Jenni Martin says a social worker saved her life.

She was 4 in 1990 when her single mom got into a fight with roommates. Police arrested her mother and took Martin to an emergency respite center.

By the next day, Martin had become part of Dane County's child welfare caseload. Last year in the county, 383 such children were removed from their homes.

Martin, now 21, would never again live with her mother or father, an outcome she thinks was the right one.

"My story is not the be-all and end-all," said Martin, a special education assistant with the Mount Horeb School District. "There are tons of children who will want to be with their parents. Everyone is so individual. For me, the system worked."

Martin calls social worker Kathy Seifert her guardian angel. Seifert first worked to reunite the young girl with her parents as required by federal law. The efforts didn't pan out.

Martin's mother fled to California amid legal problems and lost her parental rights in 1993 due to abandonment. Martin's father, now deceased, was charged with physically abusing his daughter and lost his parental rights in a plea agreement.

Martin remembers one particular episode where Seifert figured out that Martin's father was inappropriately taking her to a bar in Downtown Madison during his unsupervised visits. Martin, then 5, could describe the place only as having "a dancing beer can."

Seifert marched up and down State Street with Martin's picture until she found a bartender who recognized the little girl.

"Kathy identified all of the problems and dealt with them quickly," Martin said.

Martin's first and only foster parents, Peter and Jennifer Kingslien of Mount Horeb, adopted her. The three remain close.

Seifert retired early from Dane County in 1999 at age 57, partly due to health reasons but also because she felt the system wasn't protecting children anymore, she said.

"In the process of giving parents all of the opportunities they legally had the right to, children were damaged and paying too heavy of a price," she said.

Seifert recently caught up with Martin after several years.

"There are a number of kids out there that I loved and cared a lot about," Seifert said. "I'm always glad to hear when things have turned out OK for them, because there are other kids that, no matter what you did, that didn't happen for them."

— Doug Erickson