Tracey Fouche: Making a difference for orphans

Tracey Fouche has discovered a wide expanse of world beyond the plains of the Rathdrum Prairie since graduating from Post Falls High School in 2004.

She's visited slums in India reaching out to child prostitutes, spent a semester in London, fought for victims of abuse and domestic violence as a criminal prosecutor in San Diego, led Bible studies for children and teens in California's inner cities and even competed for the title of Miss America.

The whirlwind of experiences led 27-year-old Fouche back to the place she loves most: Her hometown.

"We wanted to raise our family here," said Fouche, who has a 10-month-old daughter with her husband, Tyler. "We love the natural beauty of it. We love the small-town feel."

After graduating from Whitworth College she went on a mission trip to India. There, she met her husband and was inspired to seek a law degree.

"We were building houses for the Dalits, who are members of the untouchables caste," she said. "They are not even treated like humans. They're just treated horribly."

The volunteers were replacing homes washed away by floods. The Indian government, she said, refused aid to the Dalits - viewed as societal outcasts.

"That really opened my eyes to the injustice that's in this world," she said. "That inspired me to go to law school. I just wanted to see good in the world and I wanted to help people. To me, it seemed the legal system was a great means to do that."

Following her first year at Pepperdine University School of Law, Fouche returned to India as an intern with the Dalit Freedom Network, reaching out to a group of girls who are called devadasis in Indian societal culture. Also known as temple prostitutes, devadasis are dedicated - sometimes at birth - to gods and goddesses in the Hindu religion, Fouche said.

"They are expected to have sex with anyone and everyone who comes to them as sort of an offering to these gods and goddesses," she said. "It was horrific to see these girls who were set aside as a little child. I think about my own daughter and it just breaks my heart.

During the internship, Fouche helped with building a home - a safe place - for girls and women rescued from the abusive lifestyle.

Her trips to India were her first experience with orphans and one of the inspirations that led Fouche to open her Coeur d'Alene-based law firm specializing in adoption.

"There are kids out there who don't have homes," she said, "and that is heartbreaking."

Had you done any mission work prior to volunteering in India?

It was my first experience and it was shocking. Ravi, the man we were working with there, was telling us about kids in the village we were working at and was saying it is so sad. They were not getting an education because they can't afford a teacher and the government won't provide a teacher. He said it was $100 a month for a teacher for the whole village and there was no way they could do it. I was thinking, 'A hundred dollars? Did I hear you right?'

I realized how much we have here and how little it takes to change someone's life. I could make an impact even if it's just for handful of people. That really got me thinking.

After graduating from law school you worked for the Family Protection Unit in the San Diego District Attorney's Office. Was that a good fit for you?

It was a lot of domestic violence and child abuse cases. I was prosecuting people charged with these crimes. I got to work with the victims. It was really interesting. I got to work on a couple of murder cases. It was really heart wrenching, but meaningful work.

It was a good fit and I enjoyed it, but I also had a baby and it just really wasn't conducive to family life for me. I would come home so worked up about the injustice I was seeing. I didn't think I could leave that at work. I was thinking about what else I could do and adoption was on my heart. I decided to pursue that.

Are there other reasons adoption is near and dear to your heart?

During law school I got to be real good friends with Amanda (Schmitt) who is my partner in the law practice. She went through the process of adopting a little girl while I was there in law school. It was amazing to see. She and her husband weren't able to have biological children, so there was that heartbreak and that grief process to walk through with her. She got connected with this girl who was a very young girl who found herself pregnant, an unplanned pregnancy. Her little girl is my goddaughter.

Getting to see that experience firsthand was really inspiring. They walked through the whole process with this girl, who was scared out of her mind and found herself in this very stressful situation. They helped her find a job and a place to live and were a great support system to her. Now they are best friends.

It's just cool to see how redemptive adoption is. It's never really the first choice for anyone, but it's very redemptive and helps bring something good out of a difficult situation.

Your law practice is called Adoptions West?

My partner lives in Colorado. We're both licensed in California. I got licensed in Idaho when I moved back and she's going to take her exam in Washington so we will be able to cover all of California and Washington. We decided to open this practice based here in Idaho. She's been travelling here and we work together, otherwise we work remotely.

We're going to be doing domestic infant adoption. That's when an expectant mother comes to us and she's facing an unplanned pregnancy. If she decides she is not able to parent this child and wants to place this child for adoption, we help her find a family who is looking to adopt and we facilitate that match.

We will also be able to do finalization. So, when someone is adopting through the state - like the foster system - we will be able to finalize that. We can also do international adoption. We do the last legal work, called re-adoption, when the child is brought back to the country. We'll be doing step-parent and relative adoption and embryo adoption, which is pretty new.

What does embryo adoption entail and how popular is it?

It's pretty new in the adoption world. More than 500,000 embryos are available and just frozen in the U.S. right now. Basically, how that happens is a couple goes in and they do in-vitro fertilization. For a multitude of reasons, there are multiple embryos left over. They usually create quite a few and implant until it works.

A lot of these families who believe life begins at conception are thinking, 'OK, I have all these little lives that are frozen, that I created, and I don't know what to do with them.' It's become popular to donate them to couples who are unable to have children on their own.

Amanda is in the process of adopting two embryos. A couple can implant them in the woman and she can carry the pregnancy and give birth to a child just like you would on your own. It's a real amazing thing and it's pretty new. What we'll be doing from a legal standpoint is making a contract between the donor and the recipient. That person can experience property.

What is the most challenging part of your job?

There is a lot of emotion involved for a woman who is making a decision whether to place her baby. I can't imagine too many decisions more difficult than that.

A lot of adoptive parents I work with are not able to have biological children of their own. They want nothing more than a baby and they have to wait on someone else and see what their decision is. We've seen failed adoptions before where someone who says they are going to place their baby and at the last minute changes their mind.

The hardest part is entering into that sadness. There's always some element of sadness or hurt or disappointment because you've got someone who didn't want to be pregnant or someone who desperately wanted a child or isn't able to.

How do you deal with the sadness and stress?

By looking at the end results. For me, a lot of it is my faith and trusting God is going to work all things together for good and that this is a broken world we live in. There's a lot of hurt and a lot of sadness, but believing God is good and He has the final say and He loves the people I get to work with even more than I do. At the end of the day, it 's just turning it over to Him and trusting he's going to take care of them.

You were Miss Idaho? How did that come about?

I had a family friend mention it to me. They knew I was going to college and it's expensive. I was paying my own way through college. I enjoyed it, never expecting to win. It was an awesome experience. It started out in the North Idaho program and then went to state and then to Miss America. It was exciting.

Did you have prior pageant experience?

Not in pageants, but I had participated in the Junior Miss Program. It's now Distinguished Young Women. I participated in that and had been the Idaho representative. Now, I'm running the Distinguished Young Women of Post Falls program with two friends from high school. It's like coming full circle.

What was the Miss America pageant like?

The women were really amazing young women who were going to medical school and law school and were teachers. They had so much ambition and talent. It was neat just to meet all these incredible women.

It was scary and stressful to be on stage and know you were going to be on national television and you better not mess up.

For the talent portion you performed ballet. How did you get started dancing?

I probably started when I was about 9. I went to the Ballet School of Coeur d'Alene with Ceci Klein and danced all the way through high school. Miss America was really my last performance.

Now I just enjoy doing it on the side, but is something I was really into growing up.

I went six days a week, a few hours each day. I went to the School of American Ballet in New York on summer and Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle. I learned a lot of self-discipline and a lot of life lessons through that.

A few weeks ago, I took my first lesson since having a baby. It was kind of surreal to be back there after all those years.