Meet the Foster Dad Who Helps Children Die

Several years after Mohamed Bzeek came to the US from Libya as a college student in 1978, the quiet, devout Muslim met a woman named Dawn who was a foster parent after being inspired by her grandparents, who had also been foster parents. The two married and began to foster children together in their home in California, eventually taking in only the sickest children, reports the Los Angeles Times. "He’s the only one that would take a child who would possibly not make it," an intake coordinator says. Bzeek has been through the deaths of 10 children, some of whom died in his arms.

Now 62 and a single father, after Dawn died a few years ago, of a special needs teenager studying computer science at a nearby college, Bzeek has been caring for a 6-year-old blind and deaf girl since she was a month old. She was born with encephalocele, meaning part of her brain was sticking out from an opening in her skull, and her brain is largely undeveloped. Her pediatrician credits the 34-pound girl's survival to Bzeek. "The key is, you have to love them like your own," says Bzeek, who has been up throughout the night with his foster daughter every night for years. "I know they are sick. I know they are going to die. I do my best as a human being and leave the rest to God." A GoFundMe page has been set up to help him make ends meet. (This family adopts terminally ill children.)