This Couple Has Adopted 88 Children With Special Needs Over 4 Decades

June 25, 2017

Meet Michael and Camille Geraldi, a husband–and–wife, doctor-and-nurse duo who put their heart into everything they do.

In the last four decades, the couple has adopted 88 children with special needs, when all of them were infants.

Michael and Camille Geraldi

The Geraldis' story starts in 1986 at Miami Children's Hospital, where Camille sat by the bedside of critically ill children who had been abandoned. Here, Michael found Camille night after night, long after her shifts had ended, reading to the children or just holding their hands.

Camille started bringing these kids home with her - the ones whom hospital staff could do nothing more for - and told Michael this was what she wanted to do with her life.

Along with huge hearts, they had fortitude — and that sustained them through the years as they coped with the deaths of 32 children.

"The children I took in were expected to die," Camille, 68, told CNN. "But so many of them have lived."

Then in 2015, the couple celebrated their 40th anniversary, making plans to travel the following year on their first-ever vacation. However, life had other plans, and in January 2015 Michael Geraldi was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer caused by asbestos. He passed away on March 8, 2016.

Now, Camille is continuing the work that she and her husband started decades ago, building the Possible Dream Foundation and helping others through education and resources on how to care for individuals with special needs.

To date, more than 40 children, many of whom are now adults, consider the Geraldis their parents.