Broken Boy Surviving Foster Care and Giving Back to the System That Stole My Childhood

By any estimation, Gino Medeiros should have become a statistic.

Plunged into the broken foster care system of the 1970s at the age of five, Gino would spend the next fifteen years bouncing from one home to the next, unwanted and unloved, or so it seemed. He was convinced that he would die homeless and alone, just another life that slipped through the cracks. But one can never underestimate the power of kindness…

A coming-of-age tale first witnessed through the eyes of a child and then a young gay man, "Broken Boy" is the true story of Gino's journey through foster care to the heart of a loving family. Part manual for prospective foster parents, part emotional exploration of the value of family, it is filled with hard-won lessons of kindness, cruelty, redemption, and the ultimate triumph of unconditional love.

Gino V. Medeiros (born Gene W. Binsbachar, Jr.) lives on a small farm in Northern California with his husband, Tony. Together, they run a small construction business lifting and moving entire houses. Gino and his former husband fostered and adopted a teenage girl from the foster care system who has gone on to graduate from college and is living her best life.

In 2022, his mother, Judy, who figures heavily in his upcoming memoir, "Broken Boy", passed away. He is dedicated to carrying on her legacy of boundless compassion and caring for others. He made his mother that promise before she passed, and he is committed to that promise.

After working for fifteen years at University of California, San Francisco, he is now a passionate advocate for children's rights. Drawing on his experiences growing up in the foster care system, he has been a keynote speaker at foster parent trainings and industry conferences where he educates on the additional challenges of being gay as a foster child.

Broken Boy is his debut book. It was inspired by a chance encounter with the legendary Maya Angelou in 2001.