Rika Baum
Rika Baum is an adult adoptee from Korea. She is 1 of 6 children and three of her brothers are adopted. Her husband, Brenton, is 1 of 12 kids. He is a biological son and has 8 adopted siblings through foster care. They have been married for 11 years and have two biological sons and are in the final stages of adopting their daughter from Thailand.
Rika has almost 20 years of experience working with children and young adults from the inner cities of New York and Los Angeles to the suburbs of the Inland Empire. As a child and teenager, she struggled with identity and self esteem issues directly related to her adoption. With the help from her family and guidance from her youth leaders, she was able to realize that her identity and worth can only be found in Jesus. This revelation shifted her perspective from seeing life through the lenses of loss and victimization, to seeing a story of redemption and God's grace.
Rika is a proud advocate for adoption and foster care. Being adopted and adopting, has given her an opportunity to relate to adopted and foster children, as well as understand the unique challenges that come with parenting children from hard places.
When Rika and her family started to attend Embrace Me! events four years ago, they found an irreplaceable loving and supportive community!
Isabel Hunt | Founder
Isabel Hunt is an adoptive, biological and former foster parent. Her Journey to Motherhood included years of infertility, a kinship placement of her daughter Angelica in 1993 followed by an agency adoption of her newborn son Michael in 1996 and the miracle birth of her son Joseph in 1998.
In 2008, the family began a journey into foster care that included unique challenges that led to the realization for the need of tangible, emotional and spiritual support. In an effort to process the loss of their two-year-old foster sister, Michael and Joseph began a Community Project called Do Something MAJIC Miracles to get the word out about the need for families to foster or adopt. They were awarded the Community Hero Award for the City of Rancho Cucamonga in 2012 for their community involvement.
They took their mission to the church which paved the way for the inception of an adoption and foster care ministry at Water of Life Community Church which they called Embrace Me! Adoption & Foster Care whereby creating a forum in the church where “everyone can do something” through the 10 Ways to Embrace a Child and engaging business sponsors and empowering partners to embrace these children through their 501(c)(3) nonprofit, created shortly after in 2013.
Isabel is a court reporter by profession. As a court reporter, she worked in Dependency Court, reporting hundreds of cases relating to foster care and adoption. Her profession, together with her own journey of adoption and foster care, ignited a passion that evolved into advocacy for children in need of a temporary or permanent home. This advocacy resulted in a professional career change in 2015 from court reporting to recruiter for a foster family agency. That same year, she became instrumental in spearheading Faith in Motion in San Bernardino County, a collaborative network between faith-based organizations and the Department of Children and Family Services to gather monthly to share tangible resources.
Through the Resource Family initiative of 2017, Water of Life Church through Embrace Me! Adoption & Foster Care became the recipients of a grant to Recruit, Train & Support faith-based families to become foster adoptive parents, a historical event that led to the rise of Care Portal, an online community between CFS and faith-based organizations.
Isabel was a finalist for Woman of the Year for all her accomplishments in the 47th District of San Bernardino County. She was the featured speaker for Adoption Day for San Bernardino County in 2019. She returned to the court reporting profession feeling accomplished in her recruiting endeavors.
Author, speaker, advocate in the community; wife, mother and grandmother to her family – she is the Founder of Embrace Me! Adoption & Foster Care, together with her children.
Isabel’s passion and vision has led to the mobilization of a team of volunteers that advocate towards this great cause! They are individuals, couples, families, businesses and ministries that have joined in the effort so that every child has a family, community and church who will love and support them.
It is through embracing these children TOGETHER, that we can make the world a better safer place.