Eight-year-old Linda Garcia entered the foster care system with her infant sister, Irene Montoya, after their mother was hospitalized for tuberculosis in 1953. Linda protected her sister from a series of neglectful families over the next few years, but they were malnourished when their social worker brought them to the home of Joe and Belen Moreno.
An older couple, they took in the girls—who would come to call them Nino and Nina. At StoryCorps, Linda and Irene remembered the people who gave them the love and care they had been missing.
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Originally aired May 17, on NPR’s Morning Edition.
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