Sue and Bruce Rinebolt kiss Andrea in Family Court just after her adoption was finalized. Andrea will be keeping her surname in memory of her first adoptive mother, Katie Krumm, who adopted four children but died of cancer. The Providence Journal / Kathy Borchers

EAST PROVIDENCE

In a heart-shaped box, Andrea Krumm, 10, keeps two necklaces. Two heart pendants, one from her birth mother and one from her adoptive mother, slide along the same silver chain.

On a gold chain is a locket that her brother from a previous adoption, Andrew Bettencourt, 13, gave her last week. She and Andrew spent their early years together until they lost the only mother they had ever known.

When Andrea was born in 1999, her mother’s tangles with drugs and prison made caring for a child impossible. Katie Krumm, who had already raised two children she adopted from India, brought Andrea home from the hospital, as she had brought Andrew home three years before.

When Katie Krumm died of cancer in 2005, Andrea and Andrew rejoined the ranks of children in state custody looking for a “forever family.” This year, 160 children in state or foster care hope to be adopted. A private nonprofit agency, Adoption Rhode Island, works with the state Department of Children, Youth and Families to connect children with loving homes.

Andrea was chosen by Adoption Rhode Island to be photographed in 2007 for the Heart Gallery, a traveling exhibit of portraits taken by volunteer professional photographers.

The Heart Gallery launched this year and on display until mid-December in the Bell Room of the State House, highlights 21 children — 3 of them brothers hoping to be adopted together.

In a Nov. 12 State House ceremony attended by almost as many balloon animals as adults, a ribbon was cut, and the children pictured in the 5th annual Heart Gallery surged into the stately State Room to see their portraits for the first time.

These aren’t ordinary photographs. Somehow, when certain people view them, the portraits whisper into hearts, in voices that can’t be ignored. People then ask how they can help.

Of the children featured in the previous Heart Gallery that just finished its tour, 60 percent were adopted. Others were matched with foster homes or people to take them on visits.

After Katie Krumm died, Andrea lived in three homes and kept bouncing back to state custody. Sue and Bruce Rinebolt, of East Providence, who had known the Krumms from Barrington Baptist Church, saw that Andrea needed not only a therapeutic family but a treatment-level family, Sue Rinebolt recalled Wednesday. They had fostered two boys, Richard and Jayson McVeigh, now 22 and 20 and living on their own in Pawtucket. When the McVeigh boys joined the Rinebolts in 1993, they were 6 and 4. Sue’s son from her first marriage, Bryan, was 5 when Bruce adopted him, and 10 when the McVeigh brothers arrived.

“She was supposed to stay for two weeks,” Sue Rinebolt said. “We helped her embrace who she was. We helped her process what she had gone through.” The Rinebolts worked with DCYF and Adoption Rhode Island to get Andrea into the Heart Gallery. She was profiled on Channel 10 as a Tuesday’s Child.

Sue Rinebolt said Andrea kept asking, “Do you love me?”

Sue and Bruce always answered yes, Sue said.

Then, a surgeon from Africa spoke at their church, telling how, whenever he was jolted from sleep by an emergency requiring him to leave his bed, he would hear the voice of Jesus ask, “Do you love me?”

Sue recognized the voice, in her own life, coming from Andrea.

The Rinebolts decided to adopt Andrea. “We both went into it wholeheartedly,” Bruce Rinebolt remembered recently. Andrea had attended Andrew’s adoption in 2008, on the one Saturday a year when Family Court nearly bursts with happiness, flowers and balloons. Andrea wanted her adoption to take place on National Adoption Day, just like Andrew’s.

That day came last Saturday.

Chief Family Court Justice Jeremiah S. Jeremiah Jr. took a few moments to address Andrea and the court, which was full of people who love her — the Rinebolts, her birth mother and Melissa Higham, one of her natural sisters; plus Andrew and an older Krumm sister, Stephanie, with a new baby; her Rinebolt brother; her McVeigh brothers; her two best friends and their grandmother; her early babysitter; plus social workers from DCYF, Adoption Rhode Island and Casey Family Services.

“You’re kind of special,” the judge said, relating his connection to the Krumm family. His son-in-law treated Katie Krumm as she battled cancer, he said, and Andrew Krumm had been to the judge’s house for Sunday dinners when he stayed occasionally with the son-in-law’s family.

“You want to be part of the Rinebolt family?” Jeremiah asked Andrea, all by herself at the witness stand, wearing a dress, earrings, an updo and her first pair of heels.

She nodded and said “Uh-huh.” A lawyer prompted her to say the word. She said, “Yes.”

Papers were signed. Pictures were taken. Andrea was given flowers and gifts. The Rinebolts kissed their new daughter, one parent on each cheek. Andrea’s happiness seemed to shoot to the ceiling. Then she wiped both cheeks.

At the brunch afterward, Cheryl Peltier, a “permanency coach” for Casey Family Services, said a collaborative approach to Andrea’s care had helped keep her connected to her birth family, her Krumm family and the Rinebolts. “They all did what was best for Andrea,” Peltier said. Elizabeth Davis, Andrea’s birth mother, “was on board to help Andrea from day one.”

Ronne Chalek, the DCYF part of Andrea’s permanency team, commended Elizabeth’s caring for her daughter by letting her be adopted. Davis is unusual, Chalek said. “A lot of people wouldn’t want to see their children happy without them.”

At Andrea’s adoption brunch, symbols of love were bestowed in tiny boxes. Andrea presented her birth mother with a necklace of a heart embracing many smaller hearts. Sue Rinebolt read from her notes, saying the necklace meant: “Just as a mother can love more than one child, a child can love more than one mother.”

Sue Rinebolt then addressed Andrea: “Elizabeth has something she wants both of us to give to you.” It was a bracelet from both moms that says “Special daughter always.”

Then Andrea gave her new father a ring with DAD spelled out in crystals over an onyx background. Sue Rinebolt said the ring was from Andrea and the boys to a man who believes: “The sweetest word a man can hear is Dad.”

Sue’s grandfather, a miner in Utah, started the onyx tradition when he carved a ring from a stone he found. At Andrea’s brunch, Bryan was given the carved ring, Andrea got onyx earrings and Sue an onyx ring. Bruce presented Richard and Jayson McVeigh with onyx rings, too. Although they grew up in the Rinebolt home for 16 years, they were to become legal family members on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, the Rinebolts legally adopted Richard and Jayson as adults.

On Saturday, Bruce Rinebolt addressed his growing family:

“We’re very grateful for the children that God has blessed us with.”

With reports from Kathy Borchers

dnaylor@projo.com