Sometimes all it takes is one person to change your life. For 10-year-old True Beethe and his siblings, that person was Dr. Amy Beethe. Back in 2022, True—who was 5 at the time and living in an unstable home—was dropped off at Children’s Nebraska hospital without any guidance or adult supervision.
“He was just sitting there all alone,” Beethe recalled to CBS News. “No adult with him at all.”
While the 10-year-old still has “no idea” why he was left alone in the hospital, he was scheduled to receive a heart procedure to address his rare and severe heart defect, which caused his lung to be underdeveloped, limiting the blood flow to the lungs, known as hypoplastic right heart syndrome.
“Without a successful, loving home life, a patient like True with extraordinarily complex congenital heart disease would not be able to survive,” Dr. Jason Cole, a pediatric cardiologist and medical director of the Advanced Pediatric Heart Failure and Transplant Program at Children’s Nebraska, noted. “To be even considered as a viable candidate for a heart transplant, you must be in a stable environment with consistent care so that the organ is not rejected.”
Throughout the 7-hour surgery, Dr. Beethe explains feeling drawn to the young boy whom she found waiting alone in the hospital’s pre-operative care section. So much so that after the procedure, she presented her husband with the idea of adoption, despite already having six children.
“I called my husband, and I just said, ‘We need to have a talk when we get home. I need you to have an open mind,” Beethe said. “So yeah, that’s how the story goes.”
Her husband, Ryan Beethe, explains that it didn’t take long for his wife to convince him because “it just felt right.” However, what didn’t feel right was leaving True’s five other siblings, with whom he had been living, in that same unstable home.
Understanding that she and her husband could not manage raising 12 kids, Dr. Beethe leaned into her village to ensure each child could be placed in a stable, loving home that would also allow them to stay connected. First, her sister and her husband adopted True’s sister, TyLynn; then her sister-in-law and her husband followed, adopting the young boy’s other sister, Tyra. And after convincing her co-workers to welcome Tacari and Malia into their home, only one of True’s siblings was left, which prompted her to go back to her husband with the same question she had asked him after True’s surgery.
And like with True, the couple decided to adopt his sister Laney.
