Local dad wins national parenting award

McALLEN — Angel Torres likes to catch butterflies for his daughter; or at least, he likes to try. He makes sharks out of Play-Doh for the 3-year-old and reads Blue’s Clues books with her.

But the time flies, the 24-year-old said, and their visit comes to an end all too quickly.

These visits he gets with his daughter are the fruit of his determination to play an active role in her life, even though he and the girl’s mother are no longer together.

They are also among the reasons Torres is one of five fathers in the nation to win this year’s Family Plus Inspirational Father Award from the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and the Kimberly-Clark Corp.

His story was sent to Boys & Girls Clubs of America in the form of a 500-word nomination essay by Rocio Mata, family services coordinator for the Together Time program at the Boys & Girls Clubs of McAllen. She said Torres’ positive attitude was an inspiration to almost everyone around.

“I noticed his positive attitude, above all,” Mata said, noting how committed Torres was to making it to the visits with his daughter. “If something would come up, he would just shake it off and come back the next day. Whatever he needed to do, he always did.”

The Edinburg father's story starts the day his daughter, Ariel Marie Torres, was born. He was 20 years old at the time and had been dating the girl’s mother on and off for less than a year. The couple’s relationship was rocky from the start, Torres said, but they decided to get married for their child. Ultimately, though, they didn’t go through with the union. Ariel’s mother refused to give her side of the story.

Torres and Ariel’s mother separated, leaving her as the custodial parent and Torres with court-ordered visitation rights and an ongoing struggle to be a part of his daughter’s life.

The National Fatherhood Initiative, highlighted on the Family Plus website, states that one out of three children in the United States lives apart from his or her biological father.

Torres, however, didn’t want living apart from his daughter to mean he wouldn’t be involved in her life.

He wanted to be there for her, to be a good role model for her. After growing up in an area with gangs and drugs, he said he didn’t want that for his little girl. Through a judge’s order, Torres enrolled in the Together Time program at the Glen E. and Rita K. Roney Boys & Girls Club Center in McAllen.

Together Time is a program designed to help divorcing or separated parents see their children and play an active role in their lives. It offers “co-parenting” courses on getting along and conflict resolution and provides a neutral place to meet to exchange their children for visitation and for supervised visits, Mata said.

“Most families choose to go to a Police Department parking lot and do their exchanges there to help avoid drama,” Mata said. “But we provide a common area to facilitate these exchanges for the child and the custodial and non-custodial parents.”

In October 2009, Torres enrolled in Team Work, a program similar to Together Time but one tailored primarily to parents ages 16-24. As he went through the month’s worth of co-parenting education classes, Torres scheduled his first supervised visit through the program.

When the day arrived, he waited in the small library of the Roney Center, holding a backpack filled with coloring books, Play-Doh, snacks and a juice box for his first one-on-one visit with Ariel in more than a year.

But when Ariel’s mother arrived, she refused to leave the little girl with Torres without being present. She left with Ariel while her father waited.

Mata explained the parents never see each other during this time because it brings up too many emotions and takes the focus off the child.

Torres was disappointed, but not surprised.

“I was used to it,” he said, alluding to the rocky history he and the mother share.

He returned the next time with the little backpack — and kept returning time and time again — but three months passed and still Torres had not been able to visit with his daughter.

Mata, who had gone through a similar situation herself, explained how she could relate with Ariel’s mom as a mother going through separation and sharing a child.

“A lot of (mothers) are afraid to let go of their child,” Mata said. “They are very overprotective and do not realize the importance of the (role) the fathers need to have in their child’s life.”

Through the long wait, Together Time helped Torres document every visitation he had been refused, bolstering his position when he took Ariel’s mother to court to press for his visitation rights to be upheld. For Mata, who often recorded the incidents, the process reinforced her belief in the court system.

“People don’t realize that it is about documentation,” the Pharr resident said. “It’s a long process. If that visitation doesn’t go through, you have to file a report to the police to document it every time. And you can only take so much of that before you quit. It’s natural to quit.”

But Torres didn’t quit. In January the court granted him regular weekend visitations. Since then, Torres has also won the right to have Ariel for an entire month.

He worries the girl’s mother won’t let her go for such a long stretch. Still, he can’t help but look forward to that time when he, Ariel, his wife, Kristy, and youngest daughter, Kailynn, will be together — and his family will be complete.

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Kristen Cabrera covers general assignments for The Monitor. She can be reached at (956) 683-4852.