Naperville doctor fosters 28 kids, adopts 1

Dr. Patrick Stiff of Naperville led the Huntington Estates swim team for two years while his children were growing up - and that's an accomplishment, considering his day job: An oncologist who has advanced treatment of leukemia and lymphoma.

But an even bigger feat is the fact he and his late wife Betsy were foster parents for 28 children during a 10-year span, eventually adopting one of them.

Patrick and Betsy signed up through Catholic Charities to become foster parents and soon were welcoming children without stable lives into the home they shared with their four biological kids.

One of the 28 fosters stayed an especially long time. But by age 4, the state finally told the birth mother of young Scott that she no longer had rights to see him or be part of his life.

It was clear everyone would be devastated if the Stiff family didn't keep Scott and continue the togetherness they'd formed, Stiff said. So when given first right of refusal to adopt, they didn't pass it up, and soon they officially brought their youngest son into the family.

After adopting Scott, now 21, Stiff and his wife stopped fostering, they said, worried too many kids soon would find their forever home in their household - and no kid wants an old fogey for a parent.

"Our feeling was that we'd never be able to say no," Stiff said. "If we continued to do this, we'd be in our 80s and still have kids in high school."

As it stands, Stiff is 66 and Scott is about to graduate from Loyola University.

After spending one day as a pre-med student, Scott switched into a field that's a better fit for him - finance - leaving the family heritage in medicine to his older sister, 31-year-old Stephanie Stiff, a nurse practitioner at Loyola in Maywood.

Despite his medical accomplishments including developing one of two FDA-approved methods to freeze stem cells before transplant and being recognized this year with the Stritch Medal, the highest honor given by the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, Stiff says his proudest accomplishment is his success as a parent, and now, grandparent of three.

"Everybody gets along," Stiff said of his family, which includes his second wife, Astrid. "A lot of people are estranged from their kids or the kids don't talk to each other, and we're not like that. That, to me, is a big accomplishment - making sure everyone is happy and healthy and gets along."