sws4420
05-20-2007, 06:56 PM
Friends, foes offer competing images of "Extreme Makeover" winner
http://timesunion.com/center/graphics/front0520makeoverA.jpg
COLONIE -- There is the reality TV version of Debbie Oatman, recipient of the "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" bonanza, whose image will be softly lighted and burnished to a warm glow during a two-hour tearjerker season finale today.
And then there is the plain reality, which is much messier, and involves a thick file of police reports and allegations of drug use and abusive behavior, all covered by a heavy cloud of innuendo.
"That's the thing about Deb; people either love her or hate her," said Joe Gaitan, her former husband and father of the couple's 10-year-old son, Scout, who lives with Oatman and her three adopted boys.
"There's a lot of good in Deb," said Gaitan, 50, of Ravena, a truck driver who battled Oatman through a bitter divorce and custody fight. "But there's also a dark side. I knew the dark side."
"She's absolutely wonderful with children," said Patricia Baldwin, chairwoman of the teacher education program at The College of Saint Rose, who observed Oatman as a fourth-grade student-teacher and praised Oatman's sensitivity and compassion.
Oatman graduated with a bachelor's degree in childhood education from Saint Rose on May 12. She was on the dean's list, had a 3.8 grade point average and was selected for membership in a national honor society. The college also offered her a full scholarship for graduate school.
Somewhere in between those starkly contrasting images of Debbie Oatman the saint and Debbie Oatman the sinner, the truth resides.
The light and shadow of Oatman's forceful personality, once confined to a small circle of family and friends, has been thrust into a hit TV show's white-hot glare.
Today's ABC-TV home makeover of Oatman's Fairway Lane home in Colonie and the story about the 49-year-old single mother -- two of whose adopted sons were diagnosed with HIV and also have special needs -- will be seen by some 20 million Americans and an estimated 1 billion viewers in 69 countries.
"It's the Super Bowl of reality shows," said co-executive producer Conrad Ricketts during a visit to Colonie for the show's March taping.
Suddenly, Oatman and her long quarrelsome streak have been placed under an intense microscope, creating an open season for those who wish to criticize her.
Oatman chalks up the trash talk to petty jealousy.
Those slinging the mud consider her a masterful manipulator who's receiving her just deserts.
"When you're on a show that's so high-profile, you become a target and have to expect a backlash," said Neil Willenson, founder and CEO of Camp Heartland, based in Minnesota. His organization has provided a summer camp experience for more than 2,000 children with HIV/AIDS and their families since 1993. He said he received hate mail after his camp played a small part in a previous episode of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."
Oatman's sons attended the camp and Willenson told the "Extreme Makeover" producers, who were searching for a family dealing with HIV/AIDS, to reach out to Oatman.
The camp will be featured in Sunday's episode.
Fairway Lane residents who have had dust-ups with Oatman whisper about her volatile nature. She's become a lightning rod for the 15 minutes of TV fame that descended upon the sprawling town.
"Debbie is very vocal when it comes to fighting for her kids. She had a run-in with another parent, but that happens all the time," said Joe Pavone, a neighbor of Oatman's on Fairway Lane and former president of Colonie Little League, where her sons played.
"I'll tell you from experience that the three young men she adopted are nice, polite and great kids," said Brian Casey, a retired town police officer who got to know Oatman's three adopted sons during his years as a DARE officer at Lisha Kill Middle School and as a resource officer at Colonie High School. Casey has heard negative hearsay about Oatman as a member of the South Colonie School District Board of Education, which he wouldn't discuss.
"Everywhere I go, people are still talking about her," said Police Chief Steven Heider, who was on the scene daily during the show's filming. He also once lived on Fairway Lane and keeps in touch with former neighbors.
"Sure, I've heard a lot of criticism, but you can't take back what she did, taking in those boys with HIV at a time when nobody else in suburbia would think of doing that," he said.
Dr. Kallana Manjunath, an Albany pediatrician who treated Oatman's children for many years, concurred.
"Those children she adopted could have been abandoned in a hospital in New York City if she didn't come forward," Manjunath said. "Debbie is a caring parent who provided them with a comfortable home and kept them healthy through a life-threatening disease."
The best and worst of the local community have been on display since Ty Pennington and the "Extreme Makeover" design team's tour bus rolled down Fairway Lane in March to oversee demolition of Oatman's water-damaged raised ranch and construction of a 3,700-square-foot custom home in just 96 hours.
While dozens of contractors donated thousands of dollars of material and labor and an army of volunteers lent a hand, a bitter campaign of anonymous letters and e-mails about Oatman has been conducted below the media radar.
"This is really starting to piss me off," Oatman said last week in a telephone interview in a blunt, combative style detractors call abrasive and supporters view as strong advocacy for her adopted sons.
"I don't have to defend myself to anyone and I'm not trying to vindicate myself because I haven't done anything wrong," she said. She said the TV show's producers conducted a thorough criminal background check on her and that she has no convictions on her record.
Colonie police filed 18 incident reports dating to 1997 after investigating complaints by neighbors or family members at the Oatman-Gaitan home. The reports ranged from domestic disputes, arguments with neighbors, harassing phone calls, emotional outbursts by the children and vandalism of the family's car.
Two of the incidents involved marijuana.
On July 2, 2003, a Colonie DARE officer went to the house to present a gift from the police for one of the sons and noticed six marijuana plants growing on the rear deck. Oatman said the plants belonged to her husband and Gaitan was charged with unlawful possession of marijuana the next day. There was no record of conviction.
On Sept. 19, 2005, three years after Gaitan left the house and a month after their divorce was finalized, a son called police after he smelled smoke coming from his mother's bedroom and suspected it was marijuana, according to the police report. Investigators found a metal box in her nightstand with a small amount of marijuana in a plastic bag and a ceramic pipe. Oatman was charged with unlawful possession of marijuana. There was no record of conviction.
"Nothing was substantiated that the marijuana was my marijuana," Oatman said.
Gaitan describes the couple frequently smoking marijuana together, partying with friends and a euphemism the kids used for her hangovers ("mom's got the vodka flu").
"Joe's very vindictive and I don't have time to deal with the man anymore," said Oatman, who receives $265 weekly from Gaitan for child support under their divorce settlement, which allows him a 24-hour visit with Scout every other weekend and four hours one night a week.
Gaitan doesn't deny his own criminal past. He was arrested on charges of conspiracy to sell cocaine in 1994 in Florida, while he was working as a pool installer, and served two years' probation.
The two met in 1995 in Washington, D.C., at the National Institutes of Health, where Oatman's adopted son and Gaitan's daughter from a previous marriage were receiving experimental HIV drugs.
Gaitan said he and Oatman socialized with several couples they met at NIH, some of whom had adopted as many as six children with HIV for their primary source of income.
After their marriage in 1997, Oatman and Gaitan brought a girl with HIV from New York City into their home on a trial visit with plans to adopt her, but the girl was sent back to an adoption agency because of extensive medical and psychological problems.
"We talked about adopting two girls and that was going to be my income because my daughter with HIV wasn't bringing in any money since she wasn't adopted," Gaitan said.
Oatman receives subsidies for her three adopted sons that amount to an annual income in the $40,000 range, according to state subsidy rate schedules.
Oatman, who grew up in Ravena and worked with emotionally disturbed adolescent girls at St. Anne Institute in the late 1980s, was last employed outside the home in the early 1990s as a part-time waitress at a Friendly's restaurant.
She denied her ex-husband's contention that adopting HIV-positive children was a moneymaking scheme.
"I didn't take any children for money," Oatman said.
"Even if she was receiving over $100,000 a year in adoption subsidies, it's not enough to compensate for all the heartache and trouble," said pediatrician Manjunath, who, with his wife, took in an HIV-positive child as foster parents for a year and found it draining work.
Gaitan also said his ex-wife was prone to outbursts that could turn abusive toward the children. Gaitan said she targeted his daughter with HIV, who moved out of the Fairway Lane house five years ago. She is now 19 years old and lives with a relative in Florida. She declined to be interviewed for this article.
Oatman denied Gaitan's allegations.
According to the Colonie police reports, Oatman was both victim and perpetrator in family disputes.
In 2004, Oatman was taken to the hospital with a swollen face after she was struck by one of her sons during an argument about cleaning the house. In 2001, she suffered a cut to her nose while trying to restrain her agitated son, reports said.
In 1997, Oatman tossed Gaitan's clothes into the yard and police arrived during a heated argument between the couple, reports said. Two more times that same year, police responded to break up fights between the couple, including one skirmish that turned into a wrestling match in the driveway.
"Debbie could be tough and outspoken, but you have to be in this job," said Terry Gabriel, associate executive director at St. Anne Institute, where Oatman was promoted to unit manager of 25 emotionally disturbed girls in the late 1980s.
Some staffers didn't get along with Oatman because of her strong personality, Gabriel said, but she was a valued employee who was never investigated for abuse or even suspected of mistreating the girls, and she eventually left for a better-paying job.
Those who have observed Oatman working with children praise her.
"Debbie's an exceptional teacher and an amazing person," said Kerry Degnan, a close friend and classmate in the education department at Saint Rose who graduated last week.
As for the hubbub on Fairway Lane and her critics in Colonie, Oatman is trying to shrug it off.
"I take what people are saying with a grain of salt and don't see a down side," said Oatman. Besides her custom home, she has more than $160,000 in donations raised locally in the bank and college scholarships promised to her four sons and herself -- a geyser of goodwill valued at more than $1 million.
And what of the neighbors who sometimes clashed with Oatman?
They collected checks of $500 to $1,500 from the TV folks for their inconvenience. They were put up at a local hotel during construction. Several had their driveways repaved after TV crews parked trailers and heavy equipment on them and some had new grass and fencing installed as compensation for the use of their yards.
Still, the negativity persists.
"What else do they want from me?" Oatman asked. "They should spend their time examining themselves."
http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=590984&category=REGIONOTHER&BCCode=HOME&newsdate=5/20/2007
http://timesunion.com/center/graphics/front0520makeoverA.jpg
COLONIE -- There is the reality TV version of Debbie Oatman, recipient of the "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" bonanza, whose image will be softly lighted and burnished to a warm glow during a two-hour tearjerker season finale today.
And then there is the plain reality, which is much messier, and involves a thick file of police reports and allegations of drug use and abusive behavior, all covered by a heavy cloud of innuendo.
"That's the thing about Deb; people either love her or hate her," said Joe Gaitan, her former husband and father of the couple's 10-year-old son, Scout, who lives with Oatman and her three adopted boys.
"There's a lot of good in Deb," said Gaitan, 50, of Ravena, a truck driver who battled Oatman through a bitter divorce and custody fight. "But there's also a dark side. I knew the dark side."
"She's absolutely wonderful with children," said Patricia Baldwin, chairwoman of the teacher education program at The College of Saint Rose, who observed Oatman as a fourth-grade student-teacher and praised Oatman's sensitivity and compassion.
Oatman graduated with a bachelor's degree in childhood education from Saint Rose on May 12. She was on the dean's list, had a 3.8 grade point average and was selected for membership in a national honor society. The college also offered her a full scholarship for graduate school.
Somewhere in between those starkly contrasting images of Debbie Oatman the saint and Debbie Oatman the sinner, the truth resides.
The light and shadow of Oatman's forceful personality, once confined to a small circle of family and friends, has been thrust into a hit TV show's white-hot glare.
Today's ABC-TV home makeover of Oatman's Fairway Lane home in Colonie and the story about the 49-year-old single mother -- two of whose adopted sons were diagnosed with HIV and also have special needs -- will be seen by some 20 million Americans and an estimated 1 billion viewers in 69 countries.
"It's the Super Bowl of reality shows," said co-executive producer Conrad Ricketts during a visit to Colonie for the show's March taping.
Suddenly, Oatman and her long quarrelsome streak have been placed under an intense microscope, creating an open season for those who wish to criticize her.
Oatman chalks up the trash talk to petty jealousy.
Those slinging the mud consider her a masterful manipulator who's receiving her just deserts.
"When you're on a show that's so high-profile, you become a target and have to expect a backlash," said Neil Willenson, founder and CEO of Camp Heartland, based in Minnesota. His organization has provided a summer camp experience for more than 2,000 children with HIV/AIDS and their families since 1993. He said he received hate mail after his camp played a small part in a previous episode of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."
Oatman's sons attended the camp and Willenson told the "Extreme Makeover" producers, who were searching for a family dealing with HIV/AIDS, to reach out to Oatman.
The camp will be featured in Sunday's episode.
Fairway Lane residents who have had dust-ups with Oatman whisper about her volatile nature. She's become a lightning rod for the 15 minutes of TV fame that descended upon the sprawling town.
"Debbie is very vocal when it comes to fighting for her kids. She had a run-in with another parent, but that happens all the time," said Joe Pavone, a neighbor of Oatman's on Fairway Lane and former president of Colonie Little League, where her sons played.
"I'll tell you from experience that the three young men she adopted are nice, polite and great kids," said Brian Casey, a retired town police officer who got to know Oatman's three adopted sons during his years as a DARE officer at Lisha Kill Middle School and as a resource officer at Colonie High School. Casey has heard negative hearsay about Oatman as a member of the South Colonie School District Board of Education, which he wouldn't discuss.
"Everywhere I go, people are still talking about her," said Police Chief Steven Heider, who was on the scene daily during the show's filming. He also once lived on Fairway Lane and keeps in touch with former neighbors.
"Sure, I've heard a lot of criticism, but you can't take back what she did, taking in those boys with HIV at a time when nobody else in suburbia would think of doing that," he said.
Dr. Kallana Manjunath, an Albany pediatrician who treated Oatman's children for many years, concurred.
"Those children she adopted could have been abandoned in a hospital in New York City if she didn't come forward," Manjunath said. "Debbie is a caring parent who provided them with a comfortable home and kept them healthy through a life-threatening disease."
The best and worst of the local community have been on display since Ty Pennington and the "Extreme Makeover" design team's tour bus rolled down Fairway Lane in March to oversee demolition of Oatman's water-damaged raised ranch and construction of a 3,700-square-foot custom home in just 96 hours.
While dozens of contractors donated thousands of dollars of material and labor and an army of volunteers lent a hand, a bitter campaign of anonymous letters and e-mails about Oatman has been conducted below the media radar.
"This is really starting to piss me off," Oatman said last week in a telephone interview in a blunt, combative style detractors call abrasive and supporters view as strong advocacy for her adopted sons.
"I don't have to defend myself to anyone and I'm not trying to vindicate myself because I haven't done anything wrong," she said. She said the TV show's producers conducted a thorough criminal background check on her and that she has no convictions on her record.
Colonie police filed 18 incident reports dating to 1997 after investigating complaints by neighbors or family members at the Oatman-Gaitan home. The reports ranged from domestic disputes, arguments with neighbors, harassing phone calls, emotional outbursts by the children and vandalism of the family's car.
Two of the incidents involved marijuana.
On July 2, 2003, a Colonie DARE officer went to the house to present a gift from the police for one of the sons and noticed six marijuana plants growing on the rear deck. Oatman said the plants belonged to her husband and Gaitan was charged with unlawful possession of marijuana the next day. There was no record of conviction.
On Sept. 19, 2005, three years after Gaitan left the house and a month after their divorce was finalized, a son called police after he smelled smoke coming from his mother's bedroom and suspected it was marijuana, according to the police report. Investigators found a metal box in her nightstand with a small amount of marijuana in a plastic bag and a ceramic pipe. Oatman was charged with unlawful possession of marijuana. There was no record of conviction.
"Nothing was substantiated that the marijuana was my marijuana," Oatman said.
Gaitan describes the couple frequently smoking marijuana together, partying with friends and a euphemism the kids used for her hangovers ("mom's got the vodka flu").
"Joe's very vindictive and I don't have time to deal with the man anymore," said Oatman, who receives $265 weekly from Gaitan for child support under their divorce settlement, which allows him a 24-hour visit with Scout every other weekend and four hours one night a week.
Gaitan doesn't deny his own criminal past. He was arrested on charges of conspiracy to sell cocaine in 1994 in Florida, while he was working as a pool installer, and served two years' probation.
The two met in 1995 in Washington, D.C., at the National Institutes of Health, where Oatman's adopted son and Gaitan's daughter from a previous marriage were receiving experimental HIV drugs.
Gaitan said he and Oatman socialized with several couples they met at NIH, some of whom had adopted as many as six children with HIV for their primary source of income.
After their marriage in 1997, Oatman and Gaitan brought a girl with HIV from New York City into their home on a trial visit with plans to adopt her, but the girl was sent back to an adoption agency because of extensive medical and psychological problems.
"We talked about adopting two girls and that was going to be my income because my daughter with HIV wasn't bringing in any money since she wasn't adopted," Gaitan said.
Oatman receives subsidies for her three adopted sons that amount to an annual income in the $40,000 range, according to state subsidy rate schedules.
Oatman, who grew up in Ravena and worked with emotionally disturbed adolescent girls at St. Anne Institute in the late 1980s, was last employed outside the home in the early 1990s as a part-time waitress at a Friendly's restaurant.
She denied her ex-husband's contention that adopting HIV-positive children was a moneymaking scheme.
"I didn't take any children for money," Oatman said.
"Even if she was receiving over $100,000 a year in adoption subsidies, it's not enough to compensate for all the heartache and trouble," said pediatrician Manjunath, who, with his wife, took in an HIV-positive child as foster parents for a year and found it draining work.
Gaitan also said his ex-wife was prone to outbursts that could turn abusive toward the children. Gaitan said she targeted his daughter with HIV, who moved out of the Fairway Lane house five years ago. She is now 19 years old and lives with a relative in Florida. She declined to be interviewed for this article.
Oatman denied Gaitan's allegations.
According to the Colonie police reports, Oatman was both victim and perpetrator in family disputes.
In 2004, Oatman was taken to the hospital with a swollen face after she was struck by one of her sons during an argument about cleaning the house. In 2001, she suffered a cut to her nose while trying to restrain her agitated son, reports said.
In 1997, Oatman tossed Gaitan's clothes into the yard and police arrived during a heated argument between the couple, reports said. Two more times that same year, police responded to break up fights between the couple, including one skirmish that turned into a wrestling match in the driveway.
"Debbie could be tough and outspoken, but you have to be in this job," said Terry Gabriel, associate executive director at St. Anne Institute, where Oatman was promoted to unit manager of 25 emotionally disturbed girls in the late 1980s.
Some staffers didn't get along with Oatman because of her strong personality, Gabriel said, but she was a valued employee who was never investigated for abuse or even suspected of mistreating the girls, and she eventually left for a better-paying job.
Those who have observed Oatman working with children praise her.
"Debbie's an exceptional teacher and an amazing person," said Kerry Degnan, a close friend and classmate in the education department at Saint Rose who graduated last week.
As for the hubbub on Fairway Lane and her critics in Colonie, Oatman is trying to shrug it off.
"I take what people are saying with a grain of salt and don't see a down side," said Oatman. Besides her custom home, she has more than $160,000 in donations raised locally in the bank and college scholarships promised to her four sons and herself -- a geyser of goodwill valued at more than $1 million.
And what of the neighbors who sometimes clashed with Oatman?
They collected checks of $500 to $1,500 from the TV folks for their inconvenience. They were put up at a local hotel during construction. Several had their driveways repaved after TV crews parked trailers and heavy equipment on them and some had new grass and fencing installed as compensation for the use of their yards.
Still, the negativity persists.
"What else do they want from me?" Oatman asked. "They should spend their time examining themselves."
http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=590984&category=REGIONOTHER&BCCode=HOME&newsdate=5/20/2007