly and get to know people actively involved in Seattle's Ethiopian communities.

Julie said they save money by buying their produce through the Bothell restaurant they co-own with her daughter from her first marriage, Krissy Girardi, and her husband, Bruno Girardi.

Since opening Stella Mia in April 2000, the couple has not only added a much-needed extra income but they have found a full-time job for some of their high-school- and college-age children.

"I can't figure out how they find time for themselves, the two of them," Hallgrimson said. "But they find time to take off and go to Azteca for a margarita."

Jennifer Sullivan: 425-783-0604 or jensullivan@seattletimes.com