Foster Parents Adopt Children Found In Hard Rock Parking Lot

Two children have a new home after both were raised in separate situations where they were terribly neglected.

The foster parents who've taken care of the children for the past two years adopted them and are giving them a new life.

Two years ago, Alex was found wandering around the Hard Rock parking lot when Catoosa officers rescued him and gave him food and clothing.

A few weeks later they found Amber at the Hard Rock, she was also being neglected by her mother.

Rarely do officers get to see how these cases end, but Thursday they did, and it had a happy ending.

Alex is six now, and remembers the officers who found him, how they took care of him and got him to a better place. He wanted them to see him get adopted.

“Any police officer we run into, he says, ‘You guys saved my lives. Remember that time I was walking around the casino,'" Alex's mother, Emily Christensen.

Alex is now a happy, social, polite little boy, but his new parents, Nathan and Emily, said that wasn't the case when they got him.

"He didn't know how to use utensils, didn't know what a crayon was. He had a lot of catching up to do. Because of a lack of experience, didn't know about taking baths, sleeping in a bed, under the covers, things like that," his parents explained.

While they were foster parents to Alex, they also got Amber - coincidentally another casino baby. She was 18 months old then, but already taking care of herself.

"She wouldn't let us touch her bottle. She would feed herself. She would hit herself in the chest to burp herself," Emily said.

With love, and lots of work, Alex and Amber are brother and sister and have new parents who reassure them that their past parents loved them and just made bad decisions.

"Give them a way to tell their story in a positive light, not just the hard things, because there were a lot of hard things," Emily said.

She encourages others to become foster parents. She said the rewards are so great, and, of course, the Catoosa officers loved having played a part in changing the future for the two children.