Kathryn Pidgeon always wanted to be a teacher, but her father convinced her to go to law school, something she approached “half-heartedly.” After graduation, Pidgeon still considered becoming a teacher, but her credits wouldn’t roll over, so she ended up working in construction law.
Pidgeon’s dream of working with children would eventually be realized when she found her passion and started working at an adoption agency after having her first child.
“That changed my world, because I fell in love with the law of adoptions,” Pidgeon says. “When I went to work with the adoption agency, it was a moment in time where all of this law background could be used to help children.”
Not only was Pidgeon’s life changed, so were the lives of the children she would come to help in the years to come. Eventually, Pidgeon started her own practice — Kathryn A. Pidegon, P.C. — to help children.
For her first year, Pidgeon didn’t draw a salary and then the phone calls started coming in. She started placing children and matching birth mothers with prospective adoptive parents.
For 25 years, Pidgeon has worked on thousands of adoptions and foster care cases. Many of the children she initially found homes for are now starting to invite her to graduation ceremonies.
Striving to help the thousands of children in the foster care system, Pidgeon was one of the key people who helped form the Maricopa County National Adoption Day Foundation, a nonprofit charity that helps find hundreds of children a permanent home. A lot of Pidgeon’s focus now is working with the state to find foster children a “forever home,” she says, which is a very rewarding experience.
“To watch the transformation, both for the families that are building their families through adoption and the (foster) children who, for the first time, have permanency and love, it’s pretty powerful,” she says.
