Unplugged: The Cook Family

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A Minivan and A Plan

By Stephanie Flores

Attorney Dennis Cook and music professor Susan Lamb Cook walked into Sierra Adoption Services just to take a parenting class. The busy professionals needed the class to adopt a newborn baby, and eventually, they hoped, a second child. Ten years later, they now have a Pontiac minivan parked outside their Pocket home with a license plate frame that reads, “Final Score: Boys 3, Girls 1.”
    But the old minivan isn’t driven by Susan, 50, or Dennis, 54, anymore. It’s driven by their oldest son, George, 17. George was one of four in a sibling group the Cooks adopted through Sierra Adoption. The agency focuses on special-needs kids, including older children waiting for adoption and sibling groups, all of whom are harder to place.
    When George, Celene, Dan and Angelo arrived at the Cook house in 1997, all they had was a bag of clothes. Today, the teenagers play musical instruments, participate in sports and attend private school. As for the parents, Susan still enjoys a thriving music career, and Dennis still partners a successful law firm, Cook Brown LLP. But having children in their home has influenced the couple’s work lives.
    Susan, a cellist, has a lengthy resume of chamber and solo performances in Sacramento and abroad. She has also taught music for the past 30 years, including her current position as a professor at UC Davis. Having kids has changed her perspective on teaching young people.
    “For me, it was realizing what an example we set,” she says. “The young people are always watching.”
Dennis, who practices employment and labor law, spent much of his career traveling and working long hours. He doesn’t spend much time in the courtroom anymore, but he does go to his Capitol Mall office every day, where he practices a policy he aquired at home.
    “Encouragement works better than criticism,” Dennis says. “I learned that at home and apply it at work.”

A Complete Blur
Like many couples, the Cooks wanted to have a child the natural way. When they weren’t successful, they tried to adopt a baby and even looked as far as Russia. After the couple took required parenting classes at Sierra Adoption, the agency approached Susan about adopting a sibling set. “We were hoping to adopt a child, and, hopefully, a second child,” Dennis says. The idea of a package deal was “pretty surprising,” he says. “You just had to get over the initial shock.”
    Adoption agencies are trying harder to keep siblings together, says Delores E. Covington, an Elk Grove-based licensed therapist who used to work for Sierra Adoption and now counsels the Cook kids in their teenage years.
    The Cook children were actually part of a seven-sibling set. In the beginning, two of them were in receiving homes and two were in foster care. For about six weeks, they visited the Cooks once a week, the only time the children saw one another.
    It was during one of these visits that Susan remembers everything falling into place. After a long day at a Sacramento River Rats hockey game, swimming in the backyard and the kids excited to see one another, the couple was eager to put them down for a nap. Once the silence set in, an exhausted Susan stopped to look around.
    Susan says: “They were all sprawled out on the floor with their mouths open, drooling. That’s when I thought, ‘Yes, this is right. This is home to me.’ ”

Yin Yang Parents
For the past 10 years, the Cooks have been great at juggling schedules and meeting the needs of the children, therapist Covington says. “These people are high achievers. The environment they have provided for the children has been so stimulating,” she says, noting the opportunities the kids have had to travel and to learn a musical instrument.“The children are really finding their own way.”
    The kids are all teenagers now, ranging from 13 to 17. They are exploring their individuality and independence, says Covington, adding that they are adjusting well, but still see her on a regular basis. Being a teen is hard enough, Covington says, but the typical struggles are compounded when you add the angst of explaining to your friends why you are different.
    As for teenager George and his white minivan parked outside, he hasn’t asked for the soccer-mom license plate frame to be removed. “The kid is smart,” Dennis says. “He’s asked for a different car, one without 175,000 miles on it.” 

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