A dream made reality

Rand Getlin, who was adopted by a prominent West Linn family, has made the most of a fairy tale opportunity

By Dan Itel

The West Linn Tidings, Jan 24, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (11 Reader comments)

Vern Uyetake / West Linn Tidings

Rand Getlin, a West Linn High School graduate and current USC Law School student, shows off family photos at his home in the Barrington Heights neighborhood.

The correlation may sound trivial, considering the sobering start to life for Rand Getlin.

But the West Linn High School graduate barely hesitates when offering the unique comparison while telling his story.

“Have you ever seen the show ‘Fresh Prince of Bel Air?’” he said recently in a brief moment of relaxation during holiday break from his classes at the University of Southern California Law School. “I felt exactly like that.”

Getlin’s tale of growing up in North Portland – first in a dysfunctional household then in various foster homes – and ultimately being taken in by a prominent West Linn family, closely resembles the premise of the 1990s sitcom. In “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” a young man is rescued from the Los Angeles ghetto by well-to-do relatives.

“It certainly was a step up,” Getlin said of his story line.

Getlin’s life is certainly one of Hollywood-like conjure, a success story that has gone against all odds.

After spending the first 12 years of life in Los Angeles with his single father, Getlin, formerly Johnson, came to Portland to live with his mother and her new husband.

One bad turn after another – the all too common occurrences of life in underprivileged Portland – led to this ultimate rags to riches story.

Today, among Getlin’s long list of accomplishments include his acceptance into USC Law, a congressional internship and becoming one of the founding members of an emerging libertarian think tank.

He was officially adopted by the West Linn couple of Jaye Taylor and Lon Getlin three years ago, completing a life transformation and providing a study in how almost unlimited resources and opportunity, combined with a realization of one’s potential, can change a preordained destiny.

“The way I look at things is I’ve made it essentially through the fire, standing here today,” Getlin said. “I think by not sharing my story I would be doing kids a disservice.”

Making the most of his opportunity

To say Getlin, 24, is a force to be reckoned with — perhaps even one of our nation’s future leaders — is an understatement. The charisma and intelligence that has captured the attention of political leaders is coupled with the ability to relate to a struggling inner-city student who lives on the fringe of the law.

Getlin has used the foundation of his challenging upbringing and built upon it the framework to succeed. Along with his USC roommate, Matt Harrison, a graduate of the University of Miami, Getlin is one of the founding members of the Prometheus Institute, a libertarian public policy think tank. The organization calls itself “the future of politics,” providing a discussion of ideas from both sides of the fence rather than engaging in the usual political bickering.

“I feel like my experiences have given me the ability to analyze all sides of a position, or at least more sides than the average person,” said Getlin, who serves as Prometheus’ outreach director.

The organization is getting noticed, too.

Over the holiday break, Getlin and Harrison met with Lawrence Reed, the president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, in Naples, Fla. Prometheus also recently secured a $23,000 grant. And during the winter semester at USC, they are planning trips to Michigan, New York and Atlanta to meet with various other think tanks to continue their organization’s drive to legitimacy.

“I could do this for the rest of my life,” he said.

Getlin’s political transformation began when he accepted a congressional internship with former Republican Sen. Larry Craig, of all people, in 2004. Craig, of course, would later make dubious headlines after an incident in an airport bathroom. But at the time it was his “political awakening” for Getlin.

“It opened my mind to both sides of the aisle,” Getlin said. “I started realizing that republicans have some very important ideas and so do democrats. And that’s where the libertarian ideals come from.”

Getlin was eventually offered a job with the Craig staff as a foreign relations assistant and spent three months in Washington, D.C.

Getlin has also worked as an assistant deputy political director for Sen. John Kerry’s presidential campaign. And he has delivered speeches before various organizations such as the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute, the PEW Commission on Children in Foster Care and the U.S. Senate Black Legislative Staff Caucus.

“When he went back to D.C. to give the speech (at the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institution), it was a very expensive fund-raiser, and he’s up on stage with a giant screen behind him, and he gave a talk about what it really means to have a family,” Taylor said. “He had everybody in the audience in tears.”

But Getlin’s future wasn’t always so bright. Considering his early upbringing, Getlin says he is glad to even be alive.

“It’s like a fairy tale,” he said. “There’s no way, if I were to sit down and write a script, that I could come up with something like this.”

An ominous start to a promising life

It started in Los Angeles, where Getlin spent the first 12 years of his life being raised by his single father, LaMont Johnson, a jazz musician who was often on the road. Getlin got in trouble frequently, and school was always an afterthought.

“That was a crazy, crazy time in my life,” Getlin said. “My dad grew up in Harlem, and he was raised in a violent household. He thought he was taking it easy on me, but I would get whippings with belts. He was tough.”

One day, Johnson came home from a road trip and found that Getlin had dyed his hair. This didn’t sit well with the old-fashioned Johnson, and it would become the tipping point in their relationship.

“I got the beating of my life that night,” Getlin said.

That was the first time protective services was involved in Getlin’s life.

That set in motion Getlin’s move to Portland, to be with his mother, whom he wished to keep anonymous, and her new husband and his children. Five people were crammed into a tiny house on North Interstate and Lombard, and Getlin was relegated to a cramped basement bedroom set off by plywood walls.

“My step dad basically saw me as this imposition,” Getlin said.

Looking back now, as Getlin surveys the expansive house, where he lives now when not in school, in the Barrington Heights neighborhood of West Linn, and says, “my bedroom here is probably as big as the entire top floor of that house.”

Getlin said the area where he grew up could have been worse. He attended Jefferson High School and was on the wrestling team.

“We had bullet holes in the house,” he said. “I had a buddy who was stabbed to death right after a wrestling match. My half brother just turned 19, and he’s been shot at. It’s Portland, so it’s not a war zone. But we lived in what you would call the ‘hood.’”

It was his home life that was the worst. There would be times when Getlin would watch his stepfather take his children to eat, while he would be left at home hungry.

But Getlin rebelled.

“I would get my butt kicked a lot by the guy,” he said of his stepfather. “And my mom wouldn’t do anything.”

One day, while his wrestling coach at Jefferson High School, Montrell Brazielle, happened to be outside, Getlin was knocked unconscious by his stepfather. So Getlin went to live with Brazielle and his family for a short time.

But when he came back and told his mother he wanted to report the incident, he said his mother instead called the police on him.

“It was a summer day and everyone was outside in our neighborhood because the houses were so small,” Getlin said. “And here I was, a kid being led down the sidewalk in handcuffs in front of everyone.”

That led to time spent in juvenile detention and a hearing in front of a judge, where Getlin had his first experience with the law. And he took full advantage of it, describing his living situation and explaining to the judge why he wanted to be in foster care.

“The judge said, ‘Wait a minute. It’s not often I hear kids say they want to be in foster care.’ And I started listing off the reasons,” Getlin said. “My bedroom has a leak in the ceiling above my bed. A dog lives in the basement with me that has never been bathed. There are cockroaches on the floor next to my bed. At that point my mom slammed her hand on the table and yelled ‘(expletive) Rand, they’re not cockroaches! They’re beetles.’ At this point, the judge said OK.”

And Getlin was placed in the system.

He first went back to live with Brazielle, but the wrestling coach was 23 at the time raising his own children, and the state wouldn’t certify him as a foster parent. Brazielle could not be reached for comment.

So Getlin was placed at a home in the nearby Fremont neighborhood, headed by an elderly woman, along with four other kids.

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