Talk Show Arranged Adoption

Dying of AIDS and cervical cancer, Jacqueline McClure was desperate to find someone to adopt her two daughters. She found new parents in a distinctly '90s way through a daytime talk show.

McClure, daughters Tamika and Latasha and their new guardians appear on Thursday's Sally Jessy Raphael show, which brokered the arrangement.

"I definitely think that (Raphael) did right by me and did right by my children," said McClure, now in a nursing home in Cleveland.

Debra Harder, network director for Adoptive Families of America, said it was the first time she had heard of a TV show helping arrange a specific adoption. While happy the girls appeared cared for, she said she was concerned they could be shortchanged by not going through traditional channels.

"I wouldn't like to see it become a trend," said Harder, whose St. Paul, Minn.-based agency publishes a magazine and gives information to potential adoptive parents.

McClure first appeared on Raphael's show on March 24 to ask for help. Her daughters, ages seven and eight, had different fathers and both are dead, she said.

The 41-year-old Cleveland woman wanted to make sure the girls remained together and believed the show was the best, and quickest, way to ensure that.

"There are a lot of people out there who don't have a lot of money and they can't afford regular adoption," McClure said. "I was scared to death my children were going to end up in foster homes. I didn't have time to wait."

Raphael forwarded four boxes stuffed with several thousand letters from viewers to McClure after her initial appearance. McClure said she tried to contact about 18 people who wrote. Only Ronald and Katonya Everett of Wayneboro, Miss., responded.

The couple met one of McClure's requirements they very much wanted children but were physically unable to have them.

The Everetts drove 16 hours to Cleveland to meet McClure and the girls. Everyone got along, and the deal was sealed in McClure's mind when Ronald yelled at a driver in time to prevent a car from running over one of the girls as she rode a bike. McClure is convinced he saved her life.

The girls now live with the Everetts in Mississippi. They plan to adopt them after McClure's death.

Harder wishes the Everetts well but believes McClure could have found prospective parents who are trained to deal with children who lost parents to AIDS. She is also concerned about how the girls will be affected by having their story featured on television and in newspapers.

The show had nothing to do with McClure's screening process and said the Everetts will go through the usual adoption proceedings. The show paid to send the new family on vacation in Alabama, bought a gift certificate for clothes and purchased a phone card for McClure to keep in touch with the girls, she said.

McClure calls her children each week from the nursing home.

By DAVID BAUDER