Unplug from the world and plug-in!  

Join Jackie and Richard Villasana, “People-Finder Extraordinaire” and author of the controversial book Do No Harm. An expose’ on the fall-out from dividing families at “The Wall”.

Listen in as they uncover the good, the bad, and the ugly truths of kids, families, government missteps, and the not-so-great reunification.

In this episode, Richard reveals how this mission to reunify these families got started, and why he loves his work.

Warning, this is not your typical, apolitical episode. Parts of this interview may be thought-provoking, emotionally-triggering, and down-right inflammatory. It’s a colossal conversation on the universal failure of a system designed to help kids.

[01:23] A Story of failing the kids

[04:26] The challenge of ownership

[05:05] The brain of a child

[05:40] The skill and gift of finding people

[07:18] It starts with pizza and Dr. Pepper

[08:58] The clue of a life lesson

[11:21] What’s easy for you is what’s valuable to others

[12:32] The secret all nonprofits would benefit from

[14:11] The calling of service and the challenge of getting paid for it

[15:47] Determining the value of a gift

[17:19] The People-Finder story

[19:03] Locating lost relatives

[19:35] Do no harm

[21:49] Cracking cold cases

[23:33] What it’s all about

[25:02] From hopelessness to positivity

[26:13] Unintended consequences

[26:51] The failure of the Reunification Program

[29:41] The lack of ownership and compassion

[31:14] Calling out Congress

[32:54] If it’s on your watch – own it

To stay in the conversation and learn more about Richard and his work, visit the links below.

Richard’s book: Do No Harm

Richard’s organization:  https://foreverhomesforfosterkids.org/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardvillasana/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/richardvillasana

Twitter: @FamilyFindingMX

Other references:

Becky Norwood and Spotlight Publishing House

Book: Make It A Great Day: The Choice is Yours

Website: The Teen Suicide Prevention Society

Enjoy! 

About Jackie:

Jackie Simmons writes and speaks on the leading-edge thinking around mindset, money, and the neuroscience that drives success.

Jackie believes it’s our ability to remain calm and focused in the face of change and chaos that sets us apart as leaders. Today, we’re dealing with more change and chaos than any other generation.

It’s taking a toll and Jackie’s not willing for us to pay it any longer.

Jackie uses the lessons learned from her own and her clients’ success stories to create programs that help you build the twin muscles of emotional resilience and emotional intelligence so that your positivity shines like a beacon, reminding the world that it’s safe to stay optimistic.

TEDx Speaker, Multiple International Best-selling Author, Mother to Three Girls, Grandmother to Four Boys, and Partner to the Bravest, Most Loyal Man in the World.

https://jackiesimmons.info/

https://sjaeventhub.com

https://www.facebook.com/groups/yourbrainonpositive

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Welcome back to Your Brain On Positive. All the love and support you need is residing inside of you. And we're going to make it easier to turn it on.

There are moments where maybe not for you. But for me, I realized that I'm speaking to somebody who has way more depth of knowledge than I do. And this is one of those moments, we are going to talk about radical ownership, not just of what you're doing, but of who you're impacting. So to help me have that conversation, welcome to the studio, Richard. Richard, I am so excited for this conversation.

Thank you very much for having me.

You're very welcome. I wish I had a time machine. And I could go back to our green room conversation. And we could just start there. Because this idea of people going, I didn't know it was about it was about and so take us there, because this is actually, I'm going to give a disclaimer, this is not going to be pretty. So tell me the story that you were talking about in the green

room. So was explaining this earlier this week, we did a post about children that were thought to have been maybe abused. And the officials found out that these children who were under foster care, who were had been on the radar of the foster care agency were actually did and what happened through the stories, we hear how officials were called out. And yet the mother was able to wave them off and say, No, I'm busy right now. And the police went away. No time did they enter the property. Look around, check on the kids see if the kids were there. So they failed. The mother, of course failed. And the fact that she allowed this to happen, Child Protective Services allowed this to happen, because this was not a one off. And on top of that, once the story broke, one official came out and said, All right, you know, children move a lot when they're in foster care. And so that's one problem we have is that these children are moving around a lot. And they, because of that they may not have felt comfortable speaking up. And essentially, this agency has pushed away and deflected any responsibility, any accountability on the job that they are supposed to do on to anybody in anything other than themselves.

And I'm gonna pause you right there. The kids had been taken away from their mom, or their mom and given them up whenever they were in the foster care system. They've been moved around a lot, the home that they had been placed into their final home, what was known about this home,

that there was a gentleman there, who was a had been accused of sexual abuse, physical abuse. And this has been brought up to the foster care agency, a year before this terrible tragedy happened with these children dying. And yet they put them back with this person. And this is important for people to know, foster care agencies. Part of their core job is to ensure that they vet adults to ensure that they don't have pedophiles and abusers in their system. And yet again, this official said, Well, if they had spoken up, they might not have gotten placed with this person, as if the children were adults. And the children should have been able to protect themselves when that is in fact, the job of the foster care agency.

So I'm going to take this in a slightly different direction, because this is all about your brain on positive and I am absolutely positive that the challenge here is one of ownership. That no one in the system, not the foster care system, not the parents, not the police owned responsibility for the safety and welfare of these children. And that attitude that you just expressed that the children were somehow supposed to have ownership blame at home But I'm sorry, I do everything from a neuroscience place. Kids don't have a full brain. You know, the prefrontal cortex isn't even physically present until they're somewhere around 12, at least what I've been what I understand, and it's not fully developed until there's somewhere around 24, if we're lucky, and yet somehow the system thinks that the kid should speak up. I'm going to just put it out there, Richard, what can we do better? What can we do better? Because I first just tell everybody how this is your area of expertise? How did you get involved in all of this anyway.

But my involvement with foster care came almost 30 years ago, when I started finding people. And I did this from a corporate standpoint, I would find key politicians, key individuals, so that I was doing marketing internationally. And I was very good at finding these key officials who could help us with our marketing and buying our products, which were medical products that were being manufactured in the US now. And for a period of time, that information got out that I was really good at finding people. And so some of these vendors would say, you know, I have this brother, I haven't seen him in a while. I don't know what to do. But hey, could you take a look? I said, Sure, I'll try, and I'll find them. And more people started hearing about this. And I started getting phone calls. And it wasn't like I was looking for a new business. I was doing international marketing. And finally one day I said, Hmm, maybe this is something I could should do. So I started focusing more on this. And I was very lucky, I had a mentor, who we had a situation where he was able to point out to me that I had this skill. And not only that had this skill, but he pointed it out to me. And that's something that a lot of people,

I guess I don't I don't want the content. I want you to tell me the story. Tell me about the day that this happened with your mentor. God, what what started your day, what do you have for breakfast, and take us to that day?

So it was probably pizza knowing me and definitely Dr. Pepper. So I'm in the office. And he had come to my desk and dropped off this piece of paper. And he said it said Barry Johnson and said, What's this? He said, Well, I want you to find Barry, he works for the Department of Commerce. For anyone who's not familiar. We're talking about a four to $500 billion government agency 1000s of people. He says he works for the Department of Commerce in Washington, DC, at least he gave you the city. And he said do your best. Now this is pre Google pre internet. I said, Okay. And then later that day, I trucked, which was desk and dropped off the piece of paper and he said, What's this? I said, that's the phone number phone number for what phone number for Barry. And he looks at his watch. He said, I asked you for this five minutes ago. I'm thinking he's upset because I took too long. And I'm thinking, Well, I tried my best. And I'm walking away. I'm thinking job done. Let's get back to work. And he says, No, you come back here. You explain to me how in five minutes, you found this guy? And I said, Okay, well I called Susan over at the Economic Development Center. She got me to John in Washington and I talked to John for many got me to Suzanne, and I got the number and I'm thinking, okay, told the story job done at work, I'm ready to leave. I mean, I'm, and he says, You're not listening to me. And I knew this man and respected him so much that when he said that, I knew I was missing a very important life lesson. And I was lucky that listen to a lot of people don't listen, when they get that little clue of a life lesson. So I came back, chilled. So okay, I'm here, I'm present. What am I missing? He said, Do you know my background is just for you to understand. This man was a who's who have at least half a dozen countries in Latin America. He was brought in by the Department of Defense to do contracts on their behalf in Latin America. Foreign countries had him doing this work. He was all over worked for the fortune 100 companies. He was big and he admit the Wheeler and dealers at that time. He said, You know, my background said yes, he said so when I tell you, I have never met someone who can do what you just did. That means some thing. And I said, I do it all the time. He says, You do, he said, but that doesn't mean it's not a very worthwhile, skilled gift that you have. That can be very important. And I was so lucky that he pointed that out to me, because otherwise I would have thought, this is something I do. No big deal, because it was a no big deal for me. I five minutes, solve the problem. But he realized it for the important skill and gift it was.

Isn't it so true. And I think most people can get this, Richard, that what comes easy to us, we think that has no value.

Absolutely. And that's unfortunate. And as I said, I was lucky that I had someone I respected and someone who took that time and said that and I'm sure we all can remember a time and situation. Maybe he was dating someone maybe was getting that job. Maybe he was going for that promotion. If someone had just stepped up and said, You can do it. We were gone. Oh, okay. But because someone hasn't, and someone does it, we let those opportunities go. And some of those are the biggest best opportunities of our lives.

They absolutely can be. I'm very blessed. Like you, I had a mentor who said, Jackie, what comes easiest to you, is what you should be paid the most for. As an entrepreneur, my business model was the opposite of that. What I struggled with I thought was valuable. And what came easy to me I was giving away for free. And so getting this lesson, if anybody listen to this doesn't get anything else out of this episode. It's this one. Hey, guys, what's easy for you? It's valuable to those of us that it's not easy for that we can't do I can't find a needle in the haystack, much less a person in another city. County State you forget it. I mean, you know, it's a good thing. My family keeps up with me. So you have a an amazing skill. And yet, you were in marketing? How did how did this happen? Because you seem to be pretty happy in marketing. I mean, I'm not hearing any angst around doing that work. Yeah,

no, I love marketing. And I still do. And it's still very important because it helps my nonprofit and quick secret, many nonprofits would benefit. If they were more business oriented, and thought more about their marketing, there would be more successful nonprofits out there, rather than those hanging on by a shoestring with $5 in their bank account. That's not a great way to help somebody. And the move over was that as much as I love doing the deal. And traveling, when I have an opportunity, I know that I am the person that can find a relative, like a father in Puerto Rico, who doesn't know that his daughter's in foster care, because him and his wife divorce. He's living his life there. She's in foster care somewhere. And I find him and he leaves Puerto Rico, he leaves his life there flies to Pennsylvania stays up there. So he can now have a life with his daughter. I have just changed that girl's life. And you know, I consider myself to be a Christian. And one of the philosophies of that is that you do good deeds, and don't go run around shouting about it. That girl will never know who I am. She'll never know why her father showed up. And that's okay with me. And that drives me because I'm that person in the background that has changed her life and she'll never know about it.

When people talk about doing a random act of kindness everyday Richard, I'm not sure that they get that if your calling is to do this kind of work to be of service. It's okay to get paid for it.

Absolutely, it's okay to get paid for it. I don't have a problem with that part.

So I think that a lot of people do a lot people think that if and I hear this from my own students, I hear that from coaches in my certification program. The idea that if it comes easy to me, and I would do this for free, then I should do it for free. And there's something wrong with being paid. Can you help bridge that gap for people?

Oh, totally look, if the idea of following your passion is wonderful. This is an added bonus, though, and it's a bonus that we should be taking in. This is like someone saying, Look, you love the saying, I'll put you on a stage, you can sing. And by the way, I'm gonna give you $10,000 were like, oh, no, don't keep the money, I don't need it. That's crazy. But that's essentially what people were doing is they're turning away the money that they could use to make their life good. Or as a lot of successful people say, I have the freedom to choose. And that's what we can do. If I take the money, then I can help more people, because then I can scale up, do more good. And that makes more good all the way around.

When people start to become willing to own the value of their gift that their value of their gift, it's a gift, you're supposed to give it away, right? So the value is not in the eyes of the giver, the value gets determined by the eyes of the receiver. And if people start to understand that they will allow themselves to receive an exchange of value, they'll never burn out. And in my case, I will never be bored. Again, I kind of suspect the same is true for you, based based on what you're up to now. And speaking of what you're up to now, I want to go there, I want to go to the book, because you've got a book coming out. That's how we met, we share a publisher, thank God for Becky Norwood, of spotlight on your whatever her name is spotlight publishing something. Anyway, we'll get that right in the show notes. The reality is that if it wasn't for the fact that Becky is so generous, and she helps us publish the Make it a great day book series every year for my nonprofit, which is the teen suicide prevention society. And she's helping you publish your book. And you've got your own nonprofit. So before I do the big reveal about the title of this book, because I just think it's amazing. Would you please share just a minute about your nonprofit and how it connects to your gift of being a People Finder.

So with finding people and the corporate side, I started getting people talking about their relatives. And the word got out and started getting approached by foster care agencies. And they would say, Oh, we have a foster child, their mom lives in Mexico, the father has died. Actually, this is a true story. And how old was this kid? So she was 15. She was living with her father. Unfortunately, he got in trouble with the law. So he got taken away. And so at 15, she got put into foster care. Now for people. This is so sad that when a child is in their teens, especially at 15, their chance of getting out of foster care through adoption is less than 1%. So she stuck for the next three years, at least of her life in foster care. The only other way to get out is if they could find a relative and they found an uncle, but he had died three years ago. That's the only relatives they can find in the United States. But she had her motherhood, divorced from her father, who is now living in Mexico with her relatives. These people, the agency did not speak Spanish read Spanish had no idea what to do. It came to me. I go in less than three weeks. I find her mother, her grandmother, her whole side of the family. And they talked to the caseworker said, Well, she doesn't need to come here to Mexico. She's got to ask living in Los Angeles. Well guess where Veronica is Veronica's over Los Angeles back in high school, living the life she's supposed to with loving relatives. That's what we do. We locate relatives, for foster children or any children that come into the foster care system, including immigrant children who are now coming into the foster care system. We locate their relatives anywhere in Latin America, Brazil, Argentina, Dominican Republic, and we get them reconnected. And those families very often know someone who's either in that state or somewhere else in US where they should go live with them and get out of foster care into what we call kinship care.

So what drove this journey that you've been on to create a book called do no harm?

What happened was in early 2020, actually, let me go back just a little before that. So in 2017, the administration at that time, came up with something called Zero policy. Anyone coming Up to the US Mexico border was looking for asylum would not be treated as asylum seekers but as criminals. And in doing that they would separate the children from the parents. And this happened to more than 5000 families where the children were taken, they were removed or put in totally different places. This had never been done before, except to extreme circumstances. So we're talking about 1000s, instead of a couple of dozen, then in 2018, because of the courts, that policy had to be stopped. And there was executive order given to now reunify all these families. Fast forward to 2020, the government struggling, they've got at least 1500, maybe more families that can't find they've lost track of the children, they've lost track of the parents, they have no idea where these people are, they keep looking for possibilities and solutions, and my name keeps coming up. Because all those parents were supposedly living in Latin America. And everyone they went to all the experts said, that's who we go to a we need help, you need to talk to Richard. And finally, someone listened. And in late 2020, we started talking, and 2021, we got to negotiations completed, I got retained by an organization, I can't say who contractually. And so. But on behalf of the federal government, we have been cracking their worst cold cases, I'll give you a quick example. We got the name of the mother, we got her birth date. And we found out she lived in Guatemala. That's it. We found her. That was it. I mean, that's the kind of cases we have been cracking where the government had no clue how to do this.

So your ability to bring all of this together doesn't come at no cost, because the heartbreak that you are aware of all of these children, whether in the US foster system, or the ones who are seeking family outside of the United States system, the heartbreak of not being able to reconnect this great reunification of families. So you ended up taking your heartbreak and putting it into a book. So tell us about the journey of

that book.

So it's been a lot, I started this in summer of 2021. I promptly damaged my left hand, so I couldn't type had to get a wonderful editor in New York, and because I have to keep them separate from his day job. But I will say that he is a senior editor at a very large newspaper. And he is the one who helped me put everything together and do a lot of the typing in organizing the book, to tell this story, not only about what happened, because there are lots of great articles out there on what has been happening to these children, a lot of politicizing it, but at the end of the day, it's about a child and they got removed from their mother, and has not seen their mother in some cases for five years. Because it's now 2022. And the treatment, these children have gone through the treatment the parents have gone through who as I do the work just for so if if you're thinking, okay, there are people coming across who are criminals, I have not worked one of those cases. There may be a case out there like that. But I have not worked a case where I found out the person was a criminal or was not the parent, I have found parents in every case I've worked. So don't buy into this idea that they weren't really parents they were who are suffering back to their country, not seeing the child.

How many families have you helped reconnect, and since the summer of 2020, line,

roughly 80 families and again, this are the worst, the worst where we have spent, in one case more than a year, just because the information was so bad. And it has taken us so much time to work through. I'll give you an example where we'd have one case that we closed where we got the name of the county, but they have 161 cities. And we we didn't have the name for the city so we had to work through with them to figure out where this person could be living out of 161 cities. That's the kind Under stuff that I've been working with

your gift to find people has been put into what I call a God given path, a universally designed stream where you are bringing positivity into a place where there was hopelessness, you're bringing possibility and optimism into lives that thought that they had no options. And so Richard, that is why I was so excited about having this interview with you today. So your book is coming out, it's do no harm. And anybody from my generation will recognize that over the word no, there's that do not enter Ghostbusters, kind of emblem. Because we've got a system that does harm even though that was not their intention. And for anybody who listens to my podcast, you know, I've got my places where I get up on my soapbox, and I go, it's not what they intended, but they didn't think it through. And so I feel the same way about what you're describing. This is not what was intended by the administration with the policy in place. They just didn't think it through. We call it unintended consequences. And by the way, every single administration in this country throughout history has had those moments where they just didn't think it through before they put it into action. And it's had unintended consequences. Because this is not polarized. This is mainstream. This is the center, every single administration throughout history has those moments. We're just now hearing about more than

we used to. Absolutely.

And that is one of the things that I do explain in the book. I take our being apolitical very seriously. I'm just stating the facts. And I also do lean on the president ministration. Because they are failing in this reunification. An article just came out that said there's 168 I don't believe the number but at least it's a number 168 families have yet to be reconnected, found. The children found,

what do you think the number is just a guess?

It's higher. Because say you

started with over 1500 were were lost in the system, when they brought you in, you've reunited at I can do simple math. At from 1500, we've still got over 1400 out there. And then this number of 168. What happened to the rest of these people?

They did launch a campaign to locate people here in the US. But going back to what you said about how administration's always had these missteps. What they had been doing is focusing on one end or the other. In other words, they'll spend time looking for people uniquely in the US, and not do a lot internationally. And then when that doesn't work, they'll go back and start doing it internationally. And then they'll say, Well, let's put that on hold. Let's try again, in the US. There's this back and forth that said, Look, if you're going to do a rescue for a child, you don't send out one person with a dog, you send out 50 people with dogs, you send out the helicopter. Neither administration has done this. And so this is across the board. And you're so right. This is this treatment of these children didn't just start four years ago, this has been ongoing. It's just that now we have photos, we have videos. And now in my book, I am going to share terrible stories from the parents and even the children of what they went through when they tried to come up here to leave a place of violence, of no education of abject poverty. And what happened to them when they came up here to get away just from that. It's horrible. It's so sad.

Ownership is where we started. We started with the story of the children who died inside the foster care system, having been placed with someone who was a known history of accusation whether or not you've ever been convicted, there was a history of accusation of inappropriate behavior to put it in the politically correct terminology.

And no one's own a where the system has failed. You got called in when they realized they needed help because their system of reunification was failing. And so from the summer of 2021, to now you you're now able to really have a different perspective on the system. Because you're trying to work it from the inside, you got access to what happened, what didn't happen, you know? And am I right? And I could be wrong. I'm okay call me out. Is ownership the issue?

Certainly is because, again, going back to the rescue, if you're not sending out the right amount of energy and effort, someone is to blame. And the continuation of this rests on lots of shoulders. Unfortunately, the people who are now running the search, are responsible for not being as aggressive as they should be, ultimately, is going to fall the shoulders, that as far as we understand on Congress, for them to set up some kind of reunification effort, whether it's that these children stay in the US. Oh, yes. So we've got a, you know,

I'm gonna go out on a limb. And I'm going to know, I know that this little clip, what I'm about to say, is not going to land well, and I'm going to say it anyway. I'm about to call out everybody in Congress, and I'm going to say, own this own reunification. Here's how you're going to own it, you're ready. It's your child that's lost.

It's your grandchild that's lost.

Now bring that energy, that ownership to this job

and will solve this problem? Absolutely. There's that disconnect of compassion and ownership. And that's what's happening here. And it's not looking good. It's not looking good right now.

So I'm going to invite everyone to turn it around. Because here's the deal on that. have you back on Richard, your book is going to come out, we're going to be talking about it because that's what I do. People can follow the conversation in your brain, I'm positive, that's a Facebook group. I'm going to do a LinkedIn group because I've been told that's where my peeps are. And we're going to continue this conversation on ownership, especially when it comes to those who cannot take ownership of their own lives, because their children. And they're just not equipped. And it doesn't matter how much responsibility we want to give them. We're the adults here. So some of you guys are listening to this or government officials, we've empowered you to take care of this. So on it plays on it. Because what Thank you, Richard for bringing it up for bring it in for

writing the book. Hey, government officials, the children died on your watch.

Don't you think it's time you own this? So Richard, thank you so very, very much for all that you do to reunify families for all that you are willing to do to write this book. And I can't wait to read it.

Well, thanks very much.