LJWorld.com

Marty Smith was first introduced to 8-year-old Shane Lewis four years ago.

At the time, Shane — a brown-haired, blue-eyed boy with cerebral palsy and an enormous smile — had just entered the court system and was about to be removed from the care of his mother, Robin Lewis, for the first time.

Over the next four years, Shane moved back and forth between foster homes and living with his mother.

The one constant was 78-year-old Smith, who, as a volunteer with Douglas County CASA — Court Appointed Special Advocates — had the sole purpose of looking out for Shane’s best interest.

It’s volunteer work that involves dozens of hours in court. But it also grew to include visits at school, attending birthday parties, trips to see Shane’s mother in treatment centers and cheering Shane on at a wrestling match.

“Marty was the only one who stuck through the whole process,” Lewis said.

In the swirl of people involved in the custody case, Lewis always wanted Smith to be there.

“I look at her like a grandmother,” she said.

Lewis gave birth to Shane when she was 16 years old, an age when she wasn’t ready to stop partying. After several rounds of entering drug treatment programs, regaining custody of Shane and then losing it, Lewis relinquished her rights as a parent. She believed her son had slipped out of her grasp forever.

“I felt like my life was over,” she said. “I cried every day. I couldn’t believe I chose to party over my son.”

The turning point came after she had met her boyfriend and found she was two months pregnant.

“I was ready to be a mom and get my life together,” she said. She has been clean for two years.

Smith, with the aid of social service agencies, broached the idea of Lewis adopting Shane — after learning that Shane’s foster family wouldn’t be able to adopt him.

It was a chance that Lewis never thought she would get. A year and half after they were separated, the mother and son met again.

“I was more nervous than I ever have been in my life,” Lewis said.

In December, Shane went to live with Lewis and six months later, his mother officially adopted him. Today he proudly shows off his room covered in Jayhawk crimson and blue.

For Smith, the outcome is close to a miracle.

“It is what every CASA worker hopes will happen. It is just the perfect ending to a case — the one we all work for,” she said.

Shane was among the many children whose lives Smith has touched as a CASA volunteer. She has been involved in the program for almost 20 years, first in Minnesota, where her husband worked as a doctor at the Mayo Clinic, and then in Lawrence, where the two moved to retire.

“It’s a way for me to give and helps me feel like I’m doing something,” Smith said. “I never had a child that I didn’t care a lot about.

Over the years, Smith has witnessed many different endings — children adopted by foster families, others reunited with their biological parents and, sadly, some that never left the system. But in most cases, she said, the child is in a better place than where he or she started.

Smith admits to becoming attached to the children. Her emotion is clear when she talks about how Shane — who can’t walk, but crawls or uses a walker — won his first wrestling match.

Shane is the last case Smith will take.

Not as agile as she used to be, she said it has gotten harder to keep pace with the youngsters.

“It’s a good time to go out,” she said. “I gave it my all. And I don’t have my all any more.”