UConn Star Azzi Fudd's Family Built by Love, Not Blood

When 8-year-old Azzi Fudd got her wish for siblings, it didn't come the way she imagined. But Jon and Jose, two foster boys who moved into her family's tiny two-bedroom Virginia apartment, became the brothers she'd been saving pennies to buy.

The Fudds look like they wandered in from different families. Azzi's mom Katie is red-haired and white, her adoptive father Tim is a tall Black man, and her brothers Jon and Jose trace their roots to Guatemala. "That's something I love about the way we look," Azzi says without hesitation.

Their story started with heartbreak. Tim's mother Georgia frequently fostered children at her Atlanta home, including Jon and Jose. When she died suddenly from lung cancer in 2011 at age 63, she made her wishes clear: the boys needed to stay with family.

So Tim and Katie brought them home. The three kids crammed onto one bunk bed, with Jon and Jose sharing the bottom and Azzi on top. She shared her room, her clothes, her American Girl dolls, and eventually her entire life with two boys who became her brothers overnight.

"She used it as leverage," Jose laughs now. "If you're gonna sleep in my room, you gotta dress up and sing with us." Azzi dressed them in coconut bras and grass skirts. She did their makeup. They never said no to their older sister.

Jose remembers being those new foster kids who looked different, carrying the weight of fighting for themselves through the system. "That reassurance that I didn't have to fight anymore took so much pressure off," he says.

Katie watched her daughter transform too. "They brought a lot of good out of her in terms of learning how to talk a little trash or learning how to not necessarily be so nice." Sweet Azzi learned to share, to stand up for herself, to be tougher.

Why This Inspires

The Fudds call themselves "imperfectly perfect," which might be the best description of family anyone's ever coined. They've shared bedrooms and meals and countless car rides. They call each other before big games and bigger moments like surgeries. They have nicknames, inside jokes, and the kind of teasing that only comes from real love.

As Azzi heads into her final March Madness, having recently tied her career high with 34 points at Gampel Pavilion, her family will be there cheering. Not because DNA says they should be, but because 15 years ago they chose each other and never looked back.

"What a gift," Azzi says about her brothers. For all five Fudds, the gift goes both ways.