School Principal Took in 15-Year-Old with Nowhere to Go for Christmas. Teen ‘Never Thought’ She’d Find a Family

When Michigan high school principal Jeremy Wright learned in December 2022 that one of his students was about to be forced out of her foster home, he offered a short-term solution: she could stay with his family for two weeks, just until social workers found another placement.

That was the plan, anyway.

Wright says the student — Bridgett, then 15 — was dealing with serious challenges. She’d been using marijuana, and she’d recently stolen $300 from her foster mother. Still, he believed she needed stability more than anything else, and he hoped he could help.

“She kind of broke down in my office,” says Wright, 49, who was principal of Plainwell High School in Plainwell, Michigan. He recalls the social worker explaining that, during Christmas break, Bridgett would otherwise be alone in an office building, sleeping on a cot.

Bridgett’s childhood, Wright says, had been marked by constant upheaval. Her biological mother struggled with addiction and sex work, and there was no father involved. Bridgett and her three brothers were removed from their mother’s care when she was 8. Since then, Wright says, Bridgett had cycled through 20 foster placements — often separated from her siblings.

She lived with anxiety and addiction issues involving marijuana and alcohol, along with other mental health struggles. Later, Wright learned she had been sexually abused as a young child — allegedly by two men unrelated to her — and that the trauma followed her in the form of intrusive, voice-like experiences.

That December day, Wright and the school’s resource officer called his wife, Jennifer, a K–5 reading specialist, with a question that sounded simple on the surface.

“Can we take Bridgett in? It would just be for two weeks and we’ll figure it out,” he told her. “She just needs help, she needs a home.”

Jennifer, 48, remembers her immediate reaction: How are we going to juggle all this?

The couple already had two children: Jacob, now 18, and Kaylee, 21, who was in her first year at the Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut and coming home for Christmas. Jennifer initially said no.

“But they [foster officials] just kept calling me,” she says. By the next day, she agreed — not yet fully aware of how much Bridgett was carrying.

Within days, Bridgett arrived at their home with two suitcases filled with dirty laundry.

What followed was hard — and, eventually, life-changing.

Bridgett kept smoking marijuana, even having it delivered to the house. She stole liquor. The Wrights put a cowbell on her door because she’d sneak out at night.

“I slept with one eye open,” Jennifer admits.

As trust slowly built, Bridgett opened up to Jeremy about the nightmares tied to her sexual abuse history.

“It was just so disturbing,” he says. “It was like how in all my years of teaching, 25 years of teaching, I’d never heard a story like that. It was just so horrible.”

Still, he believed there was a path forward. “I knew that if we could get her to go and get some help and get on the right medicine and get on the right track,” he says, “that we could help her.”

About a month after she moved in, the Wrights put Bridgett on their health insurance and arranged for her to enter a local mental health hospital, followed by a four-week stay at another facility in Wisconsin.

“We promised her if she went and tried to get help, that we would give her a chance when she came back,” Jennifer recalls. “That was our deal to get her to go.”

When Bridgett returned, the change felt dramatic.

“She was calm, she was focused, she was trying,” Jeremy says.

She joined the track team. She passed all her classes — something she hadn’t done since elementary school. The Wrights invested in extensive individual and family therapy, and when she hit rough patches, they stayed.

They also began introducing her to ordinary family life — the kind she hadn’t consistently had. Vacations. Cruises to Alaska and Mexico. Detroit Lions games. Long talks. Little treats, like Lululemon and Starbucks. Over time, the Wrights say, it started to feel like a real family.

“At first she really struggled with being out of the house with the family and doing all of that stuff,” Jeremy says. “I just don’t think it was natural to her.”

Sometimes the bonding was as simple as a trip to a hardware store.

“I’d make her go to Menards [a retail store] with me and we would just walk and talk,” he says. “It was about building a relationship, a rapport, getting her to know that I’m not going to turn my back on her.”

Social workers with the state and the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption believed adoption could offer the long-term stability Bridgett had never had. Bridgett resisted the idea at first, insisting she didn’t want to be adopted.

“She never thought,” Jennifer says, “that it would happen.”

But as time went on, Jennifer couldn’t stop thinking about what would happen if Bridgett had to leave.

“The longer it went on, the more I felt like, ‘Where is she going to go? Who’s she going to end up with?’” she says. “How can we let that happen?”

Eventually, Bridgett agreed.

On May 22, 2024, she was legally adopted — becoming Jeremy and Jennifer’s third child.

For Bridgett, now 18, the feeling is still hard to put into words. She talks about the relief of finally having a permanent family that isn’t going anywhere, and she also delights in things she once couldn’t afford — like splurging at Starbucks, buying Lululemon, and taking cruises.

“I’ve been living my princess life,” she says.

The adjustment has its own quirks, too. Bridgett still calls Jeremy and Jennifer by their first names.

“I’ve tried calling them mom and dad, but it’s just kind of awkward,” she says. “I’ve never called anyone mom and dad since I was 5.”

With their support, Bridgett also reported her childhood sexual abuse to law enforcement, and Jeremy says two suspected perpetrators were arrested.

Now a senior at Delton Kellogg High School in nearby Delton — where Jeremy is currently the superintendent — Bridgett is thinking about her future. She hopes to become a dental hygienist or a flight attendant. She has a boyfriend on the school basketball team. Her connections with her biological brothers have been uneven, Jeremy says: one younger brother was adopted, another remained in foster care, and she’s grown more distant from her oldest brother.

Academically, the shift has been striking. Bridgett earned all As and Bs in the first semester of her senior year, her family says — a huge change from her ninth-grade year with the Wrights, when she passed only one class. Through the Dave Thomas Foundation, she’s also participated in a public service campaign emphasizing the importance of adoption.

Her parents say watching her rebuild her life has been its own reward.

“It’s been a treat to watch her grow,” Jeremy says.

Jennifer agrees. “Bridgett is fun, she’s feisty, she’s just a sweet girl,” she says. “She’s got a really big heart and is loving. She’s really completed our family.”