When you ask Det. Mike Blair why he decided to adopt a child from a homicide case he responded to, he’ll tell you that it was because of “a God thing.”
“The easiest way to surmise the whole, is this, it’s been a God thing for us,” Blair told WFLA.
Blair’s wife, Danyel Blair, had prayed that her husband would want to adopt the sweet little boy who was stabbed and set on fire by his biological father, who also killed his mother and disabled sister.
“I had already started praying that God would soften Michael’s heart and say, ‘OK yes, we have a place and Ronnie belongs home with us,’” Danyel Blair said.
Blair was told that they weren’t sure if the 7-year-old boy would survive when he responded to the call.
“By the time I arrived that night, we were told there was a child being medevacked to Tampa General, but he was not expected to live,” Blair said.
Blair went to visit Ronnie, a football fan, in the hospital to check in on him and bring him some signed Tampa Bay Buccaneers memorabilia to cheer him up.
The two began to bond over football, and one night Ronnie had a request for Blair.
“That evening, as I was leaving, Ronnie had asked if I could stay and watch a movie with him,” Blair said, according to WTSP. “I told him I couldn’t because I had to go back to work but I offered to come back and watch a movie with him that night and so the evening of the 30 I went back with my wife and watched the movie.”
Blair and his wife, who have five children, had a scheduled date night but agreed to cancel it to spend the night with Ronnie.
“I had already known that I would want to take Ronnie home with us, starting that night,” Danyel Blair said.
Ronnie was actually under the care of other family members, but there were problems in the home.
So, thankfully, a guardian ad litem was appointed.
“When I got the phone call, I was driving, and I was driving by our church and the guardian was asking, ‘do you know of somebody who can help us out,’” Blair said.
Danyel had already started praying that Blair would agree to adopt Ronnie while their children encouraged him to do so as well.
The support of his family and driving right by that church the moment he was put on the spot confirmed to Blair that adopting Ronnie was the right thing to do.
Now Ronnie is surrounded by a loving family who will protect him no matter what.
And when he forgets that, he can just repeat his family mantra: “I am safe, I am loved, and I am part of this family.”
“They are really nice people. They are the best moms and dads, and they really take care of me. There is no one else better than them,” Ronnie said of his new family.
Learn more about Ronnie’s journey in his interviews below.
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