Precious Gems

Jeffrey Jarrett and Jasmine in China

A little more than two years ago, Wan Jin Si was a Chinese orphan looking for a home.  Chinese doctors thought she was completely blind. In a country that values male offspring, Wan was not a prized adoption. With such a severe disability, baby Wan lie waiting. Nearly 7,000 miles away in Cleveland, the Jarrett family found Wan, who they named Jasmine. They found the child they were looking for.

"We were essentially looking for a healthy child, but as the paperwork went along, and the time went along, the amount of waiting we had to deal with working with the Chinese adoption agencies got longer and longer - it went from a year and a half to two years to two and a half years," says Jeffrey Jarrett, who works as executive chef at North End in Hudson. "We decided to look at the 'waiting child list', which is kids with disabilities.

"They told us that [Jasmine] was completely blind, and we were fine with that - she was way too cute to pass up on." 

The determination as to who may adopt a Chinese child is often left to chance. Potential adoptive families "bid" on adoptees, and are chosen at random from a list by Chinese adoption officials. "Nobody else had bid on Jasmine," says Jarrett. "We were the first family to bid on her." 

With their hopes across the globe and three sons at home, Jarrett and his wife Tammy traveled to Beijing. "They brought her to our hotel room," says Jarrett. "About five minutes after we got her, we realized that she wasn't completely blind. We were giving her some cereal and she dropped it on the ground, and she could see, roughly, where she dropped it." 

It was a bright sign, and the Jarretts took her to the Cleveland Clinic, where they determined that she was still developing, and it was too early to tell how her sight would develop. "She's doing wonderful now, and she's adapted to living with our family as if she's always been here." [pictured: Jarrett holds Jasmine for the first time]