Madison Nancy Moon, a friend who provided day care for the 3-year-olds, told Mey not to worry about picking them up -- she would bring the children home at the end of the day.

But by 6 p.m., Mey, a single mom, became worried when her children still hadn't shown up.

The twins never did come home that night and haven't spent a night in their mother's Loveland home since.

After calling police and sheriff's deputies to her home to report her children had been kidnapped, Mey was stunned to learn that Moon had obtained a court order that day giving her custody of Madison and Dylan Mey.

"The bottom line is that she kidnapped my kids," Mey said.

"I don't care that she has gone to court and done it. I never thought it was possible for the courts to give away my kids without an investigation. She took my kids by lies and deceit."

The groundwork for this unusual court order was laid last fall, when Mey signed a power of attorney giving Moon authority over the children while Mey was out of town for a weekend. This was followed by a document giving Moon temporary guardianship of the twins in January and permanent guardianship in February, when Mey was severely ill.

Faced with these documents and Moon's claim that the children were in danger, Fort Collins Magistrate Cynthia Hartman turned over care of the twins to Moon.

The magistrate also ordered Mey to pay $878 a month child support to her former friend and day care provider.

Mey and her attorney are convinced that the April 18 court order was merely the culmination of a longstanding plan to take the children.

"I can't get inside her mind. I'm not sure when it was formed," attorney William Wawro said. "Certainly when she got the first guardianship paper. But she may have been planning it long before that."

Moon and her legal services attorney Joan Woodbury declined interviews.

"Because this case is about two 3-year-olds, we really want to respect their privacy and not talk to the newspaper about it," Woodbury said. "That's all we really have to say."

Mey, a business technology manager at Colorado State University, had known Moon for 20 years, first as Mey's hairdresser and later as a friend who did psychic readings.

The two had been out of touch several years when Moon phoned Mey early last year to renew their friendship. Moon knew that Mey, a single mother, had given birth to twins as a result of an in-vitro fertilization.

Moon first said she was pregnant with her own twins, then said she had miscarried, Mey said. Moon offered to care for Mey's twins, saying she could give them more attention than a day care setting with other children.

At first Mey turned down the offer. She wanted to stick with the licensed home day care she had used since the twins were born. But when that day care went out of business last summer, Moon again urged Mey to give her a chance and she began caring for the twins last July.

In October, Moon took the twins for the weekend while Mey was out of town. At Moon's request, Mey signed a power of attorney giving her authority to make decisions about the children's health care.

By November, Mey said, she and Moon were having differences of opinion over the care of the twins, and Mey began to search for other day care.

"She told me how much she loved them and got really upset," Mey said.

In January, Mey began suffering from debilitating migraine headaches and nausea so severe that she lost 50 pounds over the course of three months.

"I couldn't keep anything down," Mey said. "I wasn't sleeping. I was out of work for nearly a month and then went back part time. My brain wasn't working that well during this time. Then Nancy told me she had a dream that I was going to die and social services was going to take my kids."

Mey said Moon told her this could be avoided if Mey gave her temporary guardianship of the twins while she was ill.

Mey already had a will in place giving her sister guardianship of the twins, but Moon convinced Mey the children would be turned over to social services and the care of strangers while a will was in probate court.

So, on Jan. 12, Mey signed an order Moon had prepared giving her temporary guardianship of the twins. A month later, Moon convinced Mey that the temporary order wasn't enough, and Mey signed another order Feb. 16 giving her guardianship of the twins.

Moon put the twins on Medicaid, despite the fact that they have full medical insurance through Mey's employer.

Moon filed her custody petition on March 5, after obtaining a waiver of service that Mey doesn't remember signing. The waiver signified to the court that Mey knew about the custody hearing and would have been there if she chose to fight it.

Mey's health was gradually improving in April when she began looking for a house and day care closer to her job at CSU, unaware that her life was about to be turned upside down.

On April 18, she took her children to Moon's home, planning to pick them up that afternoon and go home to meet Dylan's therapist for developmental problems.

About 3 p.m., Moon called Mey at work, saying she would drop the children off instead. Mey went home, becoming more and more anxious as the children never arrived. Dylan's therapist arrived for his 6 p.m. appointment and still the children were not home.

Eventually, Mey called the police and learned about Moon's custody order.

She was stunned and hysterical.

"I trusted her and entrusted her with the care of my kids. She not only betrayed me, but she has systematically, every single day, manipulated the situation to her advantage," Mey said.

"She used my fears and vulnerabilities to have me sign this stuff," Mey said. "It never occurred to me that she was after my children or that it would be this easy for the courts to give my children away without anyone even investigating or talking to me about it."

Mey's attorney William Wawro, whom she hired the day after Moon took the twins, said the documents Mey signed to protect her children are precisely the ones that made it so easy for her to lose them.

"If Madison Moon hadn't had these documents, this never would have happened," Wawro said.

He said he was flabbergasted when he saw the documents Mey had signed.

"The waiver of service in itself is enough to sink your ship. But (Moon) was standing there with documents purported to be an award of guardianship from a natural mother of the children to a caretaker."

Wawro counts Mey's case as among the most bizarre in his career.

"I've never seen a case like this before where you have a private party basically help themselves to another person's kids," Wawro said.

On April 18, while Mey was waiting for her children to come home, Moon and her legal aid attorney, Joan Woodbury, were in court saying Mey was unfit to care for her children.

Woodbury told the judge that the twins had been living with Moon full-time since November "and sporadically seeing their mother, who is not able to take care of them."

Woodbury said Mey was addicted to prescription drugs for her migraine headaches and that her home was filthy.

Woodbury acknowledged that Moon was unemployed, receiving $618 a month in food stamps and public assistance, and taking medications of her own for depression, migraines and anxiety.

No mention was made of the $648 a month Mey paid Moon for day care, or the income Moon receives from her $75-an-hour psychic readings. Or the fact that the children have no need for Medicaid because they are covered by Mey's insurance through her employer.

Wawro got a chance to challenge the custody ruling on July 30.

He argued that Mey was too ill to understand the legal implications of the documents she signed.

"She was so thin, she looked like a scarecrow when first she came to see me," Wawro said. "She was very, very sick. Frankly, she did not have her wits about her and Madison took advantage of that."

Wawro also charged that Moon had committed a fraud on the court by falsely stating that the children were living with her.

"She was nothing more than a baby sitter," Wawro said.

Dozens of Mey's relatives and friends testified or signed affidavits stating that the children had been living with their mother -- not Moon -- and that Mey was a wonderful mother.

"Terri was so sick, weak and fatigued and in pain that in my professional opinion she was not fully aware of the documents that she was signing," Debra Curren, a friend and registered nurse, wrote the court.

"(Mey) was taken completely advantage of by a desperate woman who wanted the children for her own to replace the twins she lost and to access the funds that would be available to her," Curren said.

Moon told the magistrate that Mey was overwhelmed by the demands of being a single mother of twins, that Mey wanted to her to have custody of the children and didn't want her family to know about it.

The magistrate held that Mey was so ill she lacked the capacity to defend herself in the April court hearing. But she kept the children under Moon's care pending further hearings.

The ruling was a crushing blow to Mey and her family, who expected to bring the twins home that day.

The family remains stunned that an outsider has gained custody of the children.

"Family members would have been happy to take the children at any time had there been cause for the court to remove them from their mother's home," the twins' grandmother, Ida Ruth Mey, told the court.

"I'm designated in Terri's will as guardian for the children if something happens to her," said her sister, Michele Yonker. "I don't understand how custody of the children can be given to someone else."

Mey's sister-in-law, Nancy Johnson, said she was outraged that Moon never consulted with Mey's family over concerns she had about the children's welfare. "I am angered that the court disrupted a young and vulnerable family without due evidence of abuse or neglect," she said.

The magistrate appointed a special advocate in August to investigate the situation and make recommendations.

She also chided Moon for stopping Dylan's therapy and failing to comply with twice-a-week court-ordered visits between Mey and the twins.

Mey said she fears that Moon is manipulating her children.

"Maddie referred to her as 'Happy Mommy' and to me as 'Sick Mommy.' My kids were well-adjusted, happy kids. This just sickens me."

A hearing before a judge is set for Oct. 17.

Meanwhile, Mey waits in a house filled with memories, photos and the toys of her two children, who haven't been home in nearly five months.

"I'm devastated here," she said. "My kids are gone and there is so much that I have missed. There is nothing that can ever make up for this summer."

Contact Sue Lindsay at (303) 892-5181 or lindsays@RockyMountainNews.com.

October 9, 2001