The Starbucks in Brentwood

When I first took into my home the girl who would become my daughter, I went to my church for help. The response was very unexpected as I thought the church would be the first line of defense. I understood most people saw a teenage girl in the home of older man who was not related to her.

One of the biggest challenges when I took in the girl who would become my daughter was that I did it out of mentorship and she wasn’t my legal daughter at the time – so many saw it as 37 year old man living with an 18 year old girl. The optic was not good.

I remember being careful who I shared it with. I was a member of a family of churches for about 10 years at that point but at a different member church at the time – I’d only been there 5 years at that point.

I remember talking to a specific Pastor about it and being told “I’m not sure if I can use you. [This Church] can’t be your covering anymore. God will have to be your covering”.

I was advised by another pastor to kick her to the curb, that she was 18, didn’t need to be living in my home and should choose either job, the military, or higher education.

By February 25, 2012, the weight of the situation of trying to rescue the girl who would become my daughter had become nearly unbearable. I had been working closely with Dr. Brian Miller on a case of potential child endangerment that spanned the border between the U.S. and Canada. A young girl, alone and grieving the death of her parents, I believed was being lured toward Winnipeg by strangers she had only met online. To those of us watching from the outside, it screamed of a trafficking situation waiting to happen – I wasn’t sure exactly what it was.

Dr. Miller suggested I reach out to a local pastor, Ps. Bert Thomsen. He was familiar with the region, and he wasn’t a stranger to me; we had shared Thanksgiving dinner at Wayne Headley’s before. During that meal, he had even prophesied over me, encouraging me that I would eventually be involved in something significant. At the time, I had no idea that “something” would be a life-or-death intervention for a child.

We met at a Starbucks near Bethel World Outreach Center. I arrived seeking insight and guidance. I had been raised in the church in New York City, a tradition that taught me the church was the first line of defense. I believed the Body of Christ was where you went to stop trafficking, to protect the vulnerable, and to intervene when the world turned a blind eye.

As I laid out the facts—the girl’s isolation, the lack of a guardian, the suspicious digital lure—I waited for a plan of action. Instead, the atmosphere shifted.

By the end of our coffee, the air felt cold. Rather than offering help, Ps. Bert stated that I was the one who should be investigated for trafficking. He seemed genuinely alarmed, but not for the girl. I had never seen anyone in such a hurry to end a meeting. I sat there, stunned and disappointed, watching him leave.

Words matter. Looking back ten years later, the memory is still disturbing. I recently sat with Pastor James Lowe to unpack this chapter of my life. We realized that if the alarm had been genuine, there should have been a follow-up—a conversation with senior leadership or the youth pastor. Instead, there was only a stinging silence.

The irony of that season was that the help I expected from one source eventually came from another. I turned to Pastor Adam Burt of EveryNation NYC. Though I’d often felt he understood me the least, he didn’t hesitate. He connected me with a congregant traveling to that region. Together with a private investigator, they took photos of the exact location the girl had been told she would live.

When we showed her those photos—the real exteriors, the license plates, the stark reality—it was like scales falling from her eyes. The dream she’d been sold didn’t match the images in front of her. That was the turning point. Pastor Adam helped save the day, providing the very “first line of defense” I had been searching for.

Ultimately, that young girl moved into my home. We became a family through a legal adoption, appearing before a judge who ensured there was no coercion involved. Today, she is a functioning adult, facing the same “millennial problems” any other thirty-year-old might. She isn’t a tragic headline on 48 Hours or a mystery on a Netflix reboot. She has a family structure to fall back on.

For me, the pain of that Starbucks meeting was rooted in my own history. As a Vietnam war orphan airlifted out of Saigon in April 1975, I knew what it meant to be adopted, and I knew what it meant to be vulnerable. I believed the church was the place that intervened. While that one meeting was a source of deep hurt, the story didn’t end there. It ended with a daughter who was no longer alone.

Pastor Bert Thomsen and EveryNation GTA was sent this in 2024 and did not respond. My covering was never restored by Pastor James Lowe as I brought it to his attention. I never saw spiritual family the same. The label of a child trafficker never felt lifted at Every Nation because of Pastor Bert’s lack of response.