While most parents would travel to the ends of the earth to keep their children safe, Kat Lively’s biological mom and dad deliberately put her in harm’s way. At just three months old, in October 1993, she was sold to a “random couple” in Colorado in exchange for drugs.
She was found in December of that year, at the home of the couple who traded illegal substances for her, after a strenuous search and rescue effort put together by her paternal grandparents and the police. Lively was swiftly placed under the full-time care of her grandparents in California, where she still lives to this day.
Although both her grandpa and grandma, whom she came to call mom and dad, have since passed away, the love and care they afforded Lively still rings true. She says it is the only reason why she’s here, alive and well, today.
“The love of my grandfather, my adoptive father, saved my life following my surreal arrival into the world,” Lively, who is a writer and podcast producer, told Newsweek.
“My biological parents were young, irresponsible addicts. They gave me up in exchange for drugs back in Denver when I was just three months old. They called my grandparents in Visalia, Ron and Kathy Walters, and told them that I was gone but that they don’t know where.”
“My grandfather, off the back of two heart attacks within one year, jumped into his van against all medical advice and drove to Colorado in the middle of a cold, harsh winter,” she added.
Ron Walters, who didn’t think twice before racing to find Lively to bring her to safety, roped in the support of law enforcement as soon as he heard the news of her “disappearance”.
“He brought me home to California on Christmas Eve, and my grandparents became my guardians before legally adopting me. The adoption was finalized in 1999,” Lively said.
Sadly, tragedy visited the family three more times in the years that followed.
“My grandmother and their son, who became my adoptive brother, passed one year apart when I was only 11 and 12. In September 2023, my grandfather passed away after he was fatally struck by a van at a crosswalk while sitting in his motorized wheelchair.”
“I was with him in his final moments while he was on life support. He died as a result of a brain injury from the accident’s impact.”
“My Biological Parents Were Addicts”
Despite the sadness weaved into different stages of her life, Lively has found purpose and happiness in using social media to help and inspire others who have also faced difficult circumstances. Speaking out online has also helped her come to terms with the loss of her grandfather.
On February 4, she shared a video to TikTok that detailed her upbringing and honored her grandparents’ efforts in shielding her from the uglier parts of life while growing up. To date, the clip that had been shared by @katlivelyofficial has been viewed more than 4.6 million times.
“I was sold for drugs by my own parents, but wait, this story has a kind of happy ending,” Lively said in the post.
“I was born in 1993 to two people who should have never conceived a child. They couldn’t even take care of a mouse,” she added.
The podcaster, who now lives in Los Angeles, stressed to viewers that her biological grandparents had done their utmost to give their son a good life.
“But he chose to run off and get into drugs and crime on his own,” Lively wrote under a different post.
“My mission now with sharing my story on social media, and building a community online, is to help and inspire other people. I’ve experienced and navigated so much at my young age, but I’ve risen from the ashes. My goal is to lend motivation and strength to others who may be dealing with similar things and let them know that they’re not alone,” she told Newsweek.
“While things happen in life, it’s how we react and what we do that is most important. A hard life doesn’t have to mean a bad life.”
How Lively Was Found Alive
Lively’s grandpa had camped out in his Chevrolet van for the two weeks he spent searching Denver for her back in 1993, all while battling diabetes and recovering from two heart attacks.
At home in Visalia, his wife Kathy Walters was facing health struggles of her own. Walters, optimistic that he’d find Lively and return home soon, had even bought winter baby grows and a car seat. He fortunately found Lively before the situation took a darker turn.
“There is no way I would have lived much longer if they hadn’t found me at the time that they did,” Lively shared in her viral TikTok post.
“After that, my grandparents treated me like one of the family. I never felt adopted and they are the only parents that deserve the title mom and dad. They raised me with a beautiful childhood and I feel as though I was always meant to be theirs,” she continued.
Lively told Newsweek: “I decided to open up about my past on social media as a means of talking about my grandfather. In part to honor his memory as I cope with the grief of his passing. He was my best friend.”
As an adult, Lively reconnected with her biological parents but to her own admission quickly realized that she “wasn’t missing much.” The pair had visited Lively on a few occasions, but continuously declined her offers of support to help them heal from substance abuse.
Is What Lively Went Through Common?
Sadly, countless investigations have proven that young children have been sold for drugs or are used and abused to smuggle and sell drugs. The regularity of such horrors is more difficult to determine.
In 2021, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration said on its website that “violent drug organizations use human trafficking to expand profits”. This trafficking can also seep into local communities.
In 2020, victim advocacy officials stated that some parents have exploited their own children and that their reason for doing so is often linked to drug activity.
Speaking to Oklahoma broadcasting station, KOKH Fox 25 in 2020, Ashley Gay-Vocco, victim services program director at Family Services, talked of parents selling their children for money or “goods like drugs”.
A 2019 study revealed that over 1,173 children had been enslaved by drug dealers in the U.K. that very year. The U.K. government’s Home Office soon declared that more than 1,100 children had been trafficked into the U.K.’s drug trade in 2019.
In 2000, Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act which called for the creation of the President’s Interagency Task Force, an office designed to monitor and combat trafficking in persons, and amped up efforts to coordinate anti-trafficking work among U.S. federal government agencies.
The White House released an updated National Action Plan in 2021, that works to combat human trafficking.
“Each of our agencies and our partners have been working every single day to prevent trafficking, to protect victims and to prosecute those who are responsible,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on February 13.
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This story was originally published February 25, 2024, 5:00 AM.
source: star-telegram
