By Krissy Fasy, an employee of The Adoption Exchange

If you’re an Xennial like me – that Jordan-Catalano-loving, Oregon-Trail-playing micro-generation between Gen X and Millennials – you can remember a time when phones had cords, and the most complex piece of technology in the pocket of your Z Cavariccis was a TI-81 calculator. Even as home computers became common in the 1980s, most of us still got our information from the radio, the newspaper, and the five o’clock news – and our news anchors’ faces were as familiar to us as those of our friends and family. It was into this analog world that The Adoption Exchange was born, and our local news station, CBS4, was a pioneer in delivering our message to the world.

In 1983, Dixie Davis was frustrated. As a psychologist, Dixie was passionate about connecting kids in foster care with loving families who could become permanent parts of their lives – but she realized that no matter how hard she tried to find families for every youth, dozens remained in foster care year after year. Dixie knew that if people could only see the hopeful faces of waiting children and hear their stories, more families would consider adoption. So, she set out to make it happen.

Dixie founded The Adoption Exchange in 1983 with a small group of social workers and socially-minded citizens to help “exchange” information about waiting kids, so that families in one county or state could learn about youth available for adoption in neighboring counties or states. Dixie and her colleagues printed photos, wrote biographies, created albums and galleries, and delivered them throughout the state. Still, they knew that getting on television was the best – and in those days, the only – way to reach a much larger audience, so Dixie started making some calls.

Her exact pitch to CBS4’s General Manager Roger Ogden is lost to history, but we know she succeeded in touching the hearts of Ogden and his team because pretty soon, weekly “Wednesday’s Child” segments began airing on CBS4 in Denver. Much like today, each week a different waiting youth shared his or her hopes and dreams of finding a forever family with the people of Colorado. And at The Adoption Exchange’s headquarters, the phone began to ring.

CBS4 News Director Tim Wieland recalls meeting Dixie when he was 23 years old and in his first year at CBS4, sometime in the ‘80s: “I was invited to dinner with Dixie and was warned that she is so passionate about adoption that she would leave the entire table in tears. I was certain I wouldn’t cry, but like everyone at the table, after hearing her stories of youth in foster care getting connected with families, I cried. Once I composed myself, I decided I wanted to do everything I could to support those life-changing moments.”

Tim was true to his word, joining The Adoption Exchange’s Board of Directors several years ago and continuing to support our work through advocacy, weekly Wednesday’s Child tapings, an annual CBS4-hosted Day of Giving called “A Day for Wednesday’s Child,” and so much more. By simply giving a platform to youth waiting in foster care, Tim and the entire CBS4 family realized that they could change the future for thousands of youth by giving them a chance to be safe and loved.

“Once I composed myself, I decided I wanted to do everything I could to support those life-changing moments.”
– Tim Wieland, News Director (CBS4) & Board Member (The Adoption Exchange)

Since that first “Wednesday’s Child” feature so many years ago, The Adoption Exchange has connected over 9,000 waiting youth with loving families and has expanded our services to focus on both connecting the longest-waiting, hardest-to-place youth with caring adults and supporting families with trauma-informed interventions that help them heal and thrive. We salute CBS4’s efforts on behalf of Colorado’s youth in foster care: Thank you for being such an integral part of The Adoption Exchange’s journey to change the future!