Frehiwot Vowels was 4 years old and alone, living in an orphanage in Ethiopia after her parents passed away. She was malnourished in a destitute African country, and the future looked bleak.
That’s when her life was transformed by an American looking to adopt. Vowels is now one of the Dallas area’s rising girls basketball stars at Bishop Lynch, a powerhouse that has won a national-record 31 state championships.
Vowels, commonly called Fre, was adopted by Kristie Vowels in 2012 and came to the United States weighing a mere 26 pounds and just starting to learn English. Going through the Gladney Center for Adoption in America, Kristie became a single mother on her 52nd birthday after patiently waiting out a process that took five years.
“I had reached a point in my life where I wanted something more. I kept walking out of my jobs and it didn’t matter what title I had or how I climbed in that career,” said Kristie, now 64. “When I looked at the countries that were available at the time, Ethiopia was my first choice. It had a very low drug and alcohol rate.
“A lot of the reason it took so long was because there was a transition period of black market babies in Ethiopia being sold over and over. They changed and restructured how they did adoptions. I got caught up in that waiting period.”
Kristie wasn’t deterred by the jarring level of poverty she saw there, or the fact that others had concerns about a white woman adopting an Ethiopian child.
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