Anna Mae Torn Between Two Families, Two Worlds
After seven-year custody battle, American girl navigates new life in China.
Feb. 16, 2010— -- Anna Mae He, an 11-year-old American citizen, is torn between two families, two cultures and two countries.
Raised by an American couple in Memphis, Tenn., almost since birth, the world Anna Mae knew was turned upside down in July 2007 when a Tennessee Supreme Court ruled she had to leave the only family she'd ever known and be returned to her Chinese birth parents.
After a wrenching, seven-year custody battle, the shock of moving in with her biological parents, Jack and Casey He, was just the beginning for Anna Mae.
Along with the new family came a new language -- and even a new country -- when the Hes, who had been granted temporary permission to stay in the U.S. until the custody hearings were completed, decided to leave the country, voluntarily, before facing deportation.
Anna Mae and her biological family moved to China in February 2008, leaving behind Jerry and Louise Baker, who raised her since she was 3 weeks old, and her "little sister" Aimee, born just 13 months after Anna Mae. The two girls -- raised as siblings -- were best friends.
"I think about Anna every single day, every minute," Aimee said. "I go to sleep. I don't have her beside me. When I walk into school in the mornings, I don't have her standing beside me, walking in together."
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Eight-thousand miles away in China, Anna Mae is having her own adjustment issues, as ABC News producer Samantha Wender discovered when she visited Anna Mae at her new home in Chongqing, a province in southwest China.
Anna Mae attends a boarding school with her siblings Andy and Avita. But keeping up in a Chinese classroom when she doesn't speak the language has proved difficult for the once straight-A student. Anna Mae told ABC News, "Last time I tested, I didn't do so good."
She also said she misses her classmates in Tennessee.
"When I lived in Memphis, I had lots of friends. Everyone can speak English, and in America, I don't have to worry about other stuff," she said.
