Former Wednesday's Child: 'Adoption Is A Wonderful Thing'

CENTENNIAL, Colo (CBS4) – CBS4 has been partners with The Adoption Exchange for nearly 40 years. Each week, CBS4 profiles a child who is living in foster care hoping to be adopted. The segment is called Wednesday's Child. For some of these children, the profile changes their future.

John McDaniel was among those children. When he was 8 years old, John and his brother were abandoned in a motel room in Denver. He tells CBS4 that his father went into the witness protection program and just left them in the motel.

LINK: A Day for Wednesday's Child

"It was very scary. I don't remember a whole tremendous a lot. I do know I was very weak, and my brother was very weak," McDaniel explained.

John went into foster care, and soon he was profiled as a Wednesday's Child.

"I was kind of nervous about it," McDaniel remembered.

The years of abuse and instability he suffered became apparent on camera.

"I would like people that don't drink, smoke, or people who don't spank each other and stuff," 10-year-old John said in his Wednesday's Child profile.

The McDaniel family saw that news story and adopted John.

"I was a tough kid, and I was very hard to deal with," John explained. "The McDaniels did the very best they could and actually I think they did a wonderful job."

The McDaniels set him on a path to building his own happy family.

"I actually got a little bit of a taste of how family life is like," John said.

McDaniel was determined to give his kids the kind of childhood that he never had.

"I always wanted to be someone who was a good influence on everybody."

Now he has his own business, a loving wife, and 7 children, 2 step-children, and a grand baby. He credits his success now to being adopted back then.

"Adoption is a wonderful thing for a child."