The following story comes from an interview conducted with Larry and Rachel in their home in the small town of Victoria, Kansas, in May. We were recently saddened to learn that Larry passed away on July 8, which makes his words all the more poignant. Please keep Rachel and the rest of the family in your prayers.
They met because they enjoy helping people … and that commitment to serving others has continued to play an important part in their relationship. Licensed in 2022, Larry and Rachel Schmidtberger first served as a kinship placement in 2019. Since then, Saint Francis Ministries’ Foster Family of the Year has opened their Victoria, Kansas, home to 23 young people, most of them intensive level teens.
“So, we both grew up caring for people,” said Larry. “We met while we both worked at a rest home in town, and when it shut down, we felt like we still had something to give, some way to help.
They already had a mixed family, comprising multiple generations.
“Our marriage is unorthodox,” said Rachel. “He’s a bit older than me and adopted my son from my first marriage. He also adopted his oldest son from his wife’s first marriage. So, we have two boys, three grandchildren, and two great-grandbabies.”
Yet that very unorthodoxy makes them surprisingly resilient and open to the wide variety of kids and issues that pass through their home. They treat them all no differently than they treat their own children.
“We’re not the typical family,” said Rachel. “We’re goofy. We’re not millionaires by any means; we just live in a small, hokey-poke Catholic community. The teenagers will yell at us, and we’ll yell back. We bring them back down to earth, then we’re good again. Yeah, it’s good times in our house. As long as they follow the rules, they can have all the freedom they want.”
“Yeah, they’re a bit awestruck by that,” added Larry. “We tell them, ‘If you run, we don’t chase. That’s your choice, but your choices have consequences.’ Sometimes, it’s a win, sometimes a loss, but we don’t give up on them. They will either straighten up or continue down the path they choose. All we can do is be there to support them.”
“A lot of people look at teenagers in foster care as the bad guy,” said Rachel. “But they’re not the bad guy; they were handed a rough life and just need a chance to become who they need to be. Many of our kids end up here because of truancy, so they have a background with the police. We help them through the court system and probation.”
Such an outlook points to the value the Schmidtbergers place on advocacy. As far as they’re concerned, their job is to serve as mentors and guides while the birth parents work out their issues at home … and to make sure the kids in their care realize that the responsibility to achieve reunification is not theirs alone.
“We tell them, we don’t want you to stay here forever,” said Rachel. “We want you to reunite with your parents. That’s why we’re here, to help that situation. Sometimes, they’ll come home from an office visit saying, ‘I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do that,’ and we’ll say, ‘Your parents have got to do some things, too; it’s up to all of you to get you home.’”
For at least one person, that home is with Larry and Rachel.
Thanks to legislation passed just last year, the SOUL Family Option, made Kansas the first state in the nation to adopt the permanency option that gives teens 16 or older in foster care the opportunity to obtain legal permanency and transition into adulthood via a custodian of their choice.
The SOUL Family permanency option fashions a circle of caring adults to provide Support, Opportunity, Unity, and Legal relationships for young people ages 16 years and older as they move from foster care to adulthood. For youth in foster care, reunification, guardianship, and adoption offer the only legal permanency options. SOUL provides a fourth option by establishing a legal connection between a young person and at least one caring adult.
The Schmidtbergers became one of the of first foster families to serve as that option for a teen in foster care.
“We received his placement last year,” said Rachel, “and we finalized our guardianship in January 2025. He’s come very far. He’s a sophomore in high school and on the honor roll.”
And for those who stay temporarily …
“It’s a roller coaster,” said Larry. “When you’re dealing with teens, there will always be falls and backsliding. We just try to be there and to support them.”
“It’s just part of being a family,” added Rachel. “All kids have hiccups, and the bigger the kid, the bigger the hiccup. But all the hiccups get fixed. Sometimes, it’s just like having a bad day at the office, so we sit down and talk about it. We take one day at a time.”
For both, it’s all just part of the foster parenting package.
“They keep us young and bring so much life into the house,” said Rachel. “If we weren’t doing this, we’d likely be sitting on our butts watching TV all the time. This keeps us motivated and sane.”
“It makes me want to go outside and do things, to stay as healthy as possible,” said Larry. “Right now, we have a 5-year-old girl placed with us, and I walk her to school. And ‘S’ (16-year-old SOUL appointment) likes to go fishing and camping, so we’ll try to do that soon. They’re a motivation for me to get out of the house and do more. I do pray for them every day; I pray for all of them.”
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