Everyone has a story, but few people have a compelling subplot.
Wendy Wesley has both.
On Monday, she and several colleagues who work at Mitchell's Salon & Day Spa in Northgate will mail 50 care packages to Wesley's son and fellow soldiers in his troop.
Dustin Smith is a military police officer serving since August in Iraq with the U.S. Army.
Except he is not her biological son, or even her legally adopted one
A former foster child left homeless as a high school student in Norwood when his great aunt and uncle died, Smith hasn't known Wesley for even two years.
Wesley, her husband Jason and their two sons, Adam and Max, were attending a Sunday service at Springdale Church of the Nazarene on Dec. 16, 2007.
Pastor Rick Harvey made an announcement that would change Wendy Wesley's life. "Our church has a need," he said. "We know of a high school boy who needs a safe home."
"He's supposed to be with me," said Wesley, 38, as she turned to her husband in the pew.
She believes God spoke to her.
Three days later, Smith and a Norwood High librarian who had looked after him went to the Wesley home in Liberty Township for dinner. She made chicken in the crock pot over rice.
Already committed to the Army, Smith arrived in a white button-up shirt and jeans. His hair was in a short military cut.
"I knew what I had felt, it was right," Wendy Wesley said. "My heart melted."
The Wesley’s showed them around the house. Smith was not so sure and came across as reserved but respectful. "I'm not ever going to call you mom," he said.
Later that night, though, after everyone had left, Smith called her. He said he wanted to live with the family.
"When do you want to move in?" she asked.
"How about tomorrow?" he asked.
The next night after work, she drove to the house in Norwood where Dustin was staying with a friend's family.
He had a nightstand and a few clothes.
"He didn't have much," she said.
The family embraced him. They bought him clothes for Christmas. He struggled with receiving gifts and sitting with two young boys on Christmas morning under a tree.
He transferred to Lakota West and graduated in 2008.
There were bumps. He skipped school one day.
Wendy Wesley confronted him and made Dustin explain to her sons Adam and Max why he skipped.
"The boys asked me why Dustin could skip and why they couldn't," she said. "It was the first time he'd felt guilt. He never skipped again."
Adam, now 10, and Max, 7, embraced Dustin as their older brother. The three of them wear matching tweed bracelets as a sign of solidarity.
"I miss him," said Adam, wearing a gray T-shirt emblazoned with the word ARMY across his chest. "I talk to him on the computer."
Wendy Wesley doesn't remember the first time Smith called her "Mom." She still has the note he left for her one day in her West Chester office.
"Love you," it read.
Smith calls Jason Wesley his Dad.
Friends tell the couple that they've given a great gift to Smith.
Wendy Wesley thinks otherwise. A self-confessed Type A personality who built a successful career in 19 years at Mitchell's, she said Smith taught her about the importance of family and balance.
"I always want to run around and do things," she said. "Dustin wants to sit on the couch, put his head on my lap and watch TV. Even from Iraq, he is always telling me we need to have more family time. He has made me a better mother. He has helped me learn to slow down."
Smith trained at the Army MP school in Missouri and was assigned to Fort Lewis, Wash.
Then, he received his orders to ship out to Iraq.
"I cried every day," said Wendy Wesley.
The Northgate store wanted to help. Manager Kay Valentine and her employees had adopted an orphanage as a holiday project in 2007 and collected canned food in 2008. This year, they are filling and shipping care packages to Smith and his comrades in Iraq.
"We did it as a show of support for Wendy," Valentine said. "She was missing her son. She just needed a little uplifting."
The gesture touched her heart.
"It helped me smile every day," Wendy Wesley said.
Customers at the Northgate store chipped in $500 to pay for mailing the packages. Valentine contacted several other stores for donations of DVD movies, compact discs, candy, toothpaste, lip balm, sun screen and Beef Jerky - everything on a soldier's wish list.
By Wednesday morning, everything had come together in the training room at Northgate.
Students at Colerain Elementary wrote letters and drew cards for the soldiers. There were packages of playing cards, bars of soap and containers of diaper wipes and Q-tips - enough goodies for 50 boxes, though there were just 37 soldiers, including seven females, in Smith's troop. The women's care packages were marked with pink ink.
Wesley packed the first of the 50 boxes. It was for her Smith, who will be home in August.
They already have plans for one of their first outings. The Wesley’s and Smith had discussed adoption, but he already is a legal adult at age 21.
Still, he's going to change his name.
"He came to me one day in his little charismatic, joking way and said, `Hey, Mom, how does Dustin Wesley sound to you?'" she said. "He said this is the only family he'd ever known."
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