The inaugural luncheon honoring outstanding Colorado foster parents was held Monday at the Boettcher Mansion. It's not often that a luncheon prompts tears among its attendees, but then it's not often the honorees turn out to be such a remarkable group.

I can't pinpoint what made this event so moving, but I can tell you of the little boy who proudly lifted the cuff of his pants to show me his new shoes. He was among seven young children sitting at the table of Neil and Cheryl Martin. The Martins adopted five of the children and are fostering the other two, including little man in the new shoes. I can tell you of Jim and Vicki Zimmerman, and how, as Vicki moved to accept their award, she ruffled the hair of one of her four foster sons. "I love you," the gesture says, "and I am here."

I can tell you of the five young men sitting with foster mom Cathy Smith. Like the Zimmermans, Cathy specializes in fostering adolescent boys. One of them, Jacob, now 19 and in college, told me that within two months of living in Cathy's home, "she changed my whole — "

"Life," his younger brother, Jason, interrupts. He's also one of Cathy's foster sons.

"No, not life, my situation at school," Jacob says.

"That is your life," Jason says.

Jacob says he would not have graduated from high school without Cathy, who talked to his teachers, sat with him while he did his homework and told him he didn't have the option of not graduating. Everything

she did, Jacob says, told him that he mattered. "I hear that a lot, that all anyone ever told them is that they're worthless," Cathy tells me later.

Among the honorees is Sister Michael Delores Allegri. She feeds one baby while an infant sleeps in a car-seat carrier near her feet. The infant came to her Friday. The child's mother is homeless. "All children deserve to be loved, to be nurtured, to be cared for," she says. She has fostered more than 50 children and mentored many parents, showing them love requires patience and structure and sacrifice.

Sitting across the room from Sister Allegri are John and Kimberly Cannedy of Grand Junction. They brought their daughters, "three who grew in my tummy and five who grew in my heart, but I don't remember which is which," Kimberly is fond of saying. The Cannedys have fostered more than 40 children in and out of the social services system.

Sometimes, she says, people tell her husband, "Why are you raising someone else's kid? That's not your job." Her husband answers: "It's not somebody else's kid. They are everybody's kids and the minute they walk through my front door, they are my kid."

I can tell you about Linda Hughes, with whom I shared a table and who seemed mortified by all the attention. "This isn't why I do it," she tells me later. She has been a foster parent for more than 20 years and she adopted two children. She says she has grown with every child and that every one of them has a good heart, but just needs a good home.

These are the inaugural honorees, and every one of them tells me they don't believe what they do is extraordinary. They say it is what they are called to do or that they come from large families and loving parents. They say, simply, as Vicki Zimmerman does, "I guess I don't think what I do is remarkable because I know my own heart."

Gov. John Hickenlooper spoke at the luncheon and he called these parents "the real heroes in our community." They are. Their heroism finds its form not in outward expression, but inward. What they do, for two days or for two years or for forever, requires not just that they invest in a child. It requires an act of faith. It requires belief in the potential of every child who comes to them hurting and hopeless. It requires belief in their own abilities to hold safe, to guide, to teach, and it understands, finally, that the capacity to love is boundless.

Tina Griego writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.