Just four years into their marriage, NOPD Officer Travis Johnson and his wife Estefania have more than tripled the size of their family.

The couple moved to New Orleans from Miami in the fall of 2012 with a goal of quickly getting plugged into their new community.  

“We knew we wanted to get involved but we didn’t know it was going to look exactly like this,” said Estefania Johnson.

Before the move, the couple spent much of their free time in group homes working with foster children and teenagers in Miami. After stumbling across a childcare worker in New Orleans, the couple started the process of becoming foster parents and obtained their certification in July of 2013. The pair said the idea of opening up their home to children in need has always been a goal.

“When we were dating, we talked about opening our homes up to teenage mothers, but when we put in an application, they told us we were too young,” Travis said. “They told us we were too young to have a teenage, so they suggested we look at younger kids.”

A month after getting certified, the couple was expecting to take in two brothers but things changed quickly after they received another phone call from a child welfare caseworker.

“They called us not even two or three hours later saying ‘well they have an older sister, would you take all three of them?’ and we couldn’t say no,” Travis said. “And that’s how it all started.”

This marked the first time that DaeJanae and her two younger brothers, D.J. and Donnie, all lived together since they entered the foster system.

Excited by their decision to become foster parents, Travis decided to take another step in serving his community by joining the NOPD. He’s currently working as a Detective in the Property Crimes Unit in the 7th District.

Since then, the couple officially adopted the trio and has expanded the family having their first biological child, Uriah. And they’re not done yet. This Christmas season, they’re hoping to finalize their fourth adoption of a baby girl.

“We’ve had her since she was 15 days old, so her first words, her walking her eating all her first have been with us,” Travis said.

The Johnson’s said before they became foster parents they made it clear that if any of their foster children were up for an adoption that they would be the first to take them in.

“In our family, we feel like God has called us to love people and to serve them, so foster care is one way and us supporting him to serve the community is another way that we just try to love on people, ” said Estefania.

It’s a message of love that Travis said he hopes to spread throughout his community as an officer and now father of five.

“The impact that I can make for them is to love them like they are my children and to be their father," he said. "I don’t know where they would have been without me and I don’t even know where they’re going to be even with me, but I do know that they’ll never be able to say someone didn’t love me or that someone didn’t care for me.”