MOTHER'S RESOLVE WOMAN FINDS SOBRIETY, RECOVERS FAMILY.

Byline: Amy Raisin Darvish Staff Writer

LANCASTER - La Toyia Conway-Hampton had been in and out of nearly a dozen women's shelters when child-protection workers took away her seven children in 1998 and placed them in foster homes.

But the South Los Angeles native, whose abuse of alcohol and drugs began before she even reached her teens, said losing her children didn't mark her lowest point.

``Even when they took my kids, that still wasn't rock bottom enough for me,'' Conway-Hampton, 35, said Tuesday in the living room of her Lancaster home. ``It's easy for people to say, stop drinking, or they tell you, just leave (that abusive man). But ain't nothing gonna happen till you find it inside you.''

Ten months later, on Dec. 30, 1998, she took her last drink and began working toward a life that, today, often seems like a dream.

Now a domestic violence counselor and outreach coordinator at Tarzana Treatment Center in Lancaster - the same facility that helped her get sober and regain the custody of her kids - Conway-Hampton is remarried, a homeowner and a new mother to her eighth child, Christian, a boy she delivered less than three weeks ago.

Her journey to rebuild her life and the lives of her children has been so remarkable that the same county agency that took her children away from her is now honoring Conway-Hampton's success as part of its May 2005 Foster Care Awareness Campaign, which the DCFS holds annually to coincide with National Foster Care Month each May.

Sober for more than six years, she said staying drug- and alcohol-free is a daily process.

Conway-Hampton, her husband, Bobby Hampton, and all eight kids, the oldest 19, live together in Lake Los Angeles. Despite the enormous changes in lifestyle and attitude, they all hold the pain of the bad times in their hearts and minds.

Conway-Hampton rattles off the date her children were taken away by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services as easily as if it were one of her kids' birthdays. It was Feb. 4, 1998.

A women's shelter employee called DCFS after spotting the father of five of Conway-Hampton's children at her home. She had fled from him with her children numerous times. The fathers of her two oldest children died in drive-by shootings.

Kennisha Gospel, Conway-Hampton's oldest, was 12 when the county took the seven children and placed them in three foster homes. As the oldest child of an alcoholic, Gospel was a mother figure to her siblings, caring for them and keeping them safe as best she could.

When Conway-Hampton brought her seven kids to the DCFS offices on that fateful day in 1998 - the agency had lured her there under the pretense that she needed to pick up a medical card for her infant - it was Gospel who, minutes after they arrived, knew something wasn't right.

``They said they needed to talk to us kids, but our mom couldn't come in the other room with us,'' said Gospel, a college student who's expecting her first child in three months. ``The little ones, they didn't know nothing was wrong, they just went. But I just looked at my mom; I knew they was taking us and I didn't want to leave my mom.

``They told us, you're gonna go home later. They bought us McDonald's to make us stop crying,'' Gospel said.

Despite their pleas to keep them together, the children were sent to three separate foster homes. One of Conway-Hampton's boys, then 6, was eventually sent to a psychiatric hospital after a disturbing incident at his foster home.

``He was trying to gouge his own eyes out,'' Conway-Hampton said of her son. ``He told his foster mother, 'If I can't see my mom, I don't want to see.' A 6-year-old child. My kids, they've been through a lot. That's why I can't take a drink. If I do, all this - the house, the nice things, my kids, my husband - it all goes away.''

Helping others on familiar paths

Conway-Hampton got two of her children back in May 1999, about six weeks after graduation from Tarzana Treatment Center. When the county took away Conway-Hampton's children, she was ordered to complete a yearlong domestic violence program and a yearlong substance abuse program.

It was those weeks and months of being forced to dig down deep into her childhood, her teen years spent ``gangbanging,'' as she calls it, that Conway-Hampton said she discovered something about herself that she'd never realized: self-worth.

``They made me see that I was beautiful, that I was worthy,'' she said. ``It was about self-esteem and I didn't know what that was. That's why I can counsel women who in the same situation I was in. I know what they going through. Ain't nobody gonna be able to help me just from reading about abuse from a book. You got to know what it's like.''

Louise Grasmehr, director of public affairs with the DCFS in Los Angeles County, has dealt with countless cases of family abuse and drug and alcohol abuse. Grasmehr relishes success stories like Conway-Hampton's.

``We have a lot of success stories, probably more than people think,''Grasmehr said. ``But La Toyia's story is extraordinary. The fact that she had all of her children taken away, so many children, I think she realized the most important thing in her life was those children. She had a social worker who just wouldn't give up on her.

``I just feel very passionate about this woman,'' she said. ``She's maybe the most amazing person I've ever met.''

In addition to her full-time job at the center, Conway-Hampton is a motivational speaker who shares her story with others. On the wall in her tiny office is a police photo of her own face, bruised and bloodied after a fight with her mate years ago. She keeps it there to remind herself how far she's come.

``I sold myself short so many times,'' Conway-Hampton said. ``It's beautiful, how much I've been blessed. When I do my presentations, I tell them that I had to go through all of that to be here for you, to show you that you can have a better life.''

Amy Raisin Darvish, [phone]

amy.raisin(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

(color) Counselor La Toyia Conway-Hampton holds baby Christian, surrounded by husband Bobby and her seven other kids.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer