Trola’s mother stayed by her side as she lay in the Salisbury V.A. Medical Center.

Patricia stayed home, waiting for someone to call and say Trola was OK. But there was no good news, and Trola never came back home.

“It made me feel as if that was my child,”Patricia says of Trola’s death, her voice trembling as she remembers.

Sometimes you become attached to the children you raise, she explains. Even if they aren’t your own. “I was up all night, waiting for that phone call.”

Though Patricia, 42, grew up in a family with eight siblings, she has never been able to have children of her own. But that never stopped her from being more than a mother to five of her husband’s sister’s children since 1978, when she rescued Trola’s sister, Consuela, from being placed in a foster home by the Department of Social Services.

“I’d rather take care of them than put them in a foster home and not know where they are,” Patricia says. “Even though they’re more my husband’s family than they are mine, they are my family because I am married to him. So I’d rather them be with some of their own relatives. This way they know they’ll be taken care of.”

Pictures of the “babies”she has taken care of over the years hang on the living room wall of the house she shares with Merle, her husband of 23 years.

There, together, are Trola and Consuela Miller; Alphonso Miller, 16; Alixes McCombs, 15, and Harold Lee Miller, 13.

Patricia raised Alphonso from his infancy, but he left two years ago after the Millers felt like they couldn’t handle him anymore.

“We raise a tight ship around here. So, my husband told Alphonso, ‘If you can’t listen, you have to go back to your mother.’ It broke my heart,”Patricia says. “If he was still here with us, he’d know he’d have someone to love him. But Ialso want his mother to know she has a responsibility.”

Alixes, captain of the junior varsity cheerleader squad and a track star at North Rowan High School, has lived with Patricia, whom she calls “Momma,”for the past six years.

Along with making the most of her athletic ability, Alixes aspires to study marine biology at Appalachian State or North Carolina A&T University and participates in the Love of Learning program at Davidson College.

Though she says moving in with Patricia was awkward initially, Alixes knows “this is the place where God put me.”

It’s also where He put Harold Lee, who moved in with Patricia in 1996. “I used to be bad, but when I got here, that changed. … The belt changed me,”he says, laughing. “But, it’s been great. She’s good.”

Good enough to divide her time between working 12-hour shifts as a weaver at Fieldcrest Cannon Plant No. 7, cheering for Harold Lee as he runs the ball on North Rowan Middle’s football field, encouraging Alixes in her academic efforts and supporting her stepdaughter, Equynthia McNeil, and her 2-year-old daughter, Kasiaque Jayhona. They, too, live with Patricia.

“She’s special,”says Equynthia, who frequently lived with Patricia while growing up and moved back in about a year ago. “She takes a big part in my daughter’s life. When Ididn’t have nobody, I could always call on her. I still can.”

“Istayed with her when I was younger, but we got off to a rough start. I guess ’cause Inever really tried to get to know her. Ididn’t really understand why we couldn’t get along at first. I would come around and there was a grudge between my mom and dad and Patricia.

“Then, after Igrew up a little bit … and my daughter was born, Ireally got to know her because we started seeing each other more and more.”

Though Equynthia still keeps in touch with her biological mother, she says she has never had to depend on her because Patricia was always supportive.

“Even when I was staying on my own, if Jayhona got sick, I’d call her and she’d come straight down there.”

Patricia credits her own father and her mother, who died of breast cancer in 1983, for the strong sense of family and determination she demonstrates with her children.

“I come from a family that made sure the kids were raised well. And my mother and father were hard-working people,”Patricia recently told a group of parents at an Early Head Start parent meeting.

“And Idon’t like to get on social service; I’m a hard-working person, too. My husband tells me all the time, ‘I’m looking at your face, you’re gonna die,’but Ido it for those kids. I tell them, ‘Don’t call your daddy. If Ihave to put in an extra hour, I’ll do it for you.’ ”

And though Patricia rests on Sunday, she stresses to her family the importance of living a religious life and sends them to Holy Tabernacle Church.

“That’s very important. I was raised up in Shady Grove Baptist Church and I want them to stay in church,” Patricia says. “It’s a good guideline for them to keep in touch with God. I talk to them a lot, but if they have a problem, even a problem with me, they can go to Him and talk to Him.”

Patricia loves the children, including her “grandbaby,”like they were her own, but she sometimes feels that because she did not give birth to them, there is something missing in their relationship.

“If their parents weren’t in the picture, we’d be closer. Because I know, one day, they’ll be out of the house and want to be with their mom and dad. And I don’t know if they’re going to appreciate what I’ve done for them so far. But, they are with me now and that’s how I’m going to raise them, as my kids,”she says.