Learning to Love

Seven years in a Romanian orphanage left Daniel Solomon broken and full of rage. How his new American family healed him -- and themselves.

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When Life Two Started

Heidi Solomon was standing at the kitchen counter of her suburban Cleveland home, slicing cheese to make a sandwich for her ten-year-old son. It was an ordinary April afternoon -- as ordinary as any in the three tumultuous years since she and her husband, Rick, had adopted Daniel. "I don't want that," the boy snapped. Heidi, a slender woman barely taller than Daniel at five feet, didn't respond. Her son's hostility, she knew, had nothing to do with her.


Daniel had spent the first years of his life in an orphanage that was more like a prison than a home for parentless children. Though he was affectionate when the Solomons adopted him, his behavior had deteriorated over time and lately grown even worse. He smashed toys, assaulted other kids, and was expelled from school and briefly committed to a psychiatric hospital.

Still, Heidi wasn't prepared for what happened next. With a snarl, Daniel snatched a six-inch steak knife from the counter and held it near her throat.

Until his adoption, Daniel -- born Florin-Daniel Bica -- had never owned a pair of shoes, never been read to, never gotten a hug. He didn't even know he had parents. A single window offered the only glimpse of the world beyond the orphanage room he shared with dozens of others. "At night, you could see the lights of the city," the boy, now 18, remembers. "I'd wonder what all that was."

Then, one October day in 1996, a strange man led him from the orphanage and into a waiting car. "I had no idea what was going on," says Daniel. "It felt like a dream." Soon he was in an airport, and the man was urging him to say hello to a man and woman. Heidi burst into tears at the sight of the boy in the blue windbreaker. He waved shyly. "That's when Life Two started," Daniel says with a smile.

Heidi had committed herself to adopting a child when she was all of 15 years old. She made the decision after moving to Maryland to train as a gymnast for three years. During that time, she lived in seven different households and often felt more like an imposition than a guest. When she returned home to Ohio, she realized the importance of family -- and something else: "I decided I didn't want to have my own biological children, because there are so many out there who need help."

She became a special-education teacher, working with gang members and emotionally disturbed children. In her spare time, she volunteered with Big Brothers Big Sisters. Rick, who has a marketing job with a vending-machine company, wasn't so keen on adoption, but he accepted it as part of the package when he married Heidi.

Soon after they wed, in 1994, the couple began the process of adopting from overseas. Flipping through an agency catalog one evening, Heidi stopped cold at a picture of a smiling child with caramel skin and coal-black hair. "He just popped out at me," she says. "I said to Rick, 'This is our son.'"

At the time, the boy was living in an austere orphanage in Beclean, Romania. Adult staff fed and cleaned the children and occasionally beat them with sticks; otherwise, they left them to their own devices.

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