We are mostly volunteer run so when you see someone with a name tag and pink shirt say thank you to them for volunteering today. My name idsassi is. The book tent is by the book signing area. If you want to drop by. Im the author of the novel start with a backseat which housekeeping kind of announcements. Should silence your devices. We hope you are following gps on Facebook Twitter and instagram. When you post about the festival, please use the Hashtag Hashtag dbs. Your feedback is very valuable to us. Surveys are available to us at the tent. At this tent over here, and every tent really. So when you are done with your time here, please drop those off or you can visit that website afterwards. By cementing a survey, you will be entering a drawing to get a 100 visa gift card. Thats a great thing. Rob will be signing books immediately after the presentation. Copies of his book, are on sale in the tent which is right there. A quick word about buying books, this is a free event, but it does note and help the book festival if you buy books from here because the more books we can sell at our events the more publishers will want to send their authors wou to talk to us. Purchasing books from our partners also help support one of the greatest independent bookstores around and benefits our local economy. So if you can please buy a book here today. At least one. Maybe more. So, let me tell you about rob scheer. I know rob because about five years ago, he and his family walked into my church. The small church appear hundred 28 the United Methodist church, and im not going to lie to you, when we first saw them walk in, we all stared at them. We were confused, we didnt know who they were or what was going on. There were two rather tall, white man with four africanamerican children. But our confusion quickly turned to admiration. Rod and his has been race adopted children who need a loving home. They walk the talk. They carry it off an amazing amount of grace. They are very patient, with those of us who at first might stare. Along with his has been race, rob is the cofounder of comfort cases. Its mission is to inspire communities to bring dignity to youth in foster care. When they began comfort cases, our Church Members and friends shared our building, we volunteered our resources, and we wereng all in on this worthy cause and charity in support of their mission. Now, he years later they have grown, and they are all across the country and rob will tell you more about how and where. You may have already seen them tell their story on national platforms. They were on the today show, the Ellen Degeneres show up for the and various new shows, all of the internet, so you may have heard of them before. When robin reese were getting noticed by the public media, for this great charity, the thing that intrigued a lots of people that they met, tv producers website people,th was robs personal story. It this is what brought him to start comfort casesn the first place. Abby overcome such a difficult childhood and youth. He turned his life into one of joy in giving. This memoir forever family is that story. For me personally the fact that we live in a place where this year six thats what we call them, are a normal part of our Diverse Church family, and of our Loving Community is another reason i love gaithersburg. Now tell a story, allow me to introduce rob scheer. [applause] good morning,. How humbling. This is my town, this is my community. I am so absolutely proud to be here today. I am proud of the fact that they called me ago farmer from maryland you know, the father of four kids, and you guys want to hear me talk. I will tell you as a homeless kid who grew up on the streets of northern virginia, ive never in a million years thought that i would stand here in front of all of you to tell a story that i lived everyday. See i am the youngest of ten kids. Ten kids. My mother had been married six times, we lived in every shelter and return it miller at maryland dc. My earliest memories was my father kneeling us kids down and putting a gun to our heads and pulling the cold trigger and we could hear it click and he would laugh and say i wonder which one will be on themselves first. Yeah. I was family. That is what we lived every single day. I remember my father would sit in his chair and he would scream out for one of us kids and we didnt run fast enough, to give him the beer out of the refrigerator, we knew what was going to happen. We knew the cigarette that was going to touch our leg and the murmur it would make. See i am 52 years old and to this day i i still have cars for my father not just the scars there inside but the scars that are physically that you can see on my body. Life was really rough. I just know that i deserved better. Even at a young age, i would see other families and i would think to myself, there is none to be something more than this. Well, little did i know, that when i turned 12 years old, my parents would die. Wow, i was so excited. [laughter]. Yet how sad is that. House and have a child who is excited for the death of their parents. But i thought to myself, i am never going to be abused again. I am never ever going to have to worry about the sacrifices that all of us kidse based. I was 12 years old at that. And i had still h never had a birthday. I was 12 years old and never remember a Christmas Tree going up in my home. I was 12 years old and i never remember pictures being on the wall. I was 12 years old and i never remember having my own bike i never did steam sports, i was never allowed to do anything because we were the poor family. When i went into foster care i thought wow this is going to be a big change for me. I was pretty excited. Im a member up the driveway carrying this. Its a trash bag, see for me i didnt really realize that there was anything wrong with this because that is what we carried all of the time from shelter to shelter. Our member walking into the house and the lady pulling the stuff out of that trash bag and i remember her saying to her husband, he doesnt even having any decent clothes to wear to church tomorrow. I remember her looking at me and saying you really need to get in the shower. She walked me down the hallway, open up the bathroom door and close the door behind me. You know at that moment is a 12 yearold boy, i knew that my life was different. I do is different becausent of e irish spring bar of soap that was sitting in the shower. That will never be in my house. That irish spring bar of soap truly defined the fact that i was a kid that was in the system. See everybody expected me to get into the shower and grab the br of soap, leather my body up just forget the fact that what were their middle names, what color do they like, see the fact is that kids in our foster care system in our homes are people they do not know. We expect them to assimilate into their families without giving them any kind ofm, consideration of the fact that they deserve dignity. They deserve to have their own bar of soap. They should have that. They should not have to ask for it, we should already have provided it forum. So this really stuck in the back of my mind but you know what i wanted to be a good kid, i wanted a family to love me. Ha i wanted teachers to say what a great kid he was. Because by the way, at the age of 12, i was already losing my other brothers and sisters. By the time i turned 18, there was only five of us left. The other five had died from either drug overdose, suicide, right now as of today i have a brother who is serving life in prison. I have another brother who chooses to be homeless and i have a sister who has been in and out of every Psychiatric Hospital in maryland virginia and dc. See the fact is that theheri kis who are in our system come to the center because of choices other people made. We have 438,000 kids in foster care. Do you realize that only 54 percent of them will graduate from high school. Only 11 percent of them apply to college. Only 3 percent get a college education. This year alone in our country we will see 30000 children aged out of our foster care system. 70 percent of themre will be homeless within two years. I remember that. I was a senior in high school, the fall of my senior year, i turned 18. I was pretty excited because i had made it that far. I was pretty excited that i was actually a senior in high school. Life was a little rough in my foster family but it was okay because i had a roof over my head, id a family that i truly knew that left me r, until two weeks after my 18th birthday and i turned 18 and received this. I remember coming home and receiving my trick bag and i was no longer allowed in their home because the check stopped. That happened so many times c in our system. We have been making money on the backs of children for way too many years. Some are me, i came became homeless. I will never forget that first night. I will never forget hiding my trash bag behind the bush school and going into school with my mad held high and thinking that i deserve this. Every single day, i would go to school. Every day i would walk down the halls and i would hope the kids wouldnt make fun of me because of the holes in my shoes, make fun of me because by the way, my beautiful pearly whites and they are beautiful, you dont have to tell me, they cost me an arm and a leg because nobody bothered to stop to give mengike a toothbrush. Thats just not acceptable. Every day i went to school. I would go into the lunch rooms and i would wait until the kids left the lunch room and i would dig through the trash and grab as much food as i can and put it in mys backpack because they didnt know if i was going to eat that night. And in the evening times when i wasnt working my 3. 35 an hour at the taco placee which by the way, were kind enough to leave the outside door unlocked so that i could sleep. I would spend my time in the public library. The public library, i would read every single book i could get my hands on. See for me, books were my escape. Books were enabled for me to fall into them and felt forget everything that was around me. I remember around 9 00 oclock, every night when i went there, so the librarian would come over and tap me on my shoulder and she would say, is closing time. I would go outside andhe grab my r trash bag and walk down route8 and Prince William county and go to the taco place and i would sleep there and i. I would wake up the next morning, doing my homework pushed up against the door and walked back to school. That was a to day life for me. I remember it was the spring of 1985 and it was time forme graduation. It was the saddest time in my life. The reason i was so sad is because for eight hours a day i ha aoo over my hands. I got at least one meal a day and all of that was going to go away. I remember sitting in missus browns english class and my name got called over the loudspeaker. I said to myself my gosh somebody has finally going to talk about the fact that i am homeless. Someone is finally going to look at me and say you matter. See before they didnt ever look at me they looked through me. They didnt have eye contact with me because if the student acknowledge me than would have to realize you failed me. I walked out of the Principals Office and walked into merce mrm standing there thinking to, myself, either going to put me in a booke group home or make e switch schools the last two months but at least i am going to be in a bed. That didnt happen. He said robert you going to the senior trip. I said no mr. Thompson, am not. I couldnt afford to pay for that. He says no, somebody paid for you. And hereby the way and handed me an envelope. It was 75. And they also wanted you to have some spending money. El ill never forget that day with mr. Thompson. Realizing that somebody has stepped up and realize that i actually do exist. That they knew me to pay for my trip, and give me some pocket money. So that gave me a bit of energy to get through the last month. So i graduated from high school. I remember walking across the stage receiving my diploma and i was the saddest kid in the world. Because i was like what the hell am i going to do now. I knew where the shelter was, i knew the fact that i could do it most people expected me to do. Get involved in drugs, be that kid that didnt amount to anything be thehe statistics tht we see where two out of three kids in our foster care system will be dead or in jail. Dinner in jail. I wasnt going to be the number. So i joined the military. I joined the military and made something of myself i became a successful businessman. Ive never looked back. See for me my golden ring that i was trying to grab, was having the fastest car, having the most money in my bank account are more than the foster kid would ever have. The biggest house in dc so you all would look at it and say wow, look at that successful guy. See to me, thats what i thought was important. Until ten years ago. Four of the most amazing kids who walked into my life. For the most amazing kids in our foster care system, came in carrying this. Ill never forget that night. My daughter and my was four years old she was the cutest little girl id ever seen. She had the saddest little girl. We went shopping that day, and i remember we were grabbing toys and everything we could get our hands on and amaya never smiled. I remember saying to race that i am the happiest guy in the world because i am finally a dad. But i am a dad to the saddest little girl in the world. She got out of the bathtub last that night and wanted to bedroom and laying on the bed or three nightgowns, she picked one of them up and she tried to take off and she smiled with the very first time. I remember saying to amaya why are you smiling. She said mr. I have never owned a new nightgown before. See thats just not acceptable. We n were her third home. No way should a child not have their ownn brandnew pair of pajamas. Her little brother mckay arrived with her. Mckay was two years old, and they told us he would never going to talk and probably would never walk. I remember the social worker handing him to us and saying are you sure you want this one area like he was a piece of clothing. Once again mckay had been in three other homes before he arrived in our home. Mckay had open bed sores on his back from a mother who gave birth to him and put him in a crib and didnt picking up for 18 months. Mckay was lost. He needed us as much as we needed him. We immediately became a family of four. Three did i know that months later, i would receive two more beautiful gifts. My amazing son grayson who is by the way,d, and his mother was 12. She was 12 years old when she gave birth to him. He beat he came into the system the first time with bleeding of the brain and shaken baby syndrome. It eight months later the giving back and then she broke his ribs. Not one, not to but three. Not only did he arrived but he arrived with his baby brother tristan. It was six months old and again theyd been to other homes and still carrying this. Kristen had ais scar on his che, a scar where his mother a taken a razor blade and carved her boyfriends initials. By the way, she was 14. By the h way, she was part of te system. And by the way, she was your child. She was my child. She was our child. See the fact is that if these kids who are in the system belong to us. They belong to eachr and every one of use , these are not bad kids. Theres no such thing as a bed get only a child who needs to be redirected. I knew at thate moment to be a family of six it was going to take a lot of work but we were in it. We were in it to make sure thee kids had a chance. We were in it to make sure these kids knew the matter. Life is tough. It was tough. All of a sudden we were two guys living in the city and we were now a family of six with three in diapers. Most of you had nine months to prepare, we had three. But we did it. Every day we would just getet up in the morning, i remember we would look at my son mckay and we would say, we know you are in there. We would move his arms and move his legs and we would work at lunchtime and go to his daycare and move his arms and move his legs and a social worker would say you know the dr. Say he is never going to talk. He is never going to walk why are you guys doing this. And we said, because he deserves it. He deserves it. Every day we just got barely getting by by the way we were barely getting by. We moved out of dc, and moved to the most amazing place we could ever dream of. Our sound maryland. Who wouldve thought to white guys and for black kids would live here. I remember when rhys told me that he found a house in darn sound and i said you do know what we look like right. He says were going to make this happen. Remember we walked into darn sound Elementary School and met this call garyth for the first time the principal. I remember ms. Miss go gary saying i will have to tell you that we dont have any families that look like you. But we are excited. We were excited too. I remember saying to her that there were some changes that had to be made in the school immediately. And she said who are you. I said aloud now. I said wed have to make sure tt we no longer have muffins moms. It has nothing to do with the fact that my children dont have a mother. It has to do with the fact that all of the children in the school level los than mother. Ld love los than mother to cancer, to diseases, and every time you say lets do muffins for moms, your mind that child that they dont have a mom. Your mind that child that they are different. See we as adults, should never do that and by the way, we do not do donuts for dance. The number of kids who have lost their fathers to the war, to the war, a war that our adults go to the children dont understand and then we stick them in the school and remind them that we are having donuts for dance and by the way my dads dead. We cant do there. And i was soat excited that not only are pta but we are going to eliminate that but now we have donuts for darn town we have room for families and we are pretty lucky we even have muffins from update. We have what we i always knew what we had, and community. A community that loves us. Not yourunity, it is zip code, it is your human great. Co when affects me in my Little Family and in this town affects people in austin texas or la or we have to realize that our forefathers built communities for only one reason. That was for us to take care of each other. We have forgotten along that along the way. Look for the shears, we didnt want to forget it. So five years ago, when again we were barely getting by, my husband came home from work and said he didnt want to do this anymore and i was like zero crap, divorce time. I did it no gaze got divorced at that. But i was like, no i dont want to go to work every day worrying about mckay and worrying about the other kids. I want to be a stayathome dad. So we change things around and he became a stayathome dad. Two weeks into that he hands me an article is as read this. Nana rented about a little girl that was adopted out of foster care whose parents really wanted