Former Foster Child Inspires Fort Worth Family

ARLINGTON (CBSDFW.COM) - Karla Aguilar is a 19-year-old college freshman, eager to begin a new chapter in her life after a horrifying childhood.

She was abandoned by her mother, abused by her stepfather and she lived in five different foster homes. In those foster homes she found loving, caring adults who taught her that her life had value. Aguilar "aged out" of the foster care system when she was 18 and is now a freshman at the University of Texas at Arlington. Her goal is to become a forensic scientist.

CBS 11 News profiled Karla's story on November 29.

A viewer who saw that story decided that Karla would make Christmas complete for his family.

"When the story concluded, I just sat there and said 'she's the one'" said Jerry Gumbert. "She's the one that we're going to connect with this year and celebrate Christmas with."

Gumbert is the President and CEO of AR&D, Audience Research and Development, a nationally recognized media consulting company based in Fort Worth.

Gumbert said he and his family have been blessed with a successful company, so each year before Christmas he and his family try to find someone who deserves something special in their lives. This year they chose Karla Aguilar.

"I'm very surprised. I'm very grateful," Aguilar said.

With her former foster mother and a CASA – Court-Appointed Special Advocate – Supervisor watching in amazement, the Gumbert family presented her with two gifts; a small decorated Christmas tree and a digital camera.

"We heard you're an artist and like to create things in your scrapbooks and that's one of the things we wanted to make sure you had," Gumbert said.

But there was more.

Jerry and Cathy Gumbert and four of their six children returned to their cars to bring in the rest of the gifts in for Karla: an Apple Mac Book laptop computer and a color printer.

They gave the teen an iPad and an iPod, as well as a flat screen television and a DVD player. In addition, the Gumberts gave her numerous gift cards for music, books and clothing stores.

"Your courage and your strength and your determination to make something out of your life really touched our family," Jerry Gumbert said.

Cathy Gumbert said she was also impressed by Aguilar's honesty.

In the Nov. 29 story, Aguilar explained how she was nearly adopted by one of her foster mothers. "But I started acting out," she said. "I started hanging out with the wrong people, making the wrong choices and I had to be removed."

Aguilar admitted it was a hard lesson to learn, but Cathy said she thought it was admirable that Aguilar admitted her mistakes.

The Gumberts have six children and the eldest daughter, Addison, presented Aguilar with a gift basket filled with beauty items.

"Those are some luxuries, lotions and stuff, to make you feel good," she said.

After opening each gift Aguilar said "thank you" and she later admitted she was overwhelmed by the Gumbert's generosity.

"It makes me be thankful that they want me to be part of their lives and they chose me and they could have chosen any other person," Aguilar said.

"We all get knocked down in life every now and then" Jerry Gumbert said to Aguilar. "More than anybody I know you've been able to dust yourself off and pick yourself up and move forward. Here you are a college girl with an unbelievable future in front of you and we thought we wanted deeply to celebrate that with you because you inspire us."

Officials with Texas Child Protective Services estimate that there are currently more than 15,000 children in foster care.

About 6,000 are available for adoption. Studies have shown than many of those who "age out" of foster care enter the prison system, become homeless, or get into trouble with law enforcement.

Karla Aguilar gives much of the credit for her success thus far to her former foster mother, Derenda Bailey. She also credits her mentors with CASA who support her and continue to guide her.

Bailey said she recently asked all of her foster children to write which items they wanted for Christmas.Even though Karla is no longer her foster child, "Karla wrote that she just wanted to have a loving relationship with a family," Bailey said.

"So it wasn't the material things," she said. "It was relationship."